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Honoria felt an unexpected surge of sympathy. For all his power and prestige, at this moment, he was simply a man out of his depth, trying his best to comfort a child. She doubted he’d ever had to spin a tale for a child before.

She crossed the room to the table and gathered a few chapbooks. “Here,” she said. “Would you like Lord Caldwell to read one?”

“Yes!” Rosie’s face lit up.

“Very well,” he said, taking the chapbooks and sitting at the edge of the bed. “Let’s see what these books are about.”

Honoria lit a few candles and settled across from the bed.

As the earl read, his voice—steady, low, and rich—filled the room, rising and falling with the rhythm of the story. Honoria found herself entranced by his voice.

Honoria felt something shift within her in the soft candlelight with the storm raging outside and the child nestled at his side. An old dream—long forgotten—stirred, fighting to rise to the surface.

A dream of a family. Honoria tamped it down.

When Rosie finally fell asleep, her little hand still clinging to his sleeve, Lord Caldwell carefully tucked her in and turned to find Honoria watching.

Their eyes met and held. Dark. Intense. There was a whole world hidden in the depth of the earl’s eyes.

Heat crept up Honoria’s neck.

“Well done,” she whispered, needing to say something—needing to break this spell between them.

A shadow of a smile touched his lips. “Thank you,” he replied, his voice barely above a whisper.

Chapter 4

Three months later…

Caldwell sat on the long oak workbench, flipping a pencil with his fingers, flinching from the loud clatter every time it hit the desk. He picked it up and continued flipping while his vacant gaze concentrated on the iridescent beetle in the glass bowl in front of him. The afternoon sunlight streaming through the glass panes of his glasshouse caught the creature’s shell, sending prisms of blue-green light dancing across his notepad.

He needed to finish the paper he’d started months ago, addressed to the Linnean Society on his findings.

Before he had gotten the news about his sister’s passing. Before her children had moved into his home. The half-written pages lay scattered across the workbench, covered in his precise handwriting that grew increasingly erratic toward the bottom of each sheet, as if his thoughts had begun to dissolve before he could capture them.

He stood and walked through the aisles of his glasshouse, taking note of the unfinished hybridization of fuchsias, a project he had abandoned a few months prior.

It wasn’t unusual for him to lose interest in one hobby or the other. He had plenty of them to go around. He’d spend months obsessed with one subject only for his interest to wane as he became obsessed with something else. His laboratory shelves bore testament to this trait—carefully labeled specimens of butterflies, moths, and beetles; botanical pressings from every corner of England and beyond.

But for weeks now, he had been unable to concentrate on anything. Instead, he did the work he was required to do, and the rest of the time he drifted from one book to the next, searching for his spark to return. The weight of his new responsibility—guardian to three children he scarcely knew—pressed down on his shoulders like a physical burden. He had no idea how to speak to children, how to comfort them in their grief when he could barely manage his own.

He heard the door creak, then the pitter-patter of a child’s footsteps echoing on the stone floor. Caldwell silently walked toward the sound, moving between the rows of potted specimens only to see the boy, his nephew, reaching out toward the terrarium containing his rarest specimen.

“Don’t touch that,” Caldwell said sharply, and the boy immediately retracted his hand as if burned, his small shoulders hunching defensively.

“Sorry,” Robbie murmured, taking a step back. The sunlight from the windows caught in his tousled dark hair, so like Louisa’s had been.

Caldwell felt a pang of regret at his harsh tone. “It’s delicate,” he explained, softening his voice. “And one of the rarest in this country. Only two documented cases of their existence.” He moved closer, standing beside the boy, who barely reached his elbow.

Robbie looked up, his eyes widening with interest. “And this is the third?”

“Correct. This is the third.”

“Why are they so rare?” Robbie asked, rising on his tiptoes to peer more closely at the beetle, his breath fogging the glass slightly.

Caldwell frowned in thought. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But it’s one of the things that bears studying.”

There was a pause as they both observed the beetle, which was now climbing deliberately up a small branch in its enclosure.