Sylvester

Sylvester, Duke of Salford, has no plans to marry in a hurry. He is a refined and fastidious gentleman who knows exactly what he wants in a wife: good birth, a quick mind, grace, and beauty, along with the poise to hold her own in fashionable circles. When he is urged to consider Phoebe Marlow, he finds her long-limbed and awkward, and she seems to hold him in open dislike, which leaves him caught off guard.

When Phoebe flees, the duke and she are thrown together in circumstances that produce an unlikely friendship. As they spend time in each other's company, Phoebe begins to see that the man she had written off is not the villain she assumed. Sylvester, meanwhile, finds that his own feelings are shifting in ways he did not anticipate.

The story unfolds in Regency England and comes from Georgette Heyer, the English novelist whose many Regency novels helped establish the form.