Lady Harriet Worthington's passions are strictly culinary. She runs a bakery, a mill, a household - and her own life. Elias Westwood, her partner in a West Indies spice company, is at his wit's end. Harriet has been selling off shares of the business and distributing the proceeds to her neighbors for necessities like cows, sheep, food, and other provisions - until he is nearly ruined.

He plots to win back his shares, but Elias's extraordinary gifts of smell and taste - so useful in judging fine spices - prove his Achilles's heel. Harriet's meat pies leave him weak in the knees. Her garlic-buttered prawns enchant. Her Turkish trifle intoxicates. Elias cannot resist her culinary creations - or, it turns out, her feminine charms. When she maneuvers him into masquerading as her fiance for the Season, he never plans on falling in love.