I’m not holding you to keep you from leaving. I’m holding you because it’s a way of showing you how precious you are to me. Lillian Burkhart could not be more different from her half-sister, Wilhelmina. Suspecting that she is more like their wastrel father, she struggles against the wildness inside her, trying desperately to be the proper young woman that Miss Euphemia Darrow has reared her to be. But when she’s discovered walking barefoot in Hyde Park by none other than the grandson of the elderly dowager duchess who employs her as a companion, her failure is complete. Lord Valentine Somers, Viscount Seaburn, has been playing a part for so long that he no longer recognizes himself. As a soldier, he’d risked life and limb. Now, as a spy for Whitehall, he’s risking his very soul by using his skill with cards to gain entree to circles he wants no part of. Feigning the ennui of a debauched dilettante who treats women and money as if they were both in unending supply, he’s immediately struck by the beauty, vivacity and innocence of a lovely barefoot nymph… who happens to be his grandmother’s companion. Given an ultimatum by his grandmother, marry or be disinherited, Val offers for Lillian on a whim. And she accepts in order to claim her own familial bequest. But theirs isn’t a normal engagement… not when someone keeps trying to murder his betrothed. Uncertain if it has to do with Lillian’s inheritance, his own inheritance or the enemies he’s made over the years, Val knows he will do whatever it takes to protect her… but he didn’t expect to fall in love with her.