When the very bored and very handsome Viscount Trowbridge agrees to escort Miss Sophie Edwards to her first ball, his life is upended. New to the ton and not terribly interested in it, Sophie is unable to dance because of a childhood injury. But our heroine has a secret weapon. During the years most young ladies would have been on the Town, Sophie has been mastering the violin. The viscount, aka Gorgeous Frank, is smitten the first time he hears her perform. Recognizing in Sophie a person more complex and desirable than any ton beauty, he launches a courtship calculated to win her in ways as original as she is. Sophie is nearly bowled over, but a native disinclination to trust proves a serious challenge to Frank. His former mistress interferes, scheming to ruin his new plans, and at other times, Frank is his own worst enemy. As he wades through a sea of misunderstandings, will his “angel” have the insight to believe that he is a changed man? Will Sophie lower the barriers of a lifetime to trust him and allow herself to fall in love?

What’s a poor rogue to do? No sooner has he become intrigued by the lonely veiled figure of a young lady sitting in Green Park, than he hears a disembodied voice inform him : “The jig is up, Ruisdell. That is the girl you’re going to marry.” He does not intend to marry anyone! Yet, when he visits a delightful and beautiful young lady in her opera box that very evening, he discovers her to be the woman in the park, Miss Elise Edwards. Not only that, a plethora of insistent ex-fiance’s attends her, one of whom is violent. Once he uncovers a connection between them that makes him honor bound to protect her, his habitual boredom vanishes. Life morphs into into an unstoppable train of events—ironic, dangerous, sweet, and chaotic—until the rogue does not know whether he is on his head or his heels. And then there was that bet he made . . .

In the world of the Regency, Christian Elliott, Baron Shrewsbury has it all. Helene Whitcombe has nothing except a prickly slate of feminist principles and a job as a schoolteacher in Lord Shrewsbury’s Orphanage for Girls. Pride on both sides separates them, but that doesn’t stop the fierce attraction that builds between this unlikely pair. Can the penniless vicar’s daughter humble the haughty baron? Or will her uncomfortable principles and his high place in society prove to be insuperable barriers to love?