Can a wounded widower and a reluctant bride find true love?Rose Lycombe’s passion for botany threatens to fray the final nerve of her matchmaking mother. It’s unnatural for a well-bred young lady in 1845 to be concerned with anything other than preparations for marriage to a carefully selected gentleman.

Rose may be able to bear letting go of her secret botany studies—but how can she stand to wed the bluff and brash Captain Bryce? As Rose resigns herself to a future with a thoroughly incompatible spouse, she receives a shock in the form of a far more suitable suitor. Sir Edmund Locke, a reclusive widower with little use for high society, surprises the entire Lycombe household when he makes his addresses to Rose.

No one can fathom why this quiet, dour man with a hard mouth and even harder armor around his heart is expressing an interest in outwardly unremarkable Rose. Could it be that Locke can see what others cannot? Perhaps Rose can blossom beside someone who appreciates her.

Can the reserved widower and the budding botanist turn an unlikely alliance into a true love match? Or will this marriage simply wither away?. .