When a notorious rogue goes against an outspoken librarian over the fate of a rare volume of poetry, sparks fly, but more than the book is danger when hearts become involved. Lady Katherine Moncrieffe, only child to the Earl of Indicott-Barrow, is a bluestocking miss who has thrown all her energy into curating a valuable collection of books for her father's library with one exception-a rare volume of poetry that shows her mother in a scandalous light. A meeting with the man who owns the book fires her interest and excites her imagination. Too bad romance is a disappointing endeavor best left to the younger set. Nathaniel Harkness, Viscount Satterfield, has a long history of being a rogue. At the age of forty, the lifestyle has grown stale, but to give it up means doing his duty to his neglected family and title. When an obscure book of poetry turns up in his study, he hopes to sell it at auction, but a pretty librarian with russet hair in search of that very volume changes his mind. Perhaps he's found a new bedmate, and just in time for Christmas. With desire crackling between them, the two match wits for rights of the book... and neither of them is above employing seduction to get what they want. All too soon, the battle grows into a wickedly sensuous game of cat and mouse. After nights spent sharing personal histories amidst the sheets, an likely romance blooms that drives them closer to something they've spent the last few years denying they'd ever wanted again.