Kate Sutherland always felt out of place in brash and modern Southern California. But when she comes to her ancestral home in the Shetland Islands to seek a mystical guide who may shed light on her true heritage, Kate is plagued with visions of a life from five centuries past...A fiery young woman of royal English blood, Catriona Wells is determined to save her family from the deadly political clashes of 15th-century Britain. But Cat's cunning is no match for Scottish border lord Patrick MacKendrick. When this powerful warrior betroths her against her will, Cat must decide whether she dares to love him -- and to trust him with lives that are more precious to her than her own.

Meanwhile, Kate, whose dreams rapidly take on a reality of their own, is caught between a present-day attraction to a charming Scottish historian -- and risking everything in Catriona's dangerous world of passion and bloodshed.