Jared, Viscount Ravenswood, has no choice but to honour the deathbed wish of his ailing servant. All she asks is that Jared introduce her soon-to-be orphaned daughter to the notorious and reclusive Calantha, Duchess of Clairborne. No ordinary request, for this is no ordinary child. She is, in fact, the key to the Duchess's most private secrets and to Jared's own past-one that has branded him Lord Beast among the ton. But when the Viscount meets the Duchess, he finds not the pitiless dowager he expected, but a lovely and wary angel-survivor of a brutal marriage left now with only her roses and the breathtaking mystery that is her life. For Jared, to solve that puzzle is to fall in love, to make Cali believe in the impossible, and to follow the promise that comes with the most intimate whisper of all . . . Take me . . .