Saucy, headstrong Petrina had just escaped from her country school when she ran into her Guardian, Earl of Staverton. To her surprise he was not the old stuffed shirt she'd expected, but a young, strikingly handsome aristocrat--and without a doubt the coldest, most arrogant man she'd ever met.

No matter how desperately hard Petrina tried, she could not befriend the Earl. Her very presence seemed to annoy him. Preoccupied with his idle love affairs, he sought to arrange for her -- a decent marriage and be quickly done with her....

But his willful ward had other plans. Ignited by the Earl's stony indifference, she took it as a challenge to make him love her... not as a young innocent but as a full-fledged, passionate woman.