The Botanist's Bargain
(2026)(A book in the Beneath the Velvet Curtain series)
A novel by Eva Lyndale
He will not share his greenhouse. She needs it to save everything she has built.
Miss Harriet Bloom has learned that serious science requires three things: sharp observations, steadier nerves than most men deserve, and sandwiches. When the Fernshaw Athenaeum sends her to Kew Gardens to collaborate with Dr. Marcus Elliot, the brilliant but infuriatingly solitary botanist guarding a private alpine collection, Harriet arrives prepared to work. Marcus dismisses her within fifteen minutes.
Harriet returns at eight o’clock the next morning.
Marcus has no patience for disruption, committees, or cheerful women with notebooks who question his conclusions. Harriet has no intention of needing his approval. She needs access to the specimens, space to prove her theory, and the right to have her work recognized under her own name.
But among fragile alpine blooms, exacting labels, muddy fieldwork, and arguments that begin to feel dangerously like courtship, Marcus discovers that Harriet is not an inconvenience. She is the missing piece in the work he has spent years trying to complete. And Harriet begins to suspect that the severe man who guards his greenhouse like a fortress may understand her mind better than anyone ever has.
Their research could win the race to publish before a rival Heidelberg team. It could also expose the hidden scholarship network that has quietly opened doors for women scientists. When the institution that made Harriet’s work possible comes under scrutiny, the question becomes more dangerous than science: will Marcus protect the woman he loves only in private, or will he defend her name where the world can see it?
The Botanist’s Bargain is a warm, witty Victorian historical romance featuring a brilliant botanist heroine, a grumpy Kew researcher, forced workplace proximity, secret-society stakes, women in science, intellectual banter, and a hard-won happily ever after.
Genre: Historical Romance
Miss Harriet Bloom has learned that serious science requires three things: sharp observations, steadier nerves than most men deserve, and sandwiches. When the Fernshaw Athenaeum sends her to Kew Gardens to collaborate with Dr. Marcus Elliot, the brilliant but infuriatingly solitary botanist guarding a private alpine collection, Harriet arrives prepared to work. Marcus dismisses her within fifteen minutes.
Harriet returns at eight o’clock the next morning.
Marcus has no patience for disruption, committees, or cheerful women with notebooks who question his conclusions. Harriet has no intention of needing his approval. She needs access to the specimens, space to prove her theory, and the right to have her work recognized under her own name.
But among fragile alpine blooms, exacting labels, muddy fieldwork, and arguments that begin to feel dangerously like courtship, Marcus discovers that Harriet is not an inconvenience. She is the missing piece in the work he has spent years trying to complete. And Harriet begins to suspect that the severe man who guards his greenhouse like a fortress may understand her mind better than anyone ever has.
Their research could win the race to publish before a rival Heidelberg team. It could also expose the hidden scholarship network that has quietly opened doors for women scientists. When the institution that made Harriet’s work possible comes under scrutiny, the question becomes more dangerous than science: will Marcus protect the woman he loves only in private, or will he defend her name where the world can see it?
The Botanist’s Bargain is a warm, witty Victorian historical romance featuring a brilliant botanist heroine, a grumpy Kew researcher, forced workplace proximity, secret-society stakes, women in science, intellectual banter, and a hard-won happily ever after.
Genre: Historical Romance
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