All the Sherbrooke clan are alive, well, and in rip-roaring spirits in August 1815. Two months after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, Tysen Sherbrooke, the youngest of the three brothers, now thirty-one, a vicar, a widower, and a father of three, has just been told by the earl that he's become the new Baron Barthwick of Kildrummy Castle in Scotland. When Tysen visits his new holdings, his narrow, sober world explodes as he steps into a beehive of complications - facing down dreadful people who would as willingly slit his English throat as look at him. Then the local bastard, Mary Rose Fordyce, a remarkable young woman blessed with a soft, steady heart and a courageous spirit, comes unexpectedly into his life, in desperate need of his protection.