The road to London was longer without Rowan.
Livia had traveled it often with her father—coaches rattling, inns with uneven mattresses, the familiar shift as fields gave way to factories and then to the dense sprawl of the City.
She had always felt a thrill, then. Anticipation. The sense of stepping back into the current of things.
This time, the City felt… different.
Larger, somehow. Colder.
Alice, perched opposite her, watched her with wide eyes.
“Are you all right, Your Grace?” she ventured as they rolled past the first rows of sooty houses.
“Yes,” Livia said. “Just… thinking.”
“About the ship?” Alice asked softly.
“Yes,” Livia lied.
The *Prosperity* loomed in her mind like a ghost. But beneath that, pale and insistent, was the image of Rowan standing in the Merrow courtyard, mud on his boots, watching her carriage roll away.
He had not shouted any dramatic last words.
He had simply stood, arms folded, jaw clenched, until they turned the bend.
She had felt his gaze like a physical thing.
Now, as the coach turned onto streets that smelled of horse and humanity, she straightened her shoulders.
Silas Harcourt was waiting on the steps of Harcourt House when they arrived, his hair more silver than when she had last seen him, his bulk a little diminished.
“You are thin,” she said by way of greeting, unabashed.
“And you’re a duchess,” he retorted. “We’ve both had a hard winter.”
He crushed her in a hug that smelled of tobacco and ink.
“I told you not to come,” he muttered into her hair.
“And I ignored you,” she said. “As usual.”
He huffed, a sound suspiciously close to a laugh.
“Come in,” he said gruffly. “We’ve work to do.”
***
The *Prosperity* was more than a ship.
She was a knot of contracts.
Her cargo—cotton, tea, spices—had been bought on credit, insured at Lloyd’s, promised in turn to buyers in Manchester and Bristol. Her crew had families. The investors in her voyage included risk-hungry men with more greed than sense, and cautious ones with everything to lose.
If she was lost at sea, waves would ripple out, drowning more than sailors.
Livia and her father sat at the long table in the Harcourt office late into the night, lists spread before them.
“We prioritize the small men,” Livia said, tapping her pen against the edge of the paper. “Those whose entire season’s profit hung on this shipment. We can negotiate with the others. Delay. Restructure.”
Harcourt grunted. “You going to tell the big ones to wait while we coddle the little?”
“Yes,” she said. “And if they dislike it, they may take their business elsewhere. We are not the only house in London that can move goods. But we are one of the few that will not ruin a man over a single storm.”
He eyed her. “Marriage ain’t softened you.”
“No,” she said. “It has made me less patient with stupidity.”
He snorted.
They sent word to their insurers. They instructed captains to be on the lookout in every Channel port. They met with buyers, soothed panic, listened to complaints.
In the quieter moments, Livia wrote to Rowan.
*Dear Rowan,* she scrawled late one night, hand cramping. *London smells the same. You do not. I am, therefore, less impressed with it than usual.*
*The *Prosperity* remains missing. I am beginning to get cross with the sea. It does not, alas, care.*
*Father is bearing up. He pretends to grumble when I overrule him, but I catch him smiling when he thinks I do not look. He misses you. He will deny it if you mention it.*
*I miss you, too. I will deny that less ferociously. The bed is too large. Alice snores.*
*Yours (temporarily marooned),*
*Livia*
His reply, which arrived four days later, smelled faintly of woodsmoke.
*Duchess,*
*Mrs. Talbot informs me that I am more difficult to manage without you. I deny it. She is not convinced.*
*Merrow misses you. The tenants ask after you. Miss Hartley sent a child to deliver a note demanding more copybooks. I will send them with this letter. You are fostering a nest of vipers.*
*I miss you. The bed is also too large here. Fletcher does not snore, but he creaks.*
*No word of the *Prosperity* reached us yesterday’s post. That does not, I remind you (and myself), mean she is lost. Ships have limped home after months. I am braced for bad news, but I am also stubbornly reserving a portion of myself for the possibility of good.*
*Yours (counting days),*
*R.*
She smiled at the letter until her cheeks hurt.
Then, carefully, she folded it and tucked it next to her heart under her bodice, where the warmth of her skin might, irrationally, keep it safe.
***
On the ninth day, the news came.
