Rafe Atherton, the Duke of Devonshire, has managed to muck up his life, and rather grandly. A dalliance with the wrong woman has put him at the center of a scandal that could bring down the next prime minister of England. Desperate to remove the threat to his peer - and to himself by way of being skewered by said peer, he agrees to disappear from London life. Begrudgingly, he accepts his friend's suggestion to act the part of a butler at the fellow's cousin's country estate.
Lady Isabella FitzHugh is nothing if not a practical, logical, orderly young woman. Having her lifelong butler just retire and being informed by her cousin, surely in an attempt to help, that she was to host a butler-in-training, is beyond annoying. A small, self-contained estate needs no ripples to mar the necessary smooth waters. But, when the new butler, one Easton, arrives, her home and her emotions become one stormy mess. And Isabella finds herself breaking all the rules and happily opens her heart to the chaos of love.