As far as Melissa Wade was concerned, the future could have hardly looked blacker.

Her father's second marriage had been a disaster. His new wife was as crude as she was rich, interested only in the unbridled pleasures of strong drink and the hunt. There would be no place in her debauched household for a pretty, unmarried stepdaughter. Melissa would have to wed immediately a man of her stepmother's choosing.

Violently dissatisfied with these arrangements, Melissa took the only means of escape available: a job as companion to the wealthy young ward of the Duke of Aldwick. But as Melissa stood before her new employer - a man whose cynical, commanding presence terrified her, whose hatred of women was common knowledge throughout England - she began to wonder if she hadn't escaped into an even more dangerous trap. ( )