A gentleman's impulsive wager to marry a stranger. A young woman's determination not to marry the man she wants.

When Isabel Cosgrove is informed by her father that he lost her hand in marriage while playing cards with Charles Galbraith-the gentleman she's been admiring from a distance for years-she is filled with dismay. How can she agree to wed a man whose reason for marriage is part-revenge, part-indifference? Intent on avoiding a painful union where her regard cannot be returned, she concocts a plan.

Charles Galbraith didn't intend to become engaged as a result of a drunken wager at cards, but after the woman he loves spurns him, what does it matter whom he marries? But even Miss Cosgrove, the fianc e he won by wager, seems intent not to marry him-a fact that both relieves and piques him. She instead suggests a plan that has the potential to temporarily appease her father's demand of marriage while also winning back the love of the woman Charles truly wants.

But when Charles and Isabel are thrown into the midst of a brewing scandal and another man's potential disinheritance, their plan begins to unravel thread by thread, challenging what Galbraith thinks he wants-and just how much more time with him Isabel's heart can stand.