Eight years of marriage has not dimmed Cressida, Lady Lovett’s, love for her husband, but the birth of five children has cooled her ardour.
Now rumours are circulating that the kind, dashing and seemingly ever—patient Justin, Lord Lovett, has returned to the arms of his former mistress and Cressida believes her choices are stark—welcome her husband back to the marital bed and risk a sixth pregnancy she fears will kill her, or lose him forever.
With the astonishing discovery that methods exist to enable the innocent Cressida to transform herself into the vixen of her husband’s dreams without expanding her nursery, she seeks to repay the woman responsible for her empowerment...only to discover her unlikely benefactress was, and perhaps still is, her husband’s mistress.
As was normal 200 years ago, Cressida is not equipped with the vocabulary or knowledge to explain that while she wants to continue her loving relationship with her husband she can't bear to be intimate when she knows the consequences may well be another pregnancy.
Therefore, her jealous, bullying cousin's gleeful news that Cressida's hitherto faithful, adoring Justin has returned to the arms of his former mistress leads Cressida to believe it's her fault.
When she stumbles upon the means to please both her husband and herself, she inadvertently stumbles upon a 20-year-old mystery. It's now that she uses her sweet nature - and hidden determination - to secure someone else's happy ending as well as her own, showing surprising depths of courage, daring and spontaneity along the way.