Convicted for a crime he never committed, Clayton Bannister, Earl of Carlisle, is imprisoned on a ship bound for a penal colony and then enslaved on a Caribbean plantation until he escapes and becomes a pirate, making himself a fortune and eventually returning to England. There he finds that his accuser, the Duke of Blackthorne, has recognized his mistake and cleared Carlisle's name. But, in the meantime, Carlisle's wife has died in childbirth, along with their baby, and Carlisle wants revenge more fiercely than ever against the man who has ruined his life. How best to get it? By wedding, bedding and abandoning the Duke's unmarried daughter, Lady Regina Wharton. But little does Carlisle, who has been turned by harsh experience into a seemingly cruel man, expect to fall in love with his second wife or to be transformed by the right woman's love.