A spoiled heiress. An uncouth gardener. A match made in heaven—or in hell?

Lady Arabella Ponsford has it all: wealth, beauty, a title—and the vilest temper in England. She takes pleasure from punishing anyone who offends her—including the arrogant gardener whose impertinent gaze licks over her form and sets her pulse racing. When he threatens to penetrate her fa?ade to reveal the unhappy woman beneath, she destroys his belongings then evicts him without payment.

Widowed father Lawrence Baxter staked his future on a gardening commission at a country estate. But the spoiled heiress living there—the very delectable spoiled heiress—has other ideas. After a brief but scorching kiss, when Lawrence glimpses a passionate creature beneath her conceited exterior, she ruins his livelihood in a fit of spite, and he vows vengeance.

An unlikely pairing becomes the perfect match.

Eleanor Howard has never fitted in. To her, Society is an unfathomable world where success is measured by the number of suitors' names on her dance card. And her card is always empty. Constantly outshone by her younger sister, and continually criticized by her ambitious mother, Eleanor yearns to be loved for herself, not what others expect her to be. Her secret infatuation with the Duke of Whitcombe—who'd never deign to notice, much less court her—would, if revealed, make her the laughingstock of the ton.

Until he strides across a crowded ballroom and offers his hand.

Montague FitzRoy, fifth Duke of Whitcombe, is unwilling to surrender the pleasures of bachelorhood. When his mother, insistent on finding him a duchess of the right pedigree, forces his hand, he decides on impulse to punish her by kneeling before the least desirable woman in the room.

Only Miss Howard believes his proposal to be genuine.

The solution? A false betrothal that keeps Monty's mother in check, and lifts Miss Howard's prospects. Monty can weather a few weeks' ridicule over an engagement to a woman whose eccentricities are gossiped about. And a betrothal—even short-lived—to a duke will ensure that Miss Howard's dance card is never empty again.

But beneath Eleanor's awkward exterior lies a passionate, intelligent woman, misunderstood and unappreciated, who challenges Monty's notions of duty, life, and love—and with whom he's falling in love himself.

As the end of the Season, and their inevitable parting, approaches, Monty is faced with a choice—surrender to duty, or follow his heart.