The next morning, Livia was sick before she was fully awake.
She barely had time to throw herself out of bed and to the small basin in the corner before her stomach rebelled. The sour burn of bile brought tears to her eyes.
“Livia?” Rowan’s voice, thick with sleep, cut through the retching. “God—”
He was beside her in an instant, one hand gathering her hair away from her face, the other on her back, warm and steady.
“It is fine,” she gasped between spasms. “It is—”
“It is *not* fine,” he said, appalled. “You are vomiting into a bowl.”
“It is morning,” she managed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “It is… expected.”
He blinked. “Expected?”
She sank back onto her heels, breathless.
“Aunt Edith,” she said weakly, naming a relative of her mother’s whose letters had once included more detail than a child should have read, “described it. ‘A delicate indisposition in the mornings, a sign of God’s blessing.’ She was not nearly graphic enough.”
Rowan made a strangled noise somewhere between horrified and hysterical.
“I—” He looked from the bowl to her to the bed and back, clearly at a loss.
“Do not faint,” she warned.
“I am not the one being violently ill,” he protested.
She took the washcloth Alice had, at some point in the confusion, thrust into her hand, and wiped her face.
Alice hovered by the door, white as milk, eyes huge.
“Shall I fetch Mrs. Talbot?” she squeaked. “Or the doctor? Or His Grace a brandy?”
“I do not require brandy,” Rowan said. “At least, not until later.”
“Do not,” Livia said, swatting at his knee. “You will smell of it and I shall vomit again.”
He paled. “Right. No brandy. Ever again, possibly.”
She slumped onto the edge of the bed as Alice whisked away the offending bowl with a mixture of horror and determination.
“Mrs. Talbot said as how this’d happen,” Alice muttered as she went. “Said I were to have cloths and mint ready. Didn’t say it’d be so *loud.*”
Livia blinked.
“Mrs. Talbot knew?” she asked Rowan.
He looked guilty. “I may have… mentioned… to her… that we suspected.”
“You told Mrs. Talbot before you told me?” she demanded, half-laughing, half-outraged.
“I told her after you told me,” he protested. “I needed advice. She has seen more pregnancies than I have had good ideas.”
“That is not reassuring,” she said, but her lips twitched.
He sat beside her, his expression torn between worry and wonder.
“You are sure,” he said slowly, “this is not… some random… illness? A bad apple? A punishment for Eames’s pie?”
She considered.
“Possibly,” she said. “But when one adds it to the missing courses, the… soreness, the… faintness in the evenings…”
His face softened.
“Yes,” he said. “All right. I accept the… working hypothesis.”
“You sound like Miss Hartley,” she muttered.
“I feel like Miss Hartley,” he said. “Over-educated and underprepared.”
Despite the lingering nausea, she laughed.
He touched her hand, very gently.
“Shall I send for a physician?” he asked. “One who does not call you ‘my girl’ and speak only to me?”
“Yes,” she said. “But not today. I am too inclined to bite.”
He smiled. “I shall warn him to bring gauntlets.”
She leaned back against the pillows with a sigh.
The physical symptoms, unpleasant as they were, she could manage.
It was the quiet, persistent drum of fear underneath that tugged.
Bodies failed.
Babies did not always come into the world screaming and pink. Some did not come at all. Others came too soon, too small.
Her mother had borne two before her, both lost in the first month. Livia had only ever known because of an overheard argument, half-sobbed through a door.
It might be different for her.
It might not.
“You are thinking yourself into a hole,” Rowan said, watching her.
“Yes,” she said.
“Climb out,” he said gently. “At least for breakfast.”
She gave him a narrow look. “You are very confident in your rope-throwing abilities this morning.”
“I am terrified,” he said. “But I know you. You cannot control this with numbers. You will try. You will fail. You will hurt yourself. Let… some of it… be.”
She sighed. “You are asking me to do the one thing I have never learned.”
“Yes,” he said. “I am.”
She turned her head to look at him.
“You will not,” she said, “hover like a fretful hen, will you?”
“Define ‘hover,’” he said cautiously.
“If you follow me every time I cross a room, carrying cushions and asking if I am comfortable, I shall smother you with a ledger,” she said.
This time, his laugh was genuine and helpless.
“Very well,” he said. “I will… hover discreetly. Like a worried owl.”
“Rowan,” she warned.
“I promise,” he said quickly, sobering. “I will not make you… feel caged. Tell me if I begin to.”
“I will,” she said. “Vigorously.”
He nodded.
A knock at the door heralded Mrs. Talbot, carrying a small tray.
“Ginger tea,” the housekeeper announced firmly, setting it on the bedside table. “And dry toast. You’ll eat it if I have to pin you down, Your Grace.”
Livia eyed the cup with mingled hope and suspicion.
“It will help,” Mrs. Talbot said, softening. “A bit. Enough to let you get through the day without terrifyin’ the maids.”
Livia took the cup.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
Mrs. Talbot’s shrewd gaze softened further.
“You scream if anything feels… wrong,” she said. “Don’t sit there bein’ brave. Brave gets babies dead.”
Livia flinched.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I know.”
Mrs. Talbot nodded. “Then we’re ahead already. Most girls don’t.”
***
News, in a house like Merrow, did not remain confined to a bedroom for long.
By noon, the staff looked at Livia with a new, cautious deference.
