Miranda Jarvis would do anything to protect her sister - so when Lucy comes down with a fever, she thinks nothing of stealing a loaf of bread from a local landowner. After all, things can't get much worse: after their father died, they were turned out of their home, and their mother lost her life on the road giving birth to a stillborn infant. Robbed by strangers, the pair of them has nothing, and no one to help them. Miranda doesn't count on being nearly brained by the cook's rolling pin ... but nor does she count on the house's owner himself. The seemingly respectable businessman Sir James, known for his philanthropy, takes a keen interest in Miranda and her sister, and they are soon established in his household. But Sir James has quarreled with his nephew, the rakish but reluctant smuggler Fletcher Taunt, and - little does Miranda know - the hostility between the two men, one of whom she comes to love, will change her life forever.