Love like a debutante about to marry a boring old lord.

It's 1890 and Caroline Porter is grieving the loss of her father. The family's home and business have been left to her brother, and Caroline sails to England to be with her mother's family, hoping to find peace in her situation, but what she finds is so much more when she meets Benjamin Bradley, a medical research doctor who travels the world searching for cures to untreatable illnesses and is on a recent venture across the world to fight an outbreak of cholera in Punjab. When her brother finds Dr. Bradley below their station and finds her a suitable husband, she begins an affair with Dr. Bradley, and their love is put to the test of time, separation, sickness, and death.