A wounded hero...

A woman with secrets...

A killer lurking in the mists...

Scandal, love, and the hand of fate...

Captain Ian Bell is a tortured man fighting through grief and guilt over the loss of his sister. Now, three years later, Ian still hunts for her murderer in the dangerous criminal underworld of Edinburgh. Then one night, a young woman narrowly escapes death and lands at his feet...his late sister’s best friend, Phoebe Pennington.

Lady Phoebe Pennington—dreamer and storyteller to her family—is a committed reformer writing articles anonymously for an Edinburgh newspaper. One night, Phoebe descends into the corrupt and seething netherworld known as the Vaults. When she tries to save a street urchin from an assailant, she becomes the target of a violent attack, only to be saved by the one man she has desired for years.

Ian’s attraction to Phoebe is as undeniable as it is unexpected, and she awakens in him passions he thought long dead. Phoebe’s blood burns for Ian, but when she learns that he may be implicated in the scandal she is set on exposing, she finds herself torn between love and truth. But fate is taking a hand, for Phoebe is the only one who has seen the face of the killer, and the shadows of evil are closer than they imagine.