After Marianne is caught en compromise with another woman, her husband, the vicious Viscount Cobham, is enraged. He remands Marianne to the care of her beastly grandfather with orders that she take a lover—a male lover. She is to get herself with child by the time he returns from his travels in six months. He will have his heir, one way or another. Marianne’s grandfather charges his stable master with the task, and Marianne is bound to her bed every third night to await the burly man.

Michael Ainsworth is no stud horse, and Baron Thurlow’s task is too ghastly to consider. But Michael longs for a glimpse of the pretty girl who used to cling to the paddock fence to watch the horses. When he finds her terrified and unwilling, his honor demands he protect her—despite the heartbreaking knowledge the viscountess can never love a lowly servant.

Reader Advisory: Contains simulated acts of rape, but no highborn woman was harmed in the making of this story.