The daughter of a country clergyman, Arabella gets the chance to go to London stay with her rich godmother in hopes of finding a good husband. After being snubbed by the arbiter of fashion known as the Nonpareil, she pretends to be an heiress in a fit of pique. Soon all the fortune hunters in London are after her, and so is one very rich man - the Nonpareil himself. He's convinced himself he's just helping launch her onto the town to enjoy the spectacle, she's convinced that the accomplished rake is just flirting with her. But neither of them are right...The beginning of this book had a similar feeling to Anne of Green Gables, or Emily of New Moon, or even Little Women, one of those stories of the plucky young heroine and her home life, which I loved in its own right, and then once Arabella went to London it morphed into more a classic Heyer. I loved the chemistry between Arabella and Beaumaris, I loved how on one hand she seems so perfect - beautiful, good and generous, but on the other hand, she's impetuous, hasty and does a lot of really stupid things she should have thought out better. And Mr. Beaumaris may be one of my favorite of Heyer's heroes - the stuck uparbiter of fashion, but also with an amazing sense of self deprecation and the ridiculous. I adored the way he talked to Ulysses, it was so funny. I was sad the book ended when it did, because I want to read more about them.