A year after the birth of their fourth daughter, Victoria Thorton, Countess of Wolfshire, is frustrated that her husband is avoiding her. He is polite and kind and proper with her, but that is part of the problem. He treats her like a society miss and not as his wife. After ten years of marriage and four children, the changes she sees in her husband and her own self, makes Torie uneasy and almost fearful of losing him. Yet, making her husband confide anything in her has become near impossible. After witnessing the horrors of childbirth, when his wife almost died giving birth to their fourth daughter, Alistair Thorton, The Earl of Wolfshire, made a vow to never endanger his wife in that manner again. In the year after his youngest was born, he had painfully but steadily distanced himself from his wife, driven only by the need to keep his wife safe and his family together — his own needs and sorrowed heart be damned. When an irritated Torie overhears a gossip plotting to seduce Alistair and coax him into taking a mistress, Victoria decides to toss aside ton etiquette and approach the four times widowed Carolin for help in persuading her husband back into her bed. When old friends appear, re-kindling long-lost fond and not— so-fond friendships, tempers run high fuelled by jealousy and the Thortons find themselves fighting for what they believed always belonged to them.
