He’s London’s most celebrated scoundrel. She’s the one woman immune to his charm. It’s a match made in hell, and the King has just ordered it to happen. Adrian Hawthorne, the Duke of Blackmere, has built his reputation on two things: a devastating smile and a talent for turning scandal into performance. The ton calls him the “Kissing Bandit,” a title he has earned in the boudoirs and on the balconies of every great house in London. His life is a magnificent game of conquest, and he has never lost. Until he kisses the wrong woman. After a single, reckless kiss with a prince’s fiancée, Adrian’s spectacular career as a rogue comes to a screeching halt. A royal decree is issued: to save his reputation and avoid a lifetime inspecting the royal sewers, the Duke must marry an unimpeachable lady within the month. Suddenly, the most sought-after man in England is a pariah, shunned by every respectable family in the peerage. His only option is Lady Celia Whitby. A woman so proper, so plain, and so profoundly silent, she is less a person and more a walking portrait of quiet dignity. She is the perfect, boring solution to his scandalous problem. But Adrian’s problem is only just beginning. His wedding night performance, a masterpiece of seduction designed to melt the iciest of hearts, is met with a polite, "Thank you, Your Grace. Are we finished?" His legendary charm shatters against her wall of calm indifference. His every grand gesture fails. His most passionate assaults are met with the placid, observant gaze of a naturalist studying an interesting but unremarkable beetle. Trapped in a passionless marriage in private and forced to perform the role of a "smitten duke" in public, Adrian is a man on the brink of madness. He, who lives for the applause of a blush or a gasp, is being driven to obsession by the one woman who refuses to react. He must break through her silence. He must get a response. He must conquer the one woman who doesn’t seem to know a game is even being played. But what happens when a scoundrel’s desperate quest to get a reaction accidentally becomes a mission to win his silent wife’s heart