Miss Cordelia Jones is an American Princess, but her story is no fairytale.

Eighteen-year-old Cordelia Jones is locked in her tower until she promises to marry Lord thomas Ashby, the eighth Earl of Farnham. Cordelia doesn't want to leave her American home or Stuyvesant Bradley, whom she has loved since childhood. But Stuyvesant leaves on a trip and Cordelia is pressured by her overbearing mother to marry a stranger.

Coerced into a loveless marriage, Cordelia finds herself an alien in a decaying English country house where customs and manners are so different from home. Worst yet, accidents seem to befall her at every corner. The more she begins to care for her husband, the more perilous her life becomes. Is she unlucky, or is someone trying to kill the newest cash countess?