Witty and refreshingly candid, lovely Serena has been capturing hearts young and old alike. Her guardian uncle worries, though, that at twenty-three she will soon become a spinster. He wants a better life for her than that, but she doesn't want to make a match without her heart being in it.

And none of the men courting her have touched her heart—not Warren, the old friend who woos her even as he eyes other women; certainly not Eustace, the minister concerned more with appearances than compassion; not even Freddy, perhaps the most ardent of her suitors but at nineteen still a puppy.

Then Freddy's uncle, the handsome Lord Pendleton, arrives to extract his nephew from the woman he expects Serena to be—one interested only in wealth and a title. When he refuses to believe that, far from trying to ensnare Freddy, she has been urging him to return to Oxford, her ire gets the better of her. She decides to let his lordship stew in his own juices. And when it becomes clear Lord Arrogant's plan is to get her to change her course from Freddy to himself, feisty Serena sets her own course.