On the run from the wrathful Prince of Wales, Jack Haines, Earl of Lambourne, is taken prisoner by a Highland laird who makes him an unusual offer: if Jack handfasts his niece, then his life will be spared. The old Highland custom -- a marriage lasting only a year and a day, unless both partners agree to make it a lifelong vow -- sounds preferable to Jack to being dragged to London in chains, and when he meets lovely Lizzie Beal, his dilemma starts to seem positively enjoyable. Until the hellion vents her fury...on him! Detesting the scandalous match that will end all her chances of making a respectable marriage, Lizzie can't abide living intimately with a fugitive nobleman bent on seducing her and then running off. But in teaching her the pleasures of a wife's duties, Jack sparks within them both a passion that will make him wish he could stay with Lizzie for much longer than a year and a day.