Eleven years ago, ragtag near-orphan Harriette Smythe made a lifelong friend when she defended the young Earl of Renwick from the village boys persecuting him for his stammer and clubfoot. When Ren returns to London with all the polish of his Grand Tour and the need to take up his duties, he finds a woman in crimson silk shimmying through his window: Harriette, all grown up into a delectable woman, who offers him a startling proposal.

Harriette, now an artist, has been helping support her eccentric household with salacious sketches that have made her notorious, but she needs to redeem herself with a respectable-and rich-clientele if she wants to keep a roof over their heads. She offers Renwick a trade: she'll help him select a bride from London's marriageable maidens if he agrees to sit for a portrait.

Ren soon falls back under the spell of wild, willful Harriette, the only person who thinks he's perfect just as he is. But winning the one woman he cannot have will mean risking his life to free her from the grip of her past and the forces bent on tearing them apart.