The Very Definition of Love Summary: Regency Banter

Last Updated: October 21, 2026

Table of Contents

TL;DR: A Wallflower, a Rake, and a Dictionary of Vulgar Words

Lady Harriet Bancroft has spent five seasons on the edge of London ballrooms, and she has learned to prefer it there.

What nobody in Mayfair knows is that she spends her nights compiling slang for a dictionary, signing her letters as a man named H. M. Bancroft.

Sophia Benoit’s The Very Definition of Love opens in 1816, during the Regency season, and pairs Harriet with Lord Alexander Stirling, a duke’s second son with a famous reputation and a carefully hidden past.

One overheard word, one library, one interrupted moment — and both their lives are rearranged.

Premise: A overlooked eldest daughter who secretly writes a dictionary of cant terms is caught alone in a library with London’s most notorious rake. To save her sisters from scandal, the two elope to Gretna Green.

What follows: A carriage journey north, a marriage in name only with strict rules attached, and two people slowly failing to keep those rules.

Core threads: female intellect and credit, the gap between public reputation and private self, sisterly loyalty, and a hero who believes he is unworthy of being loved.

Shape of the book: fast, dialogue-driven, sensual, and comic, with 32 chapters plus a glossary of Regency slang.

Who Will Enjoy This Book?

Readers of Regency historical romance with heavy banter and low angst.
Fans of the rake-and-wallflower pairing and forced-proximity plots.
Anyone who enjoys a road-trip elopement structure followed by a London homecoming.
Readers who like heroines with an intellectual project of their own.

Meet the Cast of The Very Definition of Love

Character	Role
Lady Harriet Bancroft	Eldest unmarried Bancroft daughter who compiles slang under the pseudonym H. M. Bancroft.
Lord Alexander Stirling	Second son of the Duke of Belhaven and a celebrated London rake.
Lady Philippa Ellerton	Harriet’s widowed elder sister, who announces the false engagement.
Lady Caroline Bancroft	Harriet’s beautiful younger sister, who hides her need for spectacles.
Lady Frances Bancroft	Harriet’s youngest sister, who wears trousers and reads scandal sheets.
Hamish Bancroft, Earl of Tidewell	Harriet’s father, a gambling addict who has drained the family’s resources.
Mr. Dawkins	Oxford professor corresponding with Harriet about the dictionary project.
Giuliana (Miss Hightower)	Alexander’s mistress, who helps plan the elopement.
Lord John Weston	Alexander’s elder brother and legitimate heir to the dukedom.
The Duke of Belhaven	Alexander and John’s father, who objects to the marriage.
Presley	Alexander’s butler.
Mrs. Tanning	Housekeeper at Alexander’s Mayfair townhouse.
Captain Williams	Merchant sea captain who supplies nautical slang at the Thames docks.
Lady Neddlesby	Marchioness who walks into the Dunley library at the wrong moment.

The Very Definition of Love Summary

Spoilers ahead.

Harriet attends Lady Dunley’s ball in a borrowed low-cut gown, hoping to finally meet Mr. Dawkins in person. Instead she overhears gentlemen using cant terms and slips into the library to write one down.

Alexander enters expecting Philippa. Startled, Harriet knees him, then asks him to explain the word inked on her wrist. He wipes it away with a damp handkerchief.

Lady Neddlesby and Philippa walk in at that exact moment. Philippa declares the pair secretly engaged, and the lie travels faster than any correction could.

Harriet tracks Alexander to his mistress’s house and finds him insensible with drink. Giuliana, entirely unbothered, helps load him into his own carriage and sends the pair north.

Alexander wakes with a hangover and a wife-to-be. Harriet refuses to turn back, and he agrees to a marriage in name only: no romance, no intimacy, no heirs.

Sophia Benoit spends the middle of the novel on the road, where the rules erode. Alexander teaches Harriet slang, dances with her in a tavern, and answers her frank questions about her own body.

At Gretna Green he buys an emerald ring and they marry over a blacksmith’s anvil. Then he rides ahead to London alone, leaving a note and money.

Back in Mayfair, Harriet moves into his townhouse and meets Mr. Dawkins at last. The professor is pompous, dismissive of her sex, and entirely willing to take credit for her work.

The Duke of Belhaven tells Alexander he has married beneath him. John Weston, sick and poetry-minded, tells his brother the opposite.

Alexander commissions a printing business for Harriet and takes her to the Thames docks to collect nautical terms from Captain Williams. He also grows openly jealous of Dawkins.

Harriet misreads his visits to Philippa and Giuliana, hands her emerald ring to her father to make him leave, and announces the arrangement is finished.

Dawkins then tells her the dictionary has gone to press without her name on it. The Very Definition of Love leaves her with neither book nor husband in the same afternoon.

Philippa corrects the misunderstanding and explains what Alexander’s visits were actually about. Harriet visits John Weston, learns about Alexander’s childhood, and understands what he fears.

At the Courtenays’ ball, Harriet arrives on John’s arm. Alexander confronts his father publicly, waltzes with his wife, and leads her to his carriage.

There he confesses his love and shows her the publishing house he has bought. The dictionary will be reissued with her name on it, and the marriage becomes a real one.

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Inside the Book: Details and Structure

Genre & Subgenre	Historical Romance / Regency Romantic Comedy
Core Narrative Tropes	Rake and wallflower, accidental compromise, marriage of convenience, epistolary secret identity
Tone & Atmosphere	Witty, sensual, playful, and emotionally warm
Primary Conflict	Alexander’s self-protective detachment against his growing attachment to Harriet, complicated by his father’s contempt and her father’s debts
Pacing Style	Fast and dialogue-driven, split between a road journey north and a London homecoming
ISBN	978-1638933557 (ISBN-10: 1638933553)
Pages	448
Book Structure	32 chapters, author’s note, glossary of Regency slang, acknowledgments; first in The Bancroft Sisters series