Miss Charity Radforde prefers museums to balls, lectures to dinner parties, and spinsterhood to matrimony. Her overbearing mother disagrees. An obedient daughter, she spends her time in London with insufferable suitors, not in intellectual pursuits. Desperate, she proposes a simple subterfuge to the one man with no interest in marrying her.

Mr. Edmund Glenhaven is a third son determined to prove his worth. Counter to his family's hopes, he's in London not to find a wife but to gain sponsors for a scientific expedition. After a chance meeting and a revealing conversation, he finds himself in an unlikely arrangement with the beguiling Miss Radforde. What starts as a diversion before he departs England soon becomes a reason to stay. The longer their false courtship lasts, the stronger their real feelings grow. As Charity learns to fight for the life she wants, Edmund begins to question what he truly needs. Could they possibly find true love through a counterfeit attachment?