Emma knows there is only one fate which awaits her now that her first husband is dead. Her family has resolved to make her marry another lord, and she already fears this lord will prove even more cruel and unfeeling than her first husband. So she decides to take her fate into her own hands and flee her uncle's Norman household, to live as a commoner rather than as a lord's possession. But fate's threads prove to be more tangled than she thought them.
A mysterious woman who looks just like her suddenly comes into her life, and offers to trade places with her. In spite of her misgivings, Emma accepts to switch lives with her look-alike Rowena, leaving the other woman to marry the noble lord in her stead and looks forward to a free life as a commoner in her English homeland.
However, Emma's new life in Rowena's place is not at all what she expected. She is astonished to find out Rowena is married, and that Rowena's husband, who is a master archer, thinks she is the wife who has betrayed and deserted him. The archer chastises Emma for his wife's deeds, not believing her when she attempts to tell him she is not who he thinks she is. Emma tells herself she should run away from this man as soon as can be. It is plain he is a danger to her, not only because he is set on punishing her, but because his steady hands and keen eyes stir strange, wicked sensations inside her.