After weathering one philandering husband, Lady Harriet vows never to wed again. She is happily independent, having inherited her late husband's share of a West Indies spice company. But Lord Westwood, who founded the company, is at his wit’s end. Lady Harriet has been selling off her shares to help her neighbors, until he is nearly ruined. He plots to win them back.
But Elias’s extraordinary gifts of smell and taste — so useful in judging fine spices — prove his Achilles’s heel. He cannot resist Lady Harriet's culinary creations,