While Elanor Huxley misses the glamour of society, she is quite contented with the fact that she will have to take care of herself, after her lovable but frivolous parents died and left her not only an orphan, but a penniless one as well. Biding her time in the home of her self-absorbed cousins, she saves her money and dreams of the day she can afford to rent her own tiny cottage in the country. But when she and her cousin Harriet are rescued from their overturned carriage by the handsome and capable Mr. Patrick, Elanor finds herself thinking more and more about marriage and family and love, and less and less about her own plans. Kit Patrick, Duke of Price, decides not to tell Elanor that he is a Duke - he has just come into the title with the death of his father who banished him overseas for a youthful transgression, and he does not want it to color her judgment of him. But as he gets to know Elanor further, he realises he should have told her from the start because now it is becoming more and more difficult to find the right time. And when Elanor finds out who he is by accident, and just what his youthful discretion was, he wonders if he can ever win back her affections.