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"I believed you had urgent business in London that required your presence." She lifted her chin slightly. "Your own words, as I recall."

"Those words were poorly considered." He paused, his hands resting at his sides. "May I speak?"

"You are already speaking, Your Grace."

"I mean..." He broke off as a brief flicker of humor touched his expression, quickly giving way to quiet gravity. "May we speak properly? Without the endless formalities."

Adelaide considered his request. It was an irregular posture; a duke did not typically ask permission to speak in a gentlewoman's drawing room, yet his manner held no condescension.

"You may speak," she said softly, "though I cannot promise to alter my decision. If you have ridden from London to persuade me to catalog your collection, I must decline. My responsibilities remain here at Ashwood."

Julian turned away, stepping toward the hearth with a restless energy. He was a nobleman accustomed to strict self-discipline, holding himself with a controlled stillness honed by years of leading foreign expeditions. Now he paced before the cold grate, his boots striking the carpet in a rapid, uneven rhythm.

"I did not return to persuade you," he said.

"Then why have you come?"

He stilled, his back turned to her and his shoulders rigid beneath his dark coat. When he spoke, his voice dropped to a quiet murmur.

"I know what my brother meant to you."

Adelaide held her breath. The words were simple, yet they carried the heavy weight of years.

"Your Grace⁠—"

"Julian," he interrupted, turning to face her. "Call me Julian, as you once did."

She found herself unable to utter the name. With Thomas's journal hidden upstairs beneath her pillow and his final written thoughts fresh in her memory, such intimacy felt like a betrayal of her own guarded heart.

"Thomas and I gathered rare flora across four continents," Julian continued, not pressing her for the name. "You understand this from reading the published volumes. What you do not know, because I have never spoken of it, is how fiercely he bound himself to that childhood promise."

Adelaide rested her hands against the carved wooden back of a nearby chair, gripping it until her fingers turned pale.

"The promise," she whispered.

"To bring you a bloom from every kingdom in the world," Julian said, his voice turning raspy. "He spoke of it constantly. In Sicily, he climbed the slopes of Etna searching for a specimen sturdy enough to survive the voyage. In the Himalayas, he pressed delicate orchids between field notes while I slept, murmuring your name as he worked. In Egypt, he traded his finest pocket compass for a desert lotus simply because its petals matched the shade of your hair in the sun."

Adelaide closed her eyes, the vivid images surfacing unbidden: Thomas at fifteen, grass-stained and laughing; Thomas at twenty, boarding a transport ship with his specimen cases and bright hopes; Thomas dead upon a cold Highland slope with pressed heather in his coat.

"He loved you," Julian said quietly. "Not merely with the comfortable affection of childhood, though that formed its foundation. He loved you with his entire, transparent, devoted heart—the kind of open nature I could never possess."

Opening her eyes, Adelaide saw that Julian had stopped pacing. He stood before the hearth, his spine straight and his expression guarded, yet his blue-gray eyes held a fierce, quiet desperation.

"Why are you revealing this to me now?" she asked.

"Because you deserve to know the truth," he answered, taking a breath that shuddered slightly. "And because I built an institution in his memory that now stands endangered." He paused before continuing with quiet intensity.

"The Hawthorne Educational Trust, the charitable funds, the museum, the conservatory, and the scholarships for naturalists without private means—all of it exists because Thomas believed scientific discovery ought to be shared with anyone possessing curiosity. He believed beauty belonged to the world, not merely to men of rank and fortune."

Adelaide nodded slowly. She had read notices regarding the trust in botanical journals, admiring its generous scope from afar.

"It is a noble legacy," she remarked softly.

"It is a vulnerable one," Julian corrected. "Before I set sail for Xanthos, I must secure its governance. There are administrators and trustees in London who view Thomas's collection as mere commercial commodities. They would dismantle the archive, sell the specimens to private collectors, and convert the conservatory into an exclusive gallery for the wealthy. I shall not permit that to happen."

He resumed pacing, his energy tightly coiled. Adelaide observed him with growing concern. This was not the composed duke who had formally offered her employment two days ago; this was a man stripped of aristocratic detachment, driven by deep-seated guilt and urgency.

"You speak as though you do not expect to return from Xanthos," she observed quietly.