Every woman knows men are stupid. They wouldn’t know what’s best for them if it leapt up and smacked them between the eyes. And for Sarah Carrington, she’s almost certain it’s true where Colonel Jack Northam is concerned. The man actually has the gall to proclaim himself a bachelor-too hardened by the ways of the world to ever tangle himself up with a silly chit like her. Little does Jack know, Sarah has set her cap for him and will stop at nothing until she holds his heart captive in her pretty gloved hands.
Jack swears to heaven and all who listen that Miss Sarah Carrington is bound to be the death of him; twisting his gut into a hot knot of need and grinding his sanity to dust under the heel of her delicate kidskin boots. Convinced he’s doing what’s best for her—and guarding an awful secret—he resists her persistent charms, barricading his heart from her battalion of feminine wiles until the night she is viciously attacked. One look at Sarah's terrified, tear-streaked face and he knows his heart has little chance of holding out for much longer. Only one thing stops Jack from falling into the blissful blue mist of love. A truth so horrible, so horrendous, so . . . humiliating, that he will go to the ends of the earth to keep it hidden, even if it means living a life of privately shameful isolation and rejecting the only love he’s ever known.