Beautiful, flame-haired Kate Sheridan was far from home - and close to confusion. Her well-meaning parents had sent her from her beloved Ireland to the London Marriage Mart to make a proper match, and trusted their old friend, the wise and witty Marchioness St. Claire, to make sure their plan did not go awry and Kate did not go astray.

Yet it was the marchioness's own son, the devastatingly handsome if thoroughly depraved Marquess St. Claire, who posed the greatest danger to Kate's dutiful designs. This man who mocked all morality, who made women his playthings and propriety the target of his scorn, was all that Kate told herself she loathed. But the tenor of her conviction and the voice of her conscience were drowned out by the pounding of her heart when he took her in his arms - not for marriage, but still for better or for worse...