As the eldest daughter of the new Earl of Salisbury, young Bess de Montacute is anticipating a suitable match. When King Edward III and her father choose Hugh le Despenser, the son and grandson of disgraced traitors, as her husband, she is aghast. Meanwhile, Hugh must give up the woman he loves in order to marry the reluctant Bess. Far apart in age and haunted by the past, Hugh and Bess must somehow make their marriage work. But just as they grow closer together, they are threatened by a merciless enemy that endangers all whom they hold dear. Set against the chivalry and pageantry of the fourteenth-century court of Edward III, Hugh and Bess is a story of love and loss, of letting go of the past-and of embracing the future.