Forced to marry for money to save the family estate, the Earl of Balfour devises a strategy to win the heart of Genie Daniels, a rich English heiress, until he meets her poor cousin Augusta, forcing him to choose between family duty and love.

Douglas Allen, Viscount Amery, hates having arrived to his title without knowing how to manage his properties. Guinevere Hollister is a distant family connection raising her daughter in rural obscurity while stewarding the estate. Douglas reluctantly puts himself in Gwen's hands for lessons in land husbandry and discovers beneath her prickly exterior a woman of passion and honor. Yet despite the closeness they find, she will not marry him. When the...