Brought up by an aunt and uncle and shown no affection, Tilda Arnold was married off at eighteen to a rich gentleman over thirty years her senior. A fate all the more cruel because she had already fallen in love with a man who could never be hers. Meeting Crispin, Duke of St Ormond, again some years later, she finds her cirumstances are now much changed. A widow, she's independently wealthy, and at last free to live as she chooses. But to Crispin she remains infuriatingly, tantalisingly out of reach because the entrancing Tilda is acting as chaperon to her cousin - the woman he's intending to marry...