The Counterfeit Gentleman

the long version

STOOPING TO BE CONQUERED Miss Bethia Pepperell owed her life to the dark and handsome stranger who called himself Digory Rendel and who had fished her out of the sea. That, however, did not mean she should give him her heart in return. It was unthinkable that as highborn a young lady as she should stoop to be conquered by a man who did not even pretend to be a gentleman. Rendel made no bones about his lowly origins, and he flaunted the fact that he made his living outside the law. He laughed when Bethia proposed that he come to London to be her husband rather than the fortune hunters who circled the beautiful heiress like wolves. This maddeningly mocking miscreant was, in short, the last man in the world whom Bethia should have dreamed of desiring...if only he were not the one whom she wildly, willfully, wantonly loved....