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She could refuse to respond at all, tucking the letter into her writing desk and never speaking of it.

Or she could write back, from her own heart, telling Helena how pleased she was to at last make her acquaintance.

Or she could write cautiously, in a manner that Julian would approve of.

Of what would he approve?

CHAPTER 21

"You are going to be thoroughly delighted by what lies inside, Adelaide."

Julian pushed open the heavy doors of the glass conservatory, and warm, humid air rolled over them both. The scent hit immediately: green and rich, soil and growing things, layered with an exotic floral fragrance that lacked a familiar English name.

Adelaide stepped through ahead of him, her skirts brushing the threshold. She stopped, her hazel eyes widening in genuine wonder.

"Julian."

"You have not even seen the far wall yet."

"I do not need to see the far wall." She turned in a slow circle, taking in the iron-framed glass arching overhead, the stone paths winding between raised beds, and the climbing frames draped in vines that had no business surviving an English winter. "This is extraordinary."

"I gathered specimens from every continent my expeditions took me." He walked past her along the nearest path, running his fingers along the broad leaf of a South American philodendron. "Whatever could survive the voyage home, I brought. Whatever could not, I sketched and pressed."

"And whatever refused to die despite your complete indifference to proper climate conditions?"

"Those are my favorites." He glanced back at her. "The stubborn ones."

She followed him deeper into the conservatory, her fingers trailing across foliage as she passed. A blue orchid caught her attention, and she paused to finger a radiant petal.

Julian smiled. She straightened and fell into step beside him as the path curved past a bed of Mediterranean sage, its gray-green leaves releasing a sharp, clean scent when his sleeve brushed them.

"So tell me about the journey itself," Adelaide said softly. "Not the specimens. Not the cataloging. You."

He looked at her, surprised. "I beg your pardon?"

"Every time you speak of your expeditions, you describe what you collected and where you found it. You never tell me what it was like to be there." She tucked a stray strand of chestnut hair behind her ear. "What did South America feel like? What did you see beyond the plants?"

The question was so direct it disarmed him.

"The air is different," he said after a moment. "Thinner at elevation. You feel it in your lungs before you understand it with your mind. The Andes rise so sharply that you can stand in a tropical valley in the morning and reach snow by midday."

"And the people?"

"The communities in the highlands were remarkable." He spoke more freely now, his tone loosening as they walked. "I spent three weeks among a village whose people traced their lineage directly to the Incan Empire. They held no written language in the European sense, yet their agricultural systems were more sophisticated than anything I had seen in England. Their terraced fields fed an entire region from soil that should not have grown anything at all."

Adelaide picked up a fallen leaf from the stone path and turned it between her fingers. "Did they welcome you?"

"They fed me, sheltered me, and taught me the names of plants in a language I barely spoke, using gestures and patience," he paused, remembering. "One of the elders walked me to a ridge at dawn and pointed across the valley. He offered a quiet remark I did not fully grasp until my guide translated it later. He said the mountains remember everyone who walks among them."

Adelaide looked up at him, her expression open, warm, and completely focused on his words.

"That is beautiful."

"It was practical. He was warning me not to climb the far ridge in the afternoon weather."

She laughed—a clear, bright sound that rang against the glass.

"And East Africa?" she prompted gently. "You published an entire volume on that expedition."