Miss Fiona Hartley’s huge dowry should have ensured that finding a husband would be quick. True, she’s a tad older than the average debutante and spends too much time sketching brutally honest character portraits. She desperately needs a husband, so she can access her dowry, lest the man blackmailing her reveals a secret that would ruin her family. So desperate in fact, that she’s willing to do the unthinkable - propose marriage to the most surly, irritable gentleman in town.

Lady Ludmilla Windmere is mortified. The spinster extraordinaire has fallen in love with her best friend, and that cannot be. The problem? She hasn't met him. Not once. For they have only ever corresponded by letter. When she sets out to uncover his identity, her world shatters. For Addy turns out to be none other but London's worst rake. Adrian St. Addington is perturbed. The rakehell extraordinaire is developing a marked tendre for a spinster, and that cannot be. The problem? She might be mistaking him for someone he is not. Or, what is worse, know precisely who he is.

Emery Jenson came to Wildwood ten years ago with her parents, hired to be the estate's steward and housekeeper. She has taken on more responsibility as her father's mind grows weak and now runs the ducal country seat. When the new duke shows up, she schemes to hide her father's deficiencies, believing the Duke of Winslow won't remain long.

Trevor Hunt, the Duke of Ridgely, has been called many things, most of which are true. Reviled by his family, hated by many, he's earned his reputation in the seedy streets of London and more than his fair share of bedchambers. But battling deadly foes and irate husbands failed to prepare the duke for the most troublesome role he's played yet: guardian to one maddening hoyden.

Bow Street's best investigator, Sir Brook Derring, is hailed as a hero by the ton, but he cares little for the praise or the women. He fell in love once, with Lady Lillian-Anne Lennox, and shortly thereafter lost all romantic notions. As the eldest daughter of the duke of Lennox, Lila has everything but the freedom to follow her heart. All that is taken away when she's kidnapped by a London crime lord, but she knows that someone must be looking for her.