November came in wet and raw.
Rain drummed against the windows; the wind moaned down chimneys. The house creaked and sighed.
Livia learned the exact number of steps between her bed and the nearest chamber pot.
The nausea eased, slowly, as the weeks passed, but fatigue settled in its place. Some days, merely walking down the corridor left her breathless and faint.
She hated it.
“You are *sitting* down,” Rowan said one afternoon when he found her standing in the library, stubbornly bending over a sheaf of papers.
“I am *working,*” she retorted.
“You are swaying,” he countered.
“You are… irritating,” she said.
“Correct,” he said. “Sit.”
“I have spent my life standing,” she snapped. “At docks. At tables. In drawing rooms where chairs were not truly offered. I am not about to take to a chaise like some simpering—”
She stopped, because the room had begun to tilt alarmingly.
Rowan, cursing under his breath, was beside her in a heartbeat, easing her into the nearest armchair.
“You are infuriating,” he muttered, kneeling to loosen her shoes. “You would rather fall on your face than admit you are not made of iron.”
“I am made of iron,” she said weakly. “It is simply… rusty.”
He snorted.
“Breathe,” he said, placing her hand firmly on her own chest. “In. Out. That’s it.”
She obeyed, resisting the urge to smack him.
When the spinning eased, she opened her eyes and found him watching her, his expression a mix of exasperation, worry, and awe.
“You are… softer,” he said suddenly, then flushed. “I mean—your face. Not—”
“Rowan,” she said, too tired to summon much indignation.
“You are going to be very beautiful, you know,” he blurted.
She blinked. “I am not now?”
“You are always,” he said. “I merely mean—this is… different. There is… light. Here.” He brushed his knuckles over her cheek.
She snorted. “That is the sheen of sweat, Your Grace.”
“It is luminous,” he insisted.
“Your flattery is appalling,” she said, but a flush crept into her chest, not all of it from the faint.
He rose, went to the sideboard, and poured her a small glass of watered wine.
“Drink,” he said. “And then, for the love of all that is profitable, hand me the Derby accounts. I can add, you know.”
She eyed him.
“I remember your ‘fence at sixteen’ story,” she said. “Your judgment is suspect.”
“My judgment in investments is improving,” he said. “My judgment in women, impeccable.”
She laughed, weakly.
“Very well,” she said. “You may… assist.”
He sat beside her, spreading the papers out on his knees, shoulders touched.
As he fumbled only slightly over the more complex columns, she allowed her head to rest against the back of the chair, her eyes half-closed.
The child—if it was a child—if it had not slipped away already in some silent, unseen catastrophe—had begun to make itself known in ways beyond sickness and faintness.
Her gowns, once precise at the waist, now strained.
Her breasts ached, annoying and oddly pleasurable both.
Sometimes, at night, lying on her back, she could feel… something. Not movement. Not yet. A… heaviness. An awareness.
It frightened her.
It exhilarated her.
At the physician’s next visit—a man she grudgingly admitted knew more than most about women’s health, and who, to his credit, addressed his questions to her rather than to Rowan—he had smiled in a way that made her want to throw a candlestick at him.
“You are… well along,” he said, after palpating her abdomen with impersonal firmness. “I should say… thirteen, perhaps fourteen weeks. The sickness may abate soon. The tiredness…” He shrugged. “May not. You will likely feel… more… from within in the coming month. Quickening.”
Livia clutched the edge of the table.
“And is it…” She could not quite say the word.
“So far,” he said gently, “it is as it should be. There are no guarantees. There