Carol Courtland knew little of her husband's past...of the years during World War II... when a brief but passionate love affair with an English army nurse ended with the birth of an illegitimate child.

Carol knew, of course, that Jeffrey Courtland was handsome, loving and successful...scion to one of America's oldest families...and that the golden years of Kennedy optimism promised them a sparkling future in Washington.

But now an unexpected complication threatens to destroy their happiness. And all the money and power in the world can't hide the dark truth of the past. For Jeffrey's seventeen-year-old illegitimate son is coming home...and bringing the truth with him. Can the twenty-year marriage endure? Or has the masquerade at last come to an end?