He's a grouch. She's the reason. Having said her farewells to her son when he departed for his Grand Tour of Europe, Patience Grayson, the newly widowed Marchioness of Billingsley, heads for the country. She intends to spend at least a year living by herself in the Grayson family estate in Shropshire. If only her traveling coach could make it that far. When a wheel breaks, it does so in a most inconvenient location. Saddled with an earldom left nearly bankrupt by his late father's gambling and drinking, Max Higgins, Earl of Greenley, hasn't had a good day for over twenty years-not since the woman he was supposed to marry threw him over for another. Ever since, his bitterness has him known throughout Staffordshire as the Earl of Grump. Although he found another to be his countess, the poor woman died giving birth to his heir, some say to escape his surly moods. Max's solitude in his Staffordshire country manor house is about to be shattered when the cause of his grumpiness invades his home-and his bedchamber-on a late winter night. Will life ever be the same?