Welcome to Litsy!

What happens when falling in love is out of the question?Isabel Oakley's father, due to go on an expedition, sends her to stay with an elderly viscount and his family in London. He wants her to find a husband but she'd rather work on completing her botanical dissertation on fungi, a paper she plans to submit to the Royal Society of London for the Copley Award. Resolved to finish it during her stay, she's nonetheless drawn into helping Ashley, the viscount's son. A task that proves exciting and increasingly dangerous?Mr Ashley Newcott, secretly a spy and betrothed to a diamond of the first water, is skilled in codes and ciphers. He undertakes a mission to decode five mysterious letters, but they're nothing like what he's seen before, as each one has a drawing of a daffodil on it. When he learns that Isabel is a botanist, he asks for her help. She's intelligent, warm and lovely, and he's entranced, but he must honor his promise to his betrothed. However, as the plot behind the letters becomes known, he realizes that Isabel means more to him than he could possibly have foreseen...