For over a year, the widowed Perdita, Duchess of Ormonde has been keeping a secret. A secret about how her husband really died. So it's almost a relief when her mama-in-law finally approaches her with a proposal: Perdita will remarry, thus removing her from the Ormonde family, or the dowager will inform the town and the authorities just how her son died. Though she knows that she isn't really to blame for her late husband's death, Perdita also knows that just the suggestion of wrongdoing is sometimes enough to bring shame upon oneself. For help, she turns to the one man she's always been able to trust: Lord Archer Lisle, a younger son, and her late husband's secretary. The youngest son of the Duke of Pendleton, Lord Archer Lisle has spent his entire life in second place. But, now, finally he has a chance to do something purely for himself. For years he watched helpless as Perdita was brutalized by her husband, his employer. Now she needs another husband to ensure her secret remains hidden, and he'll step up and do the one thing that will fulfil both their needs. And when a threat emerges from a source none of them expected, he'll do whatever it takes to protect the woman he loves.