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"Then your arrow is misleading."

"My arrow is accurate to the geological reality."

"Your arrow is misleading to anyone who does not possess your geological knowledge."

"Which is why I included the explanatory note in the margin."

She checked the margin. "Your explanatory note is illegible."

"It is legible to me."

"That is not good enough if others cannot decipher it."

He ought to have felt irritation, yet instead he felt a profound, unexpected warmth. Adelaide sat beside him on the carpet, cross-legged among his papers, arguing about irrigation arrows with the same fierce intelligence she brought to everything, and the room felt more alive than it had in thirteen years.

This is what I would lose.

The thought arrived without warning. Not the expedition, the specimens, the ruins, or the charts, but this: her voice correcting him, her elbow bumping his when she reached for a shared page, and the firelight catching the ink smudge on her wrist.

He picked up his pen and turned back to the journal, though the letters blurred. He blinked them clear and kept writing.

The library door opened softly.

"Your Grace." Mr. Danvers stood at the threshold, holding a folded letter on his silver tray. "I have an urgent missive from Mr. Vance. The messenger arrived on horseback."

Julian took the letter. The seal was already broken, indicating Vance had considered the contents too urgent for formal ceremony.

"Adelaide, forgive me. I must draft a reply tonight."

"Go," she said, not looking up from the Incan journal. "I shall continue annotating your irrigation notes. Your arrows require significant attention."

He crossed the library and followed Danvers into the hallway. "Have my study prepared, Mr. Danvers. I will need the expedition correspondence files."

"Already laid out, Your Grace."

The study felt cold when he entered. He lit two candles, unsealed Vance's letter, and read.

The supply vessel charter had been challenged. A rival expedition party had claimed priority docking rights at the Smyrna port for the same departure window. Vance needed a formal response by morning to contest the claim before the Ottoman harbor authority.

Julian pulled the charter documents from the files, cross-referenced the Smyrna port regulations, and began drafting. The response required careful phrasing: too aggressive, and the Ottoman authority would dismiss the petition; too deferential, and the rival claim would succeed by default.

He wrote, revised, and rewrote while the candles burned lower. When he finally sealed the reply and rang for Danvers to dispatch it by the morning post rider, the clock on the mantel indicated he had been away for over an hour.

Julian walked back to the library.

The fire had burned down to glowing embers. The journals lay open on the carpet, the field notes neatly stacked where Adelaide had organized them before her attention had wandered. A soft, even sound reached him from across the room.

She lay asleep on the velvet chaise.

Her head rested against the armrest, her chestnut hair loosened from its pins and falling across the dark green velvet. One hand lay open on her lap, still holding a pencil, while her other hand dangled over the cushion edge. The Incan journal lay open beside her, turned to his sketch of the hillside terraces.

Julian stood over her. The dying firelight caught the quiet angles of her face: the soft curve of her cheek, the dark lashes resting against her skin, and the faint crease between her brows that never quite disappeared, even in sleep.

A deep emotion swelled within his chest—neither guilt nor grief, but a feeling far deeper than both, pressing against his ribs with unsteady force.

He kneeled beside the chaise and lifted her into his arms. She felt lighter than he expected. Her head settled against his shoulder, her soft hair brushing his jaw as he carried her through the hallway and up the staircase, her warmth against his chest and her breathing slow and even against his collar.

The bedchamber door opened without sound. He laid her gently upon the mattress, drawing back the quilts and settling her against the pillows with reverent care.