Beatrice Wolcott is desperate to keep her past a secret. She can’t afford to make the same mistake other teachers have made—mistakes that have forced them to marry! So when the Marquess asks Beatrice to pose as his temporary fiancée, she would have refused… Until he offered to discover the identity of whoever has been vandalizing the school. How could she not agree to the bargain when the safety of the students is at stake?

Lord Sexton, Chief investigator and Interim Director of the Society for the Advancement of Ingenuity in London, needs to address one last detail to convince the board to make his position a permanent one: A wife.