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The wind off the water carried a bracing cold, but the path was quiet, dotted only with the occasional couple. Adelaide inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with the scent of wet grass and autumn.
"I can breathe again," she said.
Julian looked at her, a warmth flickering across his usually cool expression. "London is best seen at a gallop."
"For the first time since our wedding, I feel as though I have outrun the gossips."
He smiled. "We are not done. There is another destination."
She eyed him skeptically. "And where is that?"
"Kew Gardens," he said. "You have never been. I recall you mentioning it a dozen times."
She remembered, faintly, saying it during a long night sorting through Thomas's journals. She had never been to Kew. Her only knowledge came from catalogs and copied descriptions.
"You have no appointments, no correspondence to dictate, no museum trustees waiting for you?" she asked.
"All of it can wait," he said. "My only plan today is to show you a proper adventure."
It was so unexpected she nearly laughed.
The journey from Hyde Park to Kew took the better part of an hour, winding through the less fashionable lanes, then across the old bridge and into the gardens proper. At the entrance, Julian paid the gatekeeper and left the horses in the care of a groom. They entered on foot, the morning crowds trailing off behind them as they walked the winding gravel paths toward the famed glasshouses.
The October light was pale, barely strong enough to cut through the autumn mist, but inside the Palm House it was as though summer had returned. Condensation trickled down the glass, beading on the ironwork and turning the walkways to a paradise of living green.
Adelaide stopped within three steps of entering, her breath leaving her in a quiet rush.
"I did not expect—"
"The journals do not do it justice," Julian agreed, close beside her.
She walked slowly along the path, turning her head to catch every strange and impossible plant. There were banana trees taller than a village cottage, great drifts of tropical orchids, even a tiny carnivorous sundew whose red filaments glittered in the light. She lingered before a South American philodendron, read the label twice, then touched the massive leaf lightly with her gloved hand.
"That is the species I brought back from Quito," Julian said, watching her. "I failed utterly to preserve it until the third attempt. This one is a descendant of the original cutting."
She glanced up at him, catching a look on his face she could not name.
"You succeeded in the end," she said. "You always do."
He shrugged, uncomfortable. "The survival of a plant owes little to me. I simply keep it from dying outright."
"That," Adelaide said, "is an excellent metaphor for our marriage."
He smiled, brief but genuine. "How so?"
"You inherited me from the wild, and now you must simply keep me from dying outright."
"I prefer to think of it as cultivating an exotic bloom in foreign soil."
Adelaide circled a display of rare ferns, the air around her thick with humidity and the scent of green life. She stopped before a clump of blue-stemmed grass, then kneeled to examine a cluster of blooms at its base. As she stood, a low bough snagged the ribbon of her bonnet, yanking her head gently sideways.
Julian reacted instantly, stepping in to free her. He lifted the bonnet off being careful not to tug at her hair. "You are caught," he said, standing much closer than was strictly necessary.
Adelaide looked up, acutely aware of his hand resting just behind her ear, fingers tangled with the silk. The air was warmer in the Palm House, but his closeness made it difficult to breathe in a completely different way.
"You are free to abandon the hat altogether," he said, his voice soft. "No one would think less of you."
Adelaide tipped her head. "I prefer to keep it, if only to shield myself from further attention."
