Page 62

He picked up his fork and ate. The eggs were cold, and the toast was dry, yet he hardly noted the taste, for his mind remained fixed on the fact that his wife had dismantled every defensive wall he had spent thirteen years building. She had accomplished it with a silver teacup, a piece of toast, and the quiet, absolute certainty that he was permitted to keep his grief private until he was ready to share it.

He had not known a person could show such understanding.

He had not known anyone would bother.

"He truly believed an ancient Roman highway ran directly beneath the kitchen garden?" Julian chuckled, turning the brittle page of a botanical journal with care as dried sprigs of wild thyme crumbled at the margins.

"He was utterly convinced." Adelaide sat across the library table from him, her hands busy mounting a pressed violet between two glass plates. "He spent an entire afternoon convincing us. He held a theory regarding the alignment of the garden wall and the old parish road."

"He was fifteen years old."

"He was fifteen, and he possessed a theory." She looked up, her hazel eyes bright. "He made a rather compelling case, I assure you. He drew a map."

"Naturally, he drew a map."

"Complete with detailed annotations."

Julian laughed. The sound escaped before he could catch it—rough, genuine, and filling the library's high-ceilinged quiet. He could not recall the last time laughter had come so easily. A persistent knot of long-held tension in his chest loosened at last.

"He convinced us to dig," Adelaide continued, her face alight with memory. "All of us—you, me, and the gardener. Thomas produced a rusted shovel from the potting shed and announced that we were conducting an official archaeological survey."

"I remember that shovel. It lacked half its handle."

"Less than half. He broke it within the first quarter hour and simply continued digging with the remaining stub. He was entirely undeterred."

"What did the survey yield?"

"A great quantity of mud, one broken brick, and a worm—which Thomas declared was conclusive evidence of Roman agricultural activity."

Julian pressed his palm over his eyes, a genuine smile warming his features. "I confess I hold no memory of the worm."

"You would not. You had abandoned the excavation by then and retreated to the oak tree with your sketchbook." Adelaide set the glass-mounted violet aside and selected a dried sprig of heather from the specimen tray. "Thomas was furious with you for leaving. He declared that you lacked scientific dedication."

"I was eleven. I preferred drawing to manual labor."

"He preferred manual labor to everything." Her hands stilled on the heather. A quiet, luminous warmth filled her features—an expression of private affection, as though the memory reached into a cherished place in her heart. "He built a treehouse that summer. Do you remember?"

"I remember it collapsing."

"It collapsed magnificently," Adelaide's smile widened. "He spent three days constructing it using borrowed lumber, stolen iron nails, and a design he claimed to have adapted from a Roman military fortification."

"It was a single plank nailed to an oak branch."

"It was a plank nailed to a branch with grand ambition." She looked up at him, her expression holding an intensity that caught in his throat. Warmth, tenderness, and a deep, abiding affection lived in her eyes, in the soft curve of her lips, and in the delicate way her fingers cradled the dried heather as though it were a sacred relic. "He was so proud of it. He sat up in that treehouse for an entire afternoon, calling down to anyone who passed that he had established an advanced scientific outpost."

"How long before it fell?"

"Two days. He invited the gardener up to inspect the view, and the branch simply gave way." She let out a clear, bright laugh. "Thomas landed directly in the rosebushes. He was scratched from head to foot and entirely triumphant, declaring the outpost a success because he had gathered sufficient botanical observations before the structural failure."

Julian's laughter, which had been rising freely throughout the conversation, died abruptly.

He looked at Adelaide across the wide table. She was still smiling—that soft, glowing smile that held Thomas's memory like something sacred. Her hazel eyes were bright with affection, and her fingers moved over the dried heather with a tenderness that spoke of years of devotion, of a friendship that had shaped her girlhood.

She loved him.

The realization was not new; he had always known Adelaide and Thomas shared a profound bond. He had read his brother's unmailed letter, and he had carried that knowledge like a stone in his chest.

Yet he had not understood, until this moment, the sharp pain of watching her smile that way for his late brother.