The third in a trilogy of Regency romantic comedies by Catherine Moorhouse that are linked by major or minor characters. Dorothea Sandham, trapped as an unpaid companion to her distant cousin, Miss Leticia Grayson, reluctantly goes along to pay an intrusive condolence call on a grieving young widower, Sir Tate Bancroft. Having lost his lovely Portuguese bride in childbirth, and having been goaded by the bullying of "Vicious Letitia", Tate proposes a marriage of convenience to Dorothea. She agrees, but only so that she might care for his infant daughter while he returns to to duty - and perhaps a deliberate death - in the struggle against Napoleon in the Iberian Peninsula. What starts as a marriage of convenience, however, turns quite inconvenient when Tate returns from Portugal with a gorgeous widow who is the image of his late wife, and finds Dorothea in the arms of a charming French count. But the widow and the count are not exactly what they seem, and when Dorothea and Tate work together on a dangerous rescue, they realize that their loveless marriage is also not exactly what it seems.