Lord Jack Ardell knows what he wants, and isn’t afraid to go after it to the exclusion of all else. He wants Verity Fox, the impoverished actress struggling to rise through the ranks of the cutthroat world of nineteenth-century theatre.The illegitimate daughter of a duke, Verity had to battle for everything she has. Alone in a world that shows no mercy to the friendless, she yearns for fame and fortune, and for the security they bring; the security she has never known. When Jack proposes to become her patron in exchange for making her his own, she finds herself powerless to resist the salacious proposal of the man she wants more than any before him. However hard she fights against it, the depth of her feelings for him soon makes it impossible to resist the promise of marriage that he dangles before her.However, when the death of the only other man she has ever loved threatens to tear them apart, it brings with it the unwelcome return of her father into her life. When he finally shows an interest in the daughter he refused to acknowledge for so long, everything that Verity and Jack had begun to build together is swept away with one click of his powerful fingers. Just because the bars that trap her are gilded, they are no less a prison.