Beast Blackwater has returned from exile in America to take up his inheritance. His father’s will though requires him to marry. Fortuitously, over a game of cards, he finds himself winning a wife, when his opponent wagers one of his daughters on the final hand. Far from resenting the circumstances, calm and competent Arabella Ivers believes that marriage may help her escape her drunken father and overbearing stepmother. As she learns to manage her husband’s grand house and navigate London society, her new husband starts to see that the turn of the cards was a happy gamble.