When her beloved mother finally succumbs to illness and joins her much-missed husband in Heaven, lovely young Carita is at the mercy of her hateful stepfather. When he announces his intention to force her to marry his wealthy friend Lord Stilbury, she refuses. Stilbury is old enough to be her grandfather and rumoured to have beaten his first wife to death. So when her stepfather says he'll beat her until she gives in, she flees astride her horse Mercury, hoping to find sanctuary with an uncle in Norfolk. On the way, she witnesses a terrible riding accident and accompanies the handsome, unconscious victim as he's carried in a cart to a nearby farm. There it's assumed they are man and wife, and to avoid difficult explanations, she goes along with their assumptions. When the stranger comes round, it turns out that he too is 'on the run' from marriage to a former lover, willing to use blackmail and violence to force him to wed her. Thrown together by a shared Fate, Carita and her stranger go on the run together – pursued not only by her enraged stepfather but also by a gang of ruthless highwaymen they encounter on the road. And when finally, they reach the safety of his modest cottage in the grounds of a magnificent Priory, Carita finds she's in love with this man, who cannot possibly compare to the hated Lord Stilbury, in her stepfather's eyes . . . Little does she know, though, that her stranger has an overwhelming surprise in store for her.
