Annabella Lagrange grew up believing she was the sheltered only daughter of a wealthy family. As a child she did not find it unusual that her parents lived at opposite ends of their magnificent country estate, or that she was never taken beyond the gates. But at seventeen Annabella is horrified to learn that she is not a lady-to-be, but the daughter of a local whorehouse madam. No longer having any claim to the upper class for which she has been raised, and unable to deal with the truth, she runs away. When her childhood confidant Manuel Mendoza finds her, he helps her begin a new existence as a farmhouse maid with an invented past. And as Annabella grows from a young girl into a woman she must unlearn everything she has been taught about the lower classes, about love, and about what it really means to be a lady ...