A man cannot escape the sins of his past, but he can build a new future...

Edwin Coatesville, the "Duke" of Nottingham, is floundering. Though his title is honorary, he's a disreputable man who has lost everything. One autumn evening, he spies his former wife with another man at a ball, and they are quite chummy. Years have passed since the contretemps that led to their shocking divorce, but possession and revenge drive him, yet he wants nothing more than to regain some of his former respectability... at the cost of theirs.

Lady Charlotte Cavendish once knew great love... until that man proved he was naught but a scoundrel, to such a point her father called in favors and helped her through a scandalous divorce. After putting heartbreak behind her and hoping the beau monde has forgotten the gossip, she re-enters society, but when she accidentally meets her ex during a waltz, the past and future crash together as he demands to see their almost eleven-year-old daughter then kisses her in front of all and sundry.

With regrets, Edwin is blind to everything; he enacts a plan to hold her captive, ply her with carnal teasing until she forgives him, but Charlotte is not having any of it... much. Forced proximity and corrective yet pleasurable discipline have their place, but unless they talk and stop hiding behind bedroom endeavors, the problems between the couple won't resolve. If she's to be his by sunrise in a forever sort of way, there must be compromise and love, despite his morally gray past as well as her ties to the man who'd like to see him back in prison.

...unless he has learned nothing along the way.