The queen of new beginnings (by Erica James)

(Amazon UK link) I’m slowly re-reading the many novels I have on my shelves by Erica James. I’ve read some of them more than once, and they feel nicely familiar when I re-read. But there are others which I have read only once, when I first acquired them, and for which I have no memory whatsoever. One of the latter group is ‘The queen of new beginnings’, which I read back in 2011. I’ve just reread it, and, on the whole, liked it very much. 
The first character we meet is the rather grumpy Clayton, ...