Calista Faulkner had a plan: go to England, get married, and save her father from ruin. Instead, she's now stuck in London, penniless and without the husband she'd pinned her hopes on. Desperate to return home, she seeks employment at a hotel – as a scullery maid – a far cry from the social status she has otherwise been accustomed to. But when a chance encounter with the hotel's owner, Mr. Donahue, leads to a change in fortune and her acquaintance with him deepens, a new problem arises. For Calista knows she must return home and marry a man she hates in order to save her family's reputation. But how can she leave behind the man she's falling in love with? How can she marry anyone else?