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"I cannot accept this," she whispered.

"You must." Julian's voice was rough. "He would have insisted upon it. He spoke of you constantly during those final weeks."

She looked up into his face. His blue-gray eyes held a mixture of deep grief and long-suppressed regret.

"Why now?" she asked quietly. "Why present this to me after thirteen years of silence?"

"Because I cannot carry it alone any longer." He stepped back, his hands resting at his sides. "And because you should have received it thirteen years ago."

He turned and walked toward the door, pausing with his hand resting on the frame.

"Come to London," he said without turning back. "Or remain here. But read his words and know what he intended. That much, at least, I owe to you both."

He exited the room, his footsteps echoing down the hallway until the heavy front door closed behind him.

Adelaide stood alone in the quiet library, holding the worn journal against her chest. She looked down at the faded ribbon and the soft leather handled by two brothers across oceans and years, feeling the heavy weight of thirteen years bound between its covers.

CHAPTER 4

'Ishould like to press this one for you, Adelaide. It will keep its color through the winter, and you will remember the day we found it by the river.'

Adelaide spoke the words softly into the quiet bedroom. The single candle on her nightstand guttered in the draft, casting long shadows across the open pages of Thomas's journal resting in her lap.

The parchment pages felt soft beneath her fingertips, worn smooth from years of travel in a coat pocket. Scattered soil smudged the margins, and faint water stains warped the paper where rain had seeped through the leather binding.

She had not intended to speak the words aloud, yet they escaped her in the silence of the night, driven by a quiet ache she could no longer suppress.

He wrote this the day before he died.

Closing her eyes, she felt the small, heavy volume resting against her knees—a precious record whose existence she had only discovered three hours prior.

"I should like to press this one for you," she repeated in a hushed tone. The phrase was unmistakably Thomas, brimming with his characteristic generosity. He had always responded to the natural world in such a manner; whenever he discovered a rare bloom, a shell, or a butterfly, his immediate impulse was to share the beauty with another.

Opening her eyes, she watched the candle flame bow against the cool air while shadows stretched across the ceiling. Her afternoon conversation with Julian returned to her thoughts once more.

'I need your assistance.'

He had stood in the library, his coat damp from the rain, his eyes filled with stark vulnerability. He had not merely requested her assistance with the archive; he had declared that he needed her, as though the work and the person were indistinguishable.

They are not the same. They have never been the same.

She turned the parchment leaf. Thomas's script flowed with a loose, buoyant hand, the letters sprawling across the page with eager energy.

'July 14th. The heather blooms fully along the lower slopes. I have pressed three specimens for Adelaide, one matching the precise shade of her eyes when she is pleased. I intend to tell her as much upon my return.'

Adelaide stilled, pressing her fingers against her lips. He had observed the changing shade of her eyes and recorded the thought, intending to speak it aloud—yet he had never returned.

The sorrow that settled over her was familiar, a quiet weight she had carried for over a decade behind a composed expression. Yet in the isolation of her bedchamber, she allowed the grief to remain without restraint.

She recalled Julian's expression when he pressed the volume into her hands—the subtle tremor in his callused fingers and the raw cadence in his voice when he declared that she alone ought to receive it.

Do I belong in London? Do I have the right to step into the world Thomas and Julian constructed together?

She gazed down at the worn binding where the faded blue ribbon rested across her wrist, its silk frayed at the edges.

That explanation held truth; the estate did require management. The tenant leases, the quarterly ledgers, and the church roof all demanded her attention while her aunt and cousins were in town.

I was afraid.