She was in the counting house, arguing with an underwriter about the precise meaning of “act of God,” when a boy burst in, breathless.
“Miss—Your Grace,” he panted, clutching his cap. “They’ve sighted her. The *Prosperity.* She’s limping into Portsmouth. Lost a mast. But she’s there.”
The words washed over her like a wave.
For a moment, she could not move.
Harcourt, behind her, let out a roar that made the underwriter flinch.
“Ha!” he bellowed. “I told you, girl. Those old tubs of ours don’t sink that easy.”
Livia’s knees went weak.
She caught herself on the edge of the table, laughing and crying at once.
“Alive,” she said. “She’s alive.”
“Get the manifests,” Harcourt barked. “Send Allen down to Portsmouth. No—send two men. And write to Merrow. The boy’ll be paced a trench in his yard.”
Livia wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, uncaring of her smudged ink.
“I am going myself,” she said.
Harcourt stared. “To Portsmouth? Now?”
“Yes,” she said. “I want to see her. To see what held and what failed. To speak to the captain. I want to know what we did right. And what we must strengthen.”
He hesitated, then nodded. “Take the fast coach. And Allen. And two big lads with fists. I’m too old for this gallivanting.”
She went.
The road to Portsmouth was rough, the inns worse. She did not care.
When she stood at last on the quayside, the smell of tar and salt in her lungs, watching the battered hulk of the *Prosperity* limp toward the dock, she felt as if a piece of her soul—one she had not known was missing—was returning.
Her side scraped, sails ragged, the ship moved with stubborn dignity.
Livia’s throat tightened.
“Well, you old cow,” she murmured under her breath. “You’ve given me some gray hairs.”
Captain Briggs, as weather-beaten and stubborn as his vessel, came down the gangplank with a limp.
“Your Grace,” he said, sounding both surprised and secretly pleased. “Didn’t expect you down here yourself.”
“Of course you did not,” she said. “That’s why I came.”
He barked a laugh.
“We hit a storm in the Bay,” he said without preamble. “Worst I’ve seen in ten years. Lost the foremast. Took on water. Thought we’d go nose-first to Jonah more’n once. But the old girl held.”
“You held,” she corrected.
He shrugged. “Had help. Good crew. Good planks. Good… luck, if you like.”
She walked the quay with him, listening as he described each crack, each flooded hold, each rope that had saved a life.
Her mind ticked.
Stronger spars here. Better pumps there. A different route in winter.
She filled a notebook.
That night, in the small, grimy inn near the harbor, she wrote to Rowan by candlelight.
*Rowan,*
*She came home. I stood on the quay and cursed and blessed her in the same breath. She looks like hell. A mast gone, hull scarred. But she floats. That is more than I can say for some men I’ve met in Town.*
*We will take a loss. The delay will cost us. Some cargo is ruined. But it is not ruin. We can adjust. I would rather adjust than attend funerals.*
*I found myself thinking, absurdly, of Merrow’s roofs as I walked her deck. What holds? What fails? Where did we skimp on tar as we once skimped on thatch? What have we asked these planks to bear that they cannot? I begin to see my life as an endless series of repairs. It is almost comforting.*
*I miss you. Irritating, how often I write that. It is becoming a refrain. I miss you when I smell tar. I miss you when I smell tea. I miss you when Father falls asleep in his chair with a ledger on his chest and snores like a portly dragon. I miss you when I wake and reach for you in a bed that contains only me and far too much pillow.*
*Do not let Merrow fall into a pond while I am gone. I wish to recognize it when I return.*
*Yours (salt-stained),*
*L.*
His reply came faster this time, breathless on the heels of her coach when she returned to London.
*Livia,*
*Thank God for stubborn ships and captains. And for you. Were our positions reversed, I confess I might have melted into a puddle on the quay and refused to reform.*
*Merrow still stands. Dobbins’s boy has only fallen out of the tree once (minor bruises, major indignation). Miss Hartley has begun teaching Greek to any child foolish enough to sit still. I have received a letter from my mother’s cousin expressing “concern” that my duchess spends so much time in counting houses. I wrote back expressing concern that she spends so much time in other people’s marriages.*
*I miss you. There, I have written it also. We shall begin a chorus.*
*Come home when you can. Merrow is… better with you in it. So am I.*
*Yours (counting roofs and days),*
*R.*
***
Leaving London again was, in some ways, harder than leaving Merrow had been.
Harcourt stood in the doorway of Harcourt House, arms folded.
“You did it,” he said. “You saved us.”
“We saved us,” she corrected. “If you had not carried me, squealing, into those counting houses when I was twelve, I would not know which questions to ask.”
He made a face. “Squealing. I remember no squealing. I remember stomping.”
She smiled. “Perhaps.”
He shifted, uncomfortable.
“You going back, then,” he said, “to your… duke.”
“My husband,” she said. “Yes.”
He grunted. “You… two… are all right?”
A flood of images: Rowan’s letter. His mouth on hers. His hands reaching for her in sleep. His temper flaring at Lady Tansley. His shoulders hunched over Miss Hartley’s list of needed supplies.
“Yes,” she said simply. “We are.”
Harcourt eyed her.
“You look different,” he said. “In here.” He tapped his chest. “Not on your face. Your face is the same. Stubborn. But inside.”
She hesitated. “I—”
“Don’t tell me,” he interrupted. “I don’t want to know. I’ll only worry. Just… be happy, girl. As far as you can manage. For as long as you can manage it.”
She hugged him hard.
“I love you,” she muttered into his waistcoat.
He patted her back. “I know. Now go on. Before I change my mind and chain you to the docks.”
She laughed.
In the carriage, as the city receded, she realized she felt something she had not expected.
Relief.
London would always be part of her. The docks, the ships, the ink.
But it was no longer all of her.
There was a house of mellow stone waiting. Tenants. Trees. A man who had not touched a card in months and did not intend to again.
She leaned back against the cushions, closed her eyes, and let the rhythm of the wheels smooth the edges of her thoughts.
When she opened them again, the hedgerows of Merrow were sliding past.
***
He was waiting for her.
He tried, she could see, not to look as if he were.
He stood half up the steps, hands clasped behind his back, Mrs. Talbot and Whitlow lurking discreetly behind. Dobbins’s boy hung from a low branch of the oak like a monkey, craning to see.
As the carriage drew up, her heart hammered.
Alice squeaked, delighted.
Fletcher opened the door.
Livia stepped down.
Rowan’s eyes devoured her.
“You are thinner,” he said, his voice rough.
“So are you,” she said. “Mrs. Talbot has been neglecting you.”
Mrs. Talbot sniffed. “He’s been pacing off his dinners.”
Rowan descended the last two steps in three long strides.
He did not bow.
He did not offer his arm.
He caught her up, instead, one arm around her waist, lifting her clear off the gravel.
The assembled servants gasped; Dobbins’s boy whooped.
“You are home,” Rowan said into her hair.
“Yes,” she said, laughing and breathless. “Put me down, you great lunatic, or Mrs. Talbot will faint.”
“I will not,” Mrs. Talbot said crisply. “But the vicar’s sister is at the gate.”
Rowan set Livia down, a little sheepish.
Miss Hartley, indeed, stood by the front gate, spectacles glinting, arms folded.
“Your Grace,” she called. “You are late. The children have eaten their slates.”
Livia grinned.
“I will come,” she said. “Tomorrow.”
“Today,” Miss Hartley said. “Learning does not pause for maidenly fatigue.”
“She is not a maiden,” Rowan muttered.
“Rowan,” Livia hissed, elbowing him.
Miss Hartley’s brows climbed, then lowered with something like approval.
“Good,” she said. “Married women need their wits about them more.”
She stalked off.
Livia laughed until her sides hurt.
“Everything’s exactly as I left it,” she said.
“Yes,” Rowan said. “Only more.”
He took her hand, fingers lacing with hers.
“Come,” he said. “Let me show you what we have done in your absence. And you can show me what you have brought back from Portsmouth besides salt in your hair.”
She went.
The weight of water—sea and rain—seemed, for the first time in a long while, less like a threat and more like a resource.
They would still, she knew, have storms.
Ships would be lost. Roofs would leak. People would say cruel things.
But she had crossed a small, fierce ocean in herself.
On the far shore, Rowan waited.
That, she thought, might be enough.
***