Beth Ackerly is a young widow in 1881 and engaged to marry another man when she meets Lord Ian while attending a show at a theater. Lord Ian warns her not to marry the man she is engaged to. According to Ian, the man is debauched and unfit to be a good woman's spouse. Instead, he asks Beth to marry him, even though this is their first time meeting. Of course she refuses. But she follows his advice and breaks up with the other man. Still, Lord Ian has captured her imagination and she decides to travel to France to give herself some time to sort herself out.
While in France, she meets Ian's sister-in-law and her estranged husband, Mac, who is Ian's brother. She also encounters the police detective Lloyd Fellows, who has decided that Ian is a murderer who is responsible for the deaths of two woman in London he was known to associate with. Fellows tries to enlist her in his investigation into Ian and his other brother, Hart, the Duke of Kilmorgan, who Fellows believes is sheltering Ian from the police. But Beth repulses Fellows because she doesn't believe the picture he has painted of Ian and his family.
Ian also arrives in France and Fellows become even more insistent in his campaign against the Mackenzies. To protect Beth from Fellows' persecution, Ian talks her into marrying him. His brother the Duke has the political power to stifle Fellows' snooping. Ian then takes Beth to Scotland to live at the Duke's estate. But Beth is determined to discover if Fellows' accusations are true. So she heads to London, against Ian's and the Duke's wishes to find out for herself if she is married to a madman and a murderer.
This was a pretty good story. Ian has some kind of mental condition, possibly Asperger's or some other form of autism. Since the novel is set in the 1880s, no one really understands Ian's condition, including Ian himself. He has been told he is insane, told he is unfit to wed, views himself as dangerous. He is certainly confused, that is certain. Seeing Beth come to understand how different but still loveable Ian is made for good reading. Some elements of the story are a bit silly, like Beth's ability to solve the mystery that has eluded her husband, his brother the Duke and the police. And the constant diversions into sex scenes. This is one of those stories, where the lady and gentleman can't see each other without tearing each other's clothing off and going at it. Putting all that aside, I enjoyed the story and the mystery even if I found Beth's role in solving it all a bit too much.
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