Lucy Sinclair Wilcott is the widow of a former prize fighter. She was sold to the man by her wretch of a gentry father for an enormous amount of money, to cover her father's gambling debts. This marriage to a commoner and a brawler puts Lucy beyond the pale to her peers. When her husband dies as the result of injuries from a bout, Lucy must come home to live in penury with her despicable father, shunned by the vicious villagers around her. All she desires is to save up enough to buy a little cottage of her own and live alone with her flowers and poetry. Her life is almost over-the-top tragic to me.

Then Lord Thrale shows up and throws a spanner in Lucy's works. Thrale is an amateur boxer himself and is astonished to meet the highly knowledgeable widow of the author of a much-vaunted tome of the art of pugilism. On meeting her, Thrale believes Lucy to be a brittle and thoughtless perfection. But slowly he discovers that beneath her astonishing beauty and apparent indifference beats the heart of a brilliant and loyal woman who is everything he wants in life. But can he convince her of that?

This was a fairly cerebral read for me. It took me a while to get into the groove of the story, but I'm glad I stuck with it, because the payoff was very worth it. The language is elegant and oh so slightly stilted, which made me feel suspended in the Regency period of the story, where etiquette and dress was so rigid. I felt Jewel did a superb job of evoking the era and locale. The lovely and explicit sex scenes also rang true and yet did not pull me out of the era, which I thought masterful. I am glad that Jewel has gone back to this series, and I'm looking forward to the next of the Sinclair Sisters to fall in love.