#pteridomania

Sir Evelyn's search history is a sight to behold.

Hold Fast is a gay Victorian romance between a whaling harpooner who inherits a baronetcy and the estate agent tasked with turning him from sailor to gentleman.

Morgan Turner, agent to the Winthrop estate, owes everything to his benefactor. When the late baronet’s will tasks him with finding the lost heir and making a gentleman of him, he is determined to succeed.

Thirteen years ago, Evelyn Winthrop ran away to sea. Now that his hated patriarch is dead, the ancestral home he returns to is more shadowed than what he left behind. Ungrateful relations and old friends alike tie a knot of scandal and depravity only a sailor could hope to unravel. And all the while, the siren song of the sea calls him to return at the first opportunity.

Neither anticipated forming more tender attachments.

To Evelyn, his unexpectedly handsome agent is the only thing anchoring him to shore. He sees a captain’s soul within Morgan, and his heart is caught upon the hook of command—if only Morgan would return his affections.

To Morgan, his new employer’s charms threaten to tear down the thorns that have grown around his heart—thorns he cultivated to restrain his unnatural instincts.

The Victorians were absolutely wild for ferns-an obsession that was called pteridomania. In particular, young women would go on expeditions to local woodlands to collect them, preserving their specimens in terrariums and in albums.