Shelagh's holiday romance in Venice with young Camillo Barsini soon became much more than a holiday romance, and they were planning to
marry, when Camillo changed his mind and walked out on her at the eleventh hour. So when his father Cesare asked her to marry him instead, Shelagh was so bruised and bewildered that she accepted almost before she realised what she had
done. But Cesare was rich, an aristocrat, twenty years older than she was-what on earth had made her imagine such a marriage could succeed? Cesare had, to her relief, agreed that it would be in name only but Shelagh hadn't reckoned with a
possible change of feelings on either side....