By supper, Mrs. Pike had arrived with a jar of some alarming concoction she swore had eased her third pregnancy. Mrs. Dobbins sent broth. Miss Hartley arrived armed with three books and a lecture about ancient Greek views on the womb, which Livia cut short with a promise to read the books and a glare that would have silenced a bishop.
Rowan handled it with a mixture of humor and fierce protectiveness that made Livia’s heart twist.
When Mrs. Pike pressed her potion on Livia, Rowan took it, sniffed, and said, “Thank you. I shall drink this myself. If it kills me, we shall know to avoid it.”
Mrs. Pike laughed until she cried.
Miss Hartley, when she tried to assign Livia a strict regimen of walks and books and “mental hygiene,” found herself redirected to share her wisdom with Whitlow, who had been complaining of headaches.
For all the bustle and advice, the nights were the hardest.
Lying in the dark, the house settling around them, Livia felt every twinge, every flutter, with an intensity that verged on panic.
“Breathe,” Rowan would murmur, his hand a steady weight over hers at her abdomen. “Just breathe.”
“You sound very calm,” she would snap.
“I am not,” he would say. “I am reciting Eames’s barley yields in my head to avoid screaming.”
That, at least, made her laugh.
One evening, as October’s first true chill pressed against the windows, he asked the question she had been dreading.
“Have you told your father?”
She went still.
“No,” she said.
“Will you?” he asked.
She stared at the canopy.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “If… if it lasts. If I pass the… dangerous weeks.”
He exhaled. “He will be furious at you if you keep such a thing from him.”
“He will be furious at the world regardless,” she said. “I can manage his feelings better if I am not… bleeding on his carpet.”
He flinched.
“Do not say—” he began.
“I am not… morbid,” she said, though part of her knew she was. “I am… realistic. You told me once that you preferred deeds to promises. I prefer results to… possibilities.”
“And yet,” he said softly, “you told me. Before there were results.”
She rolled onto her side to face him, their noses inches apart.
“Yes,” she said. “Because you are… part of the possibility. You are… tied to it. Father… is tied to me. Only me. I cannot… bear… his disappointment… if I tell him and then—”
Her voice broke.
He reached, pulled her into his arms.
“Hush,” he whispered. “All right. All right. We will tell him when *you* are ready. Not before.”
She clutched his shirt, her fear finally breaking the dam she had held it behind.
“I am so *angry* with myself,” she choked. “For wanting this. For letting it make me so… fragile. I hate it.”
He held her tighter.
“I know,” he said. “I hated wanting you. At first. It made me… stupid. Weak. It took me months to realize it made me… stronger.”
She pulled back enough to glare at him through tears. “You cannot equate me with a fetus, Rowan.”
“Oh God, no,” he said, appalled. “That is… not at all what I—”
Despite herself, she wheezed a laugh.
“You are very bad at analogies,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed fervently. “Let us never speak of this again.”
She buried her face against his chest, laughter and tears mingling.
For a few moments, the fear receded.
***
A letter arrived from Lady Agnes a week later, carried by a groom whose ears had clearly been blistered by her dictation.
*My dearest idiot nephew and his much more sensible duchess,* it read. *I have it on the highest authority (Mrs. Talbot, who is more reliable than any physician) that you are breeding.*
Livia nearly choked on her tea.
Rowan, reading over her shoulder, winced.
*I will spare you the advice you will receive from every woman who ever popped out a child,* the letter continued. *You will not hear the end of it in any case. Instead, I will offer three things that no one else will say because they are too busy cooing.*
*First: you may hate it. At times. Both of you. You may hate the sickness, the fear, the way your life shrinks to the size of your wife’s stomach. You may, in later years, hate the noise, the mess, the constant interruption of your thoughts. This does not make you monsters. It makes you honest.*
*Second: you may love it. Irrationally. Unreasonably. To the point of madness. You may find yourself weeping over a dirty blanket because it smells like your child. You may want to wrap the creature in wool and stab anyone who approaches. This also does not make you monsters. It makes you dangerous. Be wary.*
*Third: whatever you feel, you must talk to each other. Not to me. Not to Harcourt (though I suspect he will have opinions). Not to the vicar or Miss Hartley or some simpering matron. To each other. If you are frightened, say so. If you are overjoyed, say so. If you are bored out of your skull while the other coos, say so carefully and with a biscuit.*
Livia snorted.
*If this child is lost—and I pray it is not—you will be tempted to retreat into your separate griefs. Do not. Meet in the middle and hit something together. Preferably Fenton.*
Rowan burst out laughing, then sobered as he read on.
*If the child lives, you will be tempted to let it wedge between you. Do not. You were a pair before you were a trio. Remain so.*
*I will come down in a month or two, if you can bear me. In the meantime, I send my fierce affection and a warning: childbirth is disgusting. Prepare yourselves.*
*Yours,*
*Agnes*
Livia folded the letter with care.
“She is,” she said, “terrifyingly correct.”
“Yes,” Rowan said. “About Fenton in particular.”
She reached for his hand across the table.
“We will not,” she said quietly, “retreat.”
“No,” he said, squeezing. “We will not.”
They looked at each other over the wreckage of breakfast—crumbs, an overturned jam pot, the remains of Mrs. Talbot’s efforts to keep nausea at bay.
For the first time, the idea of a third place at the table—somewhere between them, sticky and loud—did not fill Livia with dread.
It filled her with something far stranger.
Anticipation.
***