Lord Julius Soames, the Earl of Andover, welcomes the diversion of assisting James Metford in reclaiming his title as the Earl of Ipswich. Julius’s own life has become somewhat stultifying in recent months, not helped by his three closest friends having found and married, or be about to marry, the women they love. He believes travelling to Suffolk with James to be the perfect diversion from his own ennui. Julius might be known in Society for his cynicism and dryness of humour, but neither of those things has prepared him for the depth of his physical reaction to the ethereal beauty of James’s sister, the young and beautiful Lady Bethany Metford. For ten years Bethany has believed her brother to be dead and buried, so it is the greatest shock of her young life when he suddenly reappears back at the Suffolk estate of their uncle, where she has been incarcerated for all of those same years. Not only has James returned from the dead but he has brought the arrogant Lord Julius Soames, the Earl of Andover, with him. Will Bethany be able to forgive James for abandoning her? Can she resist the allure of the handsome, but infuriating, Julius Soames? And what is the secret their uncle is so determined to keep hidden from all of them?