On the wild Irish coast, Desmond Macartney and Lady Dulcie Kilpatrick trade wit and tenderness beneath a web of class difference, uncertain birth, and unspoken love. Desmond, lonely and proud, has been raised under Lord Kilpatrick's protection after losing his parents, yet fears his affection for Dulcie can never be more than a dream. Their flirtatious ease is interrupted by Blake of Blake's Hall, a boisterous drunk whose comic bluster soon gives way to menace, scandal, and blackmail. In the shadow of the old castle, tempers flare, servants whisper, and the proud household strains to contain a secret that could upend its future. Beneath the humor and social sparring lies a darker truth: Desmond is the child of Lord Kilpatrick's sham marriage to Moya Macartney, and the estate may be diverted to him instead of to Richard Conseltine. As Conseltine and the greedy Feagus scheme to secure the inheritance and suppress the scandal, the conscience-stricken lord weakens under guilt and illness. Meanwhile, loyal Peebles urges atonement, Moya returns in secrecy, and a startling possibility emerges—that the disreputable Blake may once have been a clergyman, and the man who married her to Kilpatrick. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.
