NEARLY A LADY

Lord Gideon Haverston wanted to right his family's wrongs. So when he promises young Winnefred Blythe the money that his stepmother had cheated her out of over the years, he expects to be greeted as a hero. But the situation is much more complicated than Gideon had expected -and the task of taming the untrusting Winnefred much more alluring.

After his father dies, the Marquess of Engsly discovers that his sire had taken in a ward and was sending yearly payments to her. Is the ward still alive on the family's Scottish estate? Engsly asks his brother, Lord Gideon Haverston, lately retired from the navy, to investigate. What Gideon finds are two women living hand to mouth in the run-down horror known as Murdock House.

Winnefred Blythe, the ward, and Lilly Ilestone, her companion, have been living on only five pounds a year, taking in wash and mending to add to their income, because Engsly's stepmother pockets the rest of the allotted funds each year. While Gideon arranges to have them repaid and provides a London season to find them husbands, he falls in love with the charming Winnefred.

Alissa Johnson lives in the rolling hills of the Ozarks, where she is hard at work on her next romance.