Faced the the prospect of becoming a servant in the home of her social-climbing step-brother and his wife, Jane Evans strikes out on her own after the death of her mother. She becomes the companion of Lady Minerva McAllister who hires her never suspecting that she is secretly the scandalous Lady J___ authoress of books lampooning the follies of high society in Victorian London.

But Lady Minerva has skeletons in her own family closet, most notably her nephew, Adam McAllister, the notorious Earl of Briarcliff. Three times married, two of Lord Briarcliff's wives met tragic ends and the third, packed off back to Paris after being exposed as a bigamous fortune-hunter, was considered by many to have been fortunate to escape with her life.

As Jane travels with Lady Minerva to sinister Briarcliff Castle on the edge of the Irish Sea, she plans to cast the enigmatic earl as the subject of her latest book. Instead she finds herself mesmerized by his dark and brooding charm. But even as the attraction between grows they are both endangered by the plots that swirl about the earl for a jealous, unscrupulous man will stop at nothing, not even murder, to dispose of the earl and steal his title and estate and a scorned woman from the earl's past will do anything to thwart the passion that blossoms between the earl and Jane---a passion born BENEATH A SMUGGLER'S MOON.