Devilishly handsome Lord Ian Sutcombe, the new Marquess Sutcombe, has inherited debt and a bankrupt ancestral Hall thanks to poor management made from his late father and an avaricious step-mother. He has no choice but to seek a marriage of convenience and sets his sight on Hannah Leeds, a newly wealthy merchant's daughter. The ambitious merchant is quite eager for his two other daughters to find titled husbands, and ensure his name will be forever linked with the nobility. Hannah, a very pretty country girl has no desire for the excessively pampered and cloistered lifestyle led by the aristocracy but was recently mysteriously jilted by the commoner she loved. Numbed by the rejection and pressured by her father, she resignedly agrees to marry Ian. They wed, and soon learn that passion and desire and a commonality of interests force them to know each other, yet their pride may prevent them from discovering a once-in-a-lifetime love.