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He grinned. “Your face is at least as riveting as that algae.”

“You sound like James.” She screwed up her face, but she knew her cheeks had gone pink. “The seaweed is down there.”

“What was your original lecture topic? You never told me.”

“Oh.” For an instant, she gaped, nonplussed, then a warm glow spread in her chest. “Taxonomic practices. It sounds dull, but it’s something I thought about a great deal during my last years in China.”

“And?” He transferred his sketchbook to the rock and drew up his legs. “What did you think?”

“I won’t lecture you.” Her laugh was self-conscious.

“Please.” His eyes held genuine interest. It melted the last of her reserve.

“Are you familiar with Kew Gardens?”

“I’ve been there, to the conservatories. And I’ve strolled around the grounds. They’re lovely.”

“They are lovely. But Kew is much more than a glorified park. It houses the largest collection of plant species in the world. The directors have been sending botanists to every corner for decades, bringing plants here, taking plants there, changing where plants are grown and at what scale. My husband was one of those botanists. He collected for Kew, and for plant nurseries in London and Truro, and he brought me with him. He died, of a fever, in Hong Kong. I continued.”

“That must have been difficult.” The gentleness in his voice was like a caress, its warmth seeping inside her, through the cracks in her wall of self-protection. She’d built that wall up over years, and he was bringing it down, in a matter of weeks.

“It wasn’t,” she said, too curtly. “Esmé’s life was his work. He married me because I could help facilitate that work, and by the time he was gone, I knew exactly what to do to carry on his legacy.”

Griffith kept looking at her, and she sagged a little and let herself feel comforted by his steady regard.

“I was seventeen when I met him,” she said softly. “On the heath, in fact. I was malingering from my cousin’s shop, and he’d gone out to botanize. He didn’t live in Hampshire. He was visiting a friend. I took him through the cornfield to the beech wood, and to a clearing where I’d found a white wild orchid, and he seemed impressed I’d paid such attention to the landscape, as though it were an accomplishment and not a form of woolgathering. It was beyond gratifying. He was nearly twice my age, worldly and intelligent—an assistant to the superintendent of the Chelsea Physic Garden in London. He told me he was sailing for India, on a commission from a nursery. We boarded the steamer four days after the wedding. Our marriage was my apprenticeship as a botanist. That’s what he wanted—an apprentice who’d stay by his side. And I wanted to learn. Well, I wanted to leave—leave Hampshire—first and foremost. In certain respects, we fulfilled each other.”

She took a breath, shifting her gaze from Griffith’s handsome face, too intent, and too ruminative, as though he were fitting together the pieces of her life.

“I never considered anything but taking up his commissions, not seriously. He’d trained me so well. I felt he was with me, every time I described a specimen or packed a bulb. I could hear his voice, advising me.”

“You still hear him,” said Griffith, low. “That was his voice, wasn’t it? In the tree. He told you that your fear was a nuisance.”

She studied the clouds.

Looks like rain, she could say.

She said instead: “I hear him less now.”

How had she let this get so off track? She’d meant to talk about her lecture, not her marriage.

“I hear him less,” she said. “And I consider his work—my work—in a different light. Mostly, we shipped ornamental plants to London. Pretty shrubs. We classified them first, according to norms set by Kew. Plants do have names before they’re discovered by British botanists—names and local uses. But you need standardized nomenclature if you’re trying to order the natural world in its entirety—to understand the whole. I was eager to contribute to that understanding, to compare morphologies and pursue the mysteries of photosynthesis, and hybridize lilacs in every shade of the rainbow. I took it for granted that Kew was the center of the world, the place where discoveries were made and knowledge was stored. Bit by bit, I realized how much local knowledge was being erased, and not to further some greater good. To enrich the empire. Naming and codifying species means better coordination between botanic stations in the colonies. Improving varieties means better yields on farms run by colonial planters, while workers sicken and die. I can’t lecture on trade or foreign policy, so I chose taxonomy, as a way into a larger conversation about the consequences of merging a scientific system with an economic system. That was the idea, in a nutshell.”

She waited as he mulled it over.

“Not dull,” he said, cocking his head, gaze appraising.

“Also, not happening.” She crossed her arms.

“Because of the tosser.”

“Heywood.” She nodded. “He’s a professor at Columbia University and directs the lecture series, so he gets the final word.”

“He disagreed with your analysis.”

“Doubtless he would have. But no, that’s not it. He only saw my title. He thought I should discuss something suited to my sex. He didn’t explain himself, but his title for my new lecture made it obvious.” She frowned. “ ‘Gatty’s Girls: Celebrating the Female Love of Botany.’ ”

Griffith’s eyes narrowed. “Why did he pick Gatty?”