Mary Rose would have loved her job nursing in the large military hospital in Singapore if she had not been so heartsick at suddenly learning her fiance was in love with another girl. Now she wanted only to get away from everything, so when Ninian Macandrew, who had also recently been jilted, asked her to travel to his New Zealand home with him and pose as his fiancee, it seemed the answer to her problems as well as his own.

But "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!" Warmly welcomed into Ninian's home by his kindly parents, treated as a loved daughter, Mary had to remind herself that it was all based on a lie. And there was no chance that Ninian would turn it into reality, for it was clear that he still loved his former fiancee, who was still, as his bother's wife, very much in the picture.