Charlotte Pembroke is always the talk of the town. Beautiful, elegant and more than a little vain, she is used to getting everything she wants no matter what the financial cost. But when her father finally puts his foot down, insisting that no more funds are forthcoming until she finds a serious suitor, her gilded world threatens to come crashing down around her ears. Charlotte's angry. Angry with her father, angry at the world, and angry with herself. When she realised that she can irritate one of London's most frustrating men, Robert Duke, by feigning a relationship in order to keep access to her funds, it rapidly becomes the most intriguing idea she's had in quite some time.
Robert Duke's been confounded by Charlotte for a long time. Forced into proximity with the scandal-courting heiress thanks to his older brother's marriage to Charlotte's best friend, he can't decide whether he hates her or pities her--or whether his obsession is something else entirely. When Charlotte comes to him with a plan so outlandish it borders on ridiculous, Robert can't help but accept--not least because, despite all his confusing feelings, he knows he had to protect her. Besides--it's only a feigned relationship with someone he can't stop thinking about. What could possibly go wrong?