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"I am so sorry, Julian."

He looked at her, and in the low light she saw the rawness in his eyes. "Ever since, if I try to sleep under this roof, I dream the same dream. I relive that storm, but each time I wake, I have failed to save him. Sometimes it is the telegram, sometimes it is the mountain, sometimes it is only the emptiness. And then I am awake, and it is three in the morning, and I am more tired than before I closed my eyes."

Adelaide squeezed his hand. "You never told anyone."

He smiled bitterly. "The world would consider it weakness. A lack of will."

"The world is full of fools," she said. "I have it on the highest authority."

He huffed a laugh, and it was the first sound of real humor in the room. "So I left. I went on longer and longer expeditions. If you are three thousand miles from London, the nightmares change their form. You dream of hyenas, or shipwrecks, or the heat that never ends. Anything but this house, this storm, and the last time you saw your brother alive."

Adelaide slid closer. She pressed her hand to his arm, and for a moment they both stared into the slow pulse of the coals.

"Memories are only as powerful as we allow them to be," she said. "Grief is meant to touch the heart, not to dwell in it forever."

He looked at her, really looked, and she saw something shift in his expression. "I believe you," he said, his voice rough.

She rose to her knees, then stood. The hem of her dressing dress brushed his shoulder. She held out her hand.

"Come with me."

He stared at her outstretched fingers, then, with the tiniest shake of his head, took her hand and let her pull him up from the carpet.

They went out into the hallway, past the grandfather clock marking the hour, and up the grand staircase. The house was utterly silent—no servants in the halls, no movement but their own shadows on the wall.

Adelaide stopped outside her bedchamber. She opened the door, and the room waited, warm and softly lit from a single candle on the mantel.

She turned to face him, her hand still in his. "You can sleep here, if you wish," she said.

He stiffened, a flash of alarm in his eyes. "Adelaide⁠—"

She read his thoughts at once and smiled, a real smile that made her whole face gentle. "I do not mean to consummate our marriage in the next five minutes, Julian. I mean only to offer you a chance at sleep, with company. Sometimes it helps."

He looked embarrassed, then relieved, then something else entirely. "Thank you," he said. "But you should know I am not at my best in the morning."

"You are not at your best in the evening either," she replied, and he laughed, a small, hoarse sound.

She moved to the bed and folded back the coverlet. The mattress was huge—far more than enough space for two people to keep a respectful distance. She climbed in on the left side, pulling her knees to her chest and patting the empty place beside her.

He removed his boots and hesitated on the threshold, as if weighing every possible consequence. Then he climbed in fully dressed, lying on his side and facing her across the safe expanse of linen.

Adelaide studied the tired lines of his face. His hair was a little wild from where he had run his hands through it, and there were dark hollows under his eyes. He looked older than she remembered from the morning, but also, somehow, more alive.

"Would you like to hear a story?" she asked, voice barely more than a whisper.

He closed his eyes. "Very much."

So she began to tell him the story of her first ride on horseback—how she had fallen into the creek and emerged with her boots full of leeches, and how her aunt had made her wear lavender water for a fortnight after. She told him about the time she broke her wrist climbing the old oak and how Charlotte had convinced the entire village that a wolf had done it. She told him about the summer she cataloged every weed in the Ashbourne kitchen garden, and how the cook had sworn a curse on every future salad.

He listened, his breathing deepening with every story. She took care to mention nothing of Thomas—no summers at Ravensmere, no debates over taxonomy, no memories that would salt the wound. Only the plain, ordinary days of a country girl's life, where grief and guilt were strangers and every disaster was surmountable.

At last, she saw his shoulders relax. His body went loose and heavy, and the hard lines around his eyes smoothed out.

She reached across the space between them, her fingers finding his in the dark. He did not stir. She pressed a soft kiss to his cheek like a benediction, and lay back on the pillow.

* * *

Light streamed through the curtains, painting the bedclothes in pale gold. Julian blinked at the unfamiliar sunlit ceiling and reached, for a moment confused by the unfamiliar weight and warmth of the coverlet.