Spirited, independent and in her late twenties, Miss Annis Wychwood held herself to be past the age for falling in love. Befriending a pretty runaway heiress brings unexpected consequences, among them the very conflicting emotions aroused by her encounter with the wayward girl's guardian, Mr Oliver Carleton, who was quite the rudest man Annis had ever met....

When Gervase Frant, Seventh Earl of St Erth, returns at last from Waterloo to his family seat at Stanyon, he enjoys a less than welcome homecoming. Only Theo, a cousin even quieter than himself, is there to greet him - and when he meets his stepmother and younger half-brother he detects open regret that he has survived the wars. The dangers of the Lincolnshire countryside could never be more unexpected...

A full-blooded romantic thriller.
'I have often wanted to know what it was he did that was so entirely wicked,' she said. It is a mystery, and I think very romantic.'
'There is no mystery,' said Shield,'nor is it in the least romantic. Ludovic was a wild young man who crowned a series of follies with murder.
A full blooded romance of the eighteenth century, this exciting adventure story of the tracking-down of a master criminal is told with all the verve and suspense of a modern detective story.