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The world replied with a shuddering crack of thunder.

He slipped, fell hard, ripped the skin from his palms, scrambled upright, and kept running.

He reached the far side, lungs heaving, sight blurred from rain and tears.

She was nowhere.

Julian bent double, gasping. His hands dug into the muddy shore. He looked out across the water, as if she might materialize from the mist.

"Please," he whispered, "please be safe⁠—"

But there was no one to hear him. Only the wind, the storm, and the memory of the last words he had spoken to her: Then I suppose I know not to trust you again.

He threw his head back and howled at the sky, a sound that was neither word nor language but pure, raw anguish.

Adelaide was nowhere in sight.

CHAPTER 31

Ishould not have come out here!

The storm was colder than any rain Adelaide had known. Wind battered her from all sides, scraping icy needles along her bare wrists and sending her hat tumbling away somewhere behind. Every breath burned in her lungs, each step forward a wrestle against knee-deep mud and wind that howled like a living thing. Her riding habit was a sodden weight, plastered to her bones and sucking the warmth out with every gust.

She wanted to turn back. She should have turned back the instant the sky blackened, and thunder began to roll in the distance, but by then she was already a mile from the road, the path behind churned into a river of muck. If she could reach the line of elms ahead, perhaps the trees would shield her for a moment—perhaps the lake would give her bearings, and she could cut across the meadows back to Mayfair.

The only certainty was that if she stopped, she would never start again.

Her foot slipped. Adelaide caught herself on a low, rain-slicked branch, her hands numb and shaking so hard she nearly dropped her grip. The branch snapped back, stinging her cheek, and for a moment she wanted to simply sit down on the wet ground and let the storm carry her away.

Her name rose up through the rain—"Adelaide!"—raw, wild, and so lost she thought she imagined it. She turned her face into the wind, blinked away rain, and listened.

"Adelaide!"

This time it was closer. The note of it stabbed through every memory she had of that voice: in the library, the garden, the world where he once wanted her. Now, it was desperate and hoarse, a man who had run beyond his own endurance.

She staggered toward the sound, boots squelching, limbs refusing to answer. A shadow reeled from behind a stand of saplings, arms windmilling, and then Julian was there, soaked to the skin, mud to his knees, eyes wild with terror.

He reached for her, missed, and dropped to one knee. His hands clutched at the moss and slick earth as if the ground might swallow him whole. When he raised his head, she saw his lips moving, but the wind shredded whatever words he tried to say.

Adelaide's anger died on the spot. All that remained was a wave of relief so sharp she nearly wept.

She dropped to her knees beside him, muddy water rising instantly to chill her bones. "Julian! Look at me."

He shook his head and clutched his arms tight to his chest, shuddering so violently she thought he might break apart. She grabbed his face between her hands, forcing his gaze to hers.

"Julian," she shouted over the gale, "you must breathe!"

His whole body convulsed. His teeth chattered so hard the sound nearly drowned his words. "Can't—stop—the storm⁠—"

She tightened her grip on his face, fingers biting his skin. "Julian. You are not in Scotland. You are not at the pass. I am right here."

He gasped, knuckles white as he dug his hands into the mud. "I left him. I left you. I⁠—"

"Listen to me." She pressed her forehead to his, anchoring both of them as the wind screamed overhead. "You did not leave me. You found me. And you will not lose me again."

His breath came shallow, rapid, panicked. She matched her own breath to his, slow and deliberate, counting out loud as she forced him to follow.

"Inhale. One. Two. Three. Exhale. One. Two. Three."