Margherita Moretti shares nothing with her father except a knack for painting. When he dies unexpectedly, she dresses as a man to finish the project he started in the cathedral in town. While she's there, she becomes reacquainted with Luca Migliore, a man she knew as a child, a boy who claimed he could travel through time and who promised to return for her as soon as he got rich. Now he's rich, but perhaps he's forgotten his promises. Does he feel the same flames she does when they are together? What secrets are hidden behind his mysterious eyes?
When she's forced to flee the town of her birth or face execution, Margherita ends up in Rome, where she learns how to support herself in the only way a destitute Renaissance woman is able: through prostitution. She meets the dashing Ricardo di Medici, whose affection for art seems to rival her own, and they embark on a torrid affair. Is it love or is it merely business? And what is she to make of Luca's sudden reappearance in her life and his warnings that Ricardo is not the man he claims to be?
When Margherita stumbles on a frightening truth, which man will have her back, and which man will throw her to the metaphorical wolves? The truth has never been less clear to her, and the stakes have never been so high.
