Christopher St. John and Maria, Lady Winter, are infamous in Society for their misdeeds and their charming allures. Wherever they go, scandalized whispers and covetous glances follow. A ruthless pirate and a widow whose two husbands have met untimely deaths, the wickedly renowned figures are even more intriguing to the authorities. Now they've been set on the most provocative of tasks—St. John is released from prison to learn the "Wintry Widow's" intimate secrets, while Lady Winter is charged with performing a similar deception in reverse. One will succeed. One will hang. With the fate of loved ones in the balance, the unlikely couple embarks upon a battle of wills and wits that takes them from glittering ballrooms to the depths of the underworld to the candlelit pleasures of the bedroom. As they fall helpless to a desire and startling affinity neither expected, the deadly web of their subterfuge closes in, forcing them to make a choice. Individual freedom? Or an audacious scheme to keep an impossible yet irresistible love…