A compromised position leads to an inconvenient compromise... Miss Fiona Trimble cultivated a friendship with the viperous Lady Bruxton because she knew it was the only way to make an advantageous match. Blessed with neither unparalleled beauty nor great fortune, social position was her one and only chance. But now the peer she'd set her cap for, the Earl of Kenworth, is betrothed to another. Rather than simply change her objective, Lady Bruxton is blackmailing Fiona into doing the unthinkable—into courting complete and utter ruin to destroy the earl's match. Lucian Maxwell never expected to inherit a title. The bastard son of a married nobleman and a widowed noblewoman, he existed on the fringe of society. And then a little known Scottish relative of his mother died and left him an earldom, one of the few that could be passed down through the female line. He's still struggling to make sense of it all when he wakes in an inn in near the Scottish border with a virginal seductress in his bed. It doesn't take long to realize that Miss Fiona Trimble has ruined herself for the wrong earl. But he needs a wife... and she will clearly need a husband. But the more Lucian is around her, the more protective and possessive he begins to—in fact, the more he begins to feel period. Fiona unlocks his very guarded heart. But Lady Bruxton is not quite finished with her and it will take herculean effort to overcome a villainess who will stop at nothing to make those she sees as her enemies pay.