When an orphaned cloth merchant's daughter needs the best husband money can buy and an impoverished lord has nothing left to sell but his family name, a marriage of convenience is the logical result. But when Lord Hanford of Laceby Place proposes to Miss Susannah Potter of Lower Chapman Street, the practical solution to their respective problems quickly turns into a marriage of inconvenience. Susanna Potter has no intention of ruining her own life and that of her younger sister by marriage to "an empty-headed fribble of ancient lineage and even more ancient debts". The money is hers and she intends to see how it is spent. After all, she has only married this fortune hunter to save herself from even more odious fortune hunters.

But if Hanford isn't quite what Susanna had hoped for in a husband, Susanna herself is far and away Hanford's last choice for a suitable lady to grace his once elegant, now crumbling, ancestral home. Though his family objects to the match, Hanford withstands all objections, feeling that since his father's debts require him to sell himself to the highest bidder, then family honor must be satisfied —even at the cost of Hanford's pride.