For seven years, Julia Benton was trapped in a loveless marriage. Despite risking everything - even her very health - to be the wife and mother she thought her husband wanted, it was never enough. And when she is suddenly left a widow after a tragic accident, her life quickly settles into an obscure existence, alone and forgotten, watching her days slip away from her one by one. When she stumbles across a free-spirited child one icy day, Julia is more than willing to take on employment as the girl's governess. The child has no mother, and Julia has no means of supporting herself in her widowed state. But her employer is Alexander Halberd. Gruff and enigmatic, mourning the loss of a wife who died in the same accident as her husband, he seems at turns both distant and endearingly kind. And Julia cannot stop herself from thinking of what more there could be between them... But secrets lie thick as dust in her new home. What she thought she knew of her dead husband might have been nothing more than a carefully constructed facade, and the things Alexander won't tell her could destroy their growing passion before it even has a chance to begin.