Arthur Merryweather has spent his whole life trying to find the plant that could have saved his mother.

He has dedicated himself to the medicinal properties of the natural world — cataloguing, collecting, searching — driven by a grief his father has never once thought worthy of respect. Botany is a gentleman's hobby at best, an embarrassment at worst. Not a career, and certainly not something a Merryweather should be pursuing on the other side of the world.

The Americas offer him everything England cannot. Raw wilderness, undiscovered species, and merciful distance from a man who has never once believed in him. He is careful. He does not make foolish mistakes.

Until he meets a golden-haired stranger who saves him. He is charming, enigmatic, and only ever appears after dark. But it is Eleanor who stops Arthur in his tracks entirely.

Somewhere between the jungle and the woman he cannot stop thinking about, Arthur begins to lose his grip on the orderly, evidence-based world he has always trusted. Something is watching them. The stranger is not what he appears. And the most dangerous specimen Arthur has ever encountered may already be closer than he realises.