Young Sarah Patterson understood perfectly well that a lowly merchant's daughter was not welcome in the salons of London's high society, and she awaited with horror the day when she would walk down the aisle to marry the Duke of Cheviot - a man from whom she could only expect haughty disapproval. But Sarah's anxious expectations were replaced by the greatest happiness a woman could experience in her life, for in the arms of the virile Duke she discovered true love, burningly passionate and terribly fragile - a love for which there are no insurmountable barriers.