Her Wicked Marquess

Miss Maryann Fitzwilliam is too witty and bookish to attract a husband of her own choosing, so her family arranges for her to marry a man old enough to be her father. Desperate to escape the match, she starts a scandal by claiming that Nicolas St. Ives, the notorious Marquess of Rothbury, was seen leaving her bedchamber. Nicolas — secretly pursuing revenge against those who wronged his late childhood love — lets the rumor stand, and begins visiting Maryann's rooms after dark. What starts as a ruse of convenience deepens into real friendship and then love, even as his hidden vendetta threatens to tear them apart.