A pretty young widow from the country agrees to contract a bogus betrothal with a dark and handsome enigmatic aristocrat. He wants to fend off an unwanted wife, and she to regain the family estate her younger brother gambled away. Matters come to a head when the heroine is abducted by the hero’s spurned mistress in league with his sworn enemy. I must admit I found the novel ‘unobjectionable’ as Jane Austen would say and pleasant reading. The writing was competent, the characters attractive, the plot, although clichéd, well handled, and, while passionate, the sex was kept within the bounds of taste and propriety.