A member of high society in Victorian England, Lady Elaine Lockwood has had enough of the ton and their exacting ideals...and she is thoroughly fed up with the marriage mart. First, she threw herself at her brother's best friend, whom she's loved all her life and who rejected her flat out, then she agreed to marry a friend who proposed out of pity, only to have that engagement broken. After suffering through scandal and humiliation, Lainey decides to shelve her girlish dreams of true love and focus on her charitable passions instead. She longs to open a help center for underprivileged women, but in order to access the capital she needs from her trust fund to do it, she must first be married. Lainey settles on a marriage of convenience, but she needs a husband who will support her endeavors and not interfere with her work. A peer will not do; Lainey needs a working class man. And in order to find the right sort of man, Lainey must turn to the one who broke her heart. Enter Gavin Mayfield, the Earl of Ashby's best friend and business partner. Gavin has always cared for Lainey, and turning her down had been the hardest thing he'd ever done. But Lainey didn't know his family secret, or that marrying him could put her safety at risk. Plus, dabbling with your best friend's little sister was prohibited in the gentleman's code book. So when she asks for his help in finding a husband, he agrees in the hopes that doing so will earn her forgiveness for breaking her heart. He reluctantly attends her house party, where he discovers that she's not as easy to resist as he'd thought, and one late-night, ill-advised kiss turns his world on its ear. As the party wears on, Gavin faces an impossible decision: let her sacrifice her dreams and marry someone she doesn't love, or conquer his owns demons and give her all she's ever wanted.