Ruined through her vile brother's schemes, Eleanor Chivenham is in despair until she is offered rescue by marriage, but marriage to a charming rake with an infamous French mistress. Eleanor accepts, but she is determined to treat this arranged marriage with cool dignity. Once she meets Nicholas Delaney, however, her confidence in her ability to do that is shaken. Not only does he stir her senses and touch her heart, but she glimpses trouble and pain beneath the smooth exterior.

Nicholas is indeed troubled. Committed to serving his country by seducing secrets out of a French spy, he is then persuaded by his brother to marry the woman the earl has ruined. Are even his fabled abilities with women up to this task? To assist him, he gathers together again the schoolboy group he started years before, the Company of Rogues, but even they cannot protect Eleanor and Nicholas from the dark plots being woven around them. Plots that threaten not only their fragile marriage, but their lives.