Lady Sylvia Collins has no dowry and no marital prospects after her father gambles away their vast fortune. He decides to go to America in hopes of reinventing himself and rebuilding their accounts. For two years he writes to her of his progress as she manages their crumbling estate, only to one day receive a letter of news that she's been pledged in marriage to a mysterious nobleman she's never met. As she processes the news of her upcoming nuptials, she is faced with the reality she will never marry the man she has been pining after during her father's absence.
Lord Dawson Croyle, Earl of Dunbrey, arranged for Lord Collins to travel to America on a pretend conquest after he made a deal with him for his daughter's hand in marriage and all holdings of his former estate. Dawson intends to spare Sylvia from further humiliation and ruin by paying off her father's gambling debts and marrying her. For two years he forges a friendship with her without her knowledge of their arrangement in hopes she will willingly accept him when their wedding day finally arrives.