The setting of this one, England in the Roaring 20s, appealed to me, as did the plot: A wealthy American girl needs to marry in order to assume control of her fortune, so she arranges a marriage with an English nobleman who has a crumbling estate in need of her money. Zoe Gifford plans to marry Sebastian Hazelton, the younger brother of a duke, only briefly, then divorce him, leaving him with a nice settlement to help restore his estate.

It all sounds easy, but when Zoe travels to England for the marriage, she meets Sebastian's older brother, Nigel, and sparks soon fly between them. Both are wounded people, Nigel physically and psychologically by the Great War, and Zoe by the death of her brother in the war and other events in her life.

If this sounds like the typical romance, it isn't. Yes, there are some satisfying sex scenes, but they are tastefully done and make sense in context. There is depth to both characters. Zoe comes across at first as the typical light-minded flapper but soon shows there's a lot more to her. Nigel is a haunted man who's attracted to Zoe in spite of himself and in spite of her being his brother's fiancée.

I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but suffice it to say that this is a well-written, well-plotted story about how the love between two people helps redeem them both.

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