With dainty fists clenched and dark eyes ablaze, Miss Rosalys Larrimer gathered the skirts of her twice mended frock and stormed out of the parlor in a tizzy. Poor Rosalys could not believe the note just read to her and her sister Daphne. A promissory note it was, drawn up between the late Duke of Kedwell and her own father – but what it promised was a marriage contract between their children! Although its signatories long ago had a falling-out, Lady Larrimer would see to it that the aged note was honored. After all, a match between Daphne and Connor St. Cyr would save Larrimer House from foreclosure.

Spirited Rosalys was outraged. Her sister, wed with neither dowry nor fortune, would be humiliated. Worse yet, despite St. Cyr's impressive demeanor, his lordship was a socially graceless, clumsy bumpkin. But Rosalys never dreamed that there was method to his lordship's rustic madness . . . and that the dreary note of days past held the key to her own bright future.