Miss Victoria Dawkins was in a most perilous position. Cast out of respectable society by a scurrilous slur on her good name, alone and penniless in the London lower depths, this proud but all too vulnerable young lady could not afford to turn down the Earl of Clune's offer. The elegant, handsome, and clearly conscienceless nobleman wished to engage Victoria as a companion to an elderly woman on his great country estate. Victoria had no illusions about the earl's intentions toward her. But she was not prepared for a different kind of danger in a manor where the vengeful ghost of a scandalous past sought her as its victim. Somehow Victoria had to stop the earl from suspecting he held the key to her heart. And she had to stop herself from yielding to a mysterious menace that she could not believe in or deny…