Lord Sebastian Griffiths would do anything for his beloved dying mother. But he didn't see this one coming: to see him married before she died. Sebastian, a 38-year-old confirmed bachelor, liked things done his way and his way only. Sebastian considered a wife to be an embarrassing, time-consuming, meddling and unnecessary addition to his life. After consulting with Dennis Burrows, a solicitor and good friend from university, he forms a plan to buy a temporary wife that could be paid off when his mother died. Isabel couldn't believe her own father could sell her into marriage. After spending nine years in debtors' prison looking after him, Isabel had become a strong, independent woman. It was that or fall apart and die from hunger. But Isabel wasn't ready for Sebastian. He was an attractive, arrogant, dangerous pig, yet she'd gone ahead with the marriage, for the love of her father, and the chance to get him out of the hellhole they had been living in for the last nine years. Sebastian is caught unawares by the passion he experiences with Isabel. After his mother dies, and he leaves Isabel for the second time, he realises he's truly fallen in love with his own wife. Miserable and drowning his sorrows, he is rescued by Burrows, who knows his friend has to pull himself together for the sake of his unborn child, something Sebastian has yet to discover. Will Sebastian be able to find the courage to go back to Isabel and win her heart, or will she turn him out like the rat he's been?