Miss Caroline Cummings was a vicar’s daughter, the picture of propriety and the soul of innocence. Thomas Mannering was the most irresistible and infamous rake in the realm, whose drinking, gaming, and womanizing had exiled him from polite society. Only the most bizarre of accidents could have made Caroline his bride—but accidents do happen and did.

Now Caroline’s happiness was in the hands of a libertine lord who taught her the pleasures of love but who himself was besotted with another man’s ravishing wife. This gave Caroline the choice of either settling for the scraps of Mannering’s affection or battling a supremely dazzling and designing beauty for the heart of a man who might well have none...