Publisher's Synopsis
Hope Clarke is saved from Sir William Halpen exercising his droit de seigneur the night before her wedding to Edward. Halpen's son John, who has loved Hope since childhood, purchases the virginity of Bessie, a simple-minded local girl, for his father and is handsomely rewarded by the grateful Hope for her rescue. After the wedding Hope and her new husband escape to America and start a new life on Martha's Vineyard, free from the feudal pressures of English law. But their calm is suddenly threatened when Hope's son is born, and he looks remarkably like John Halpen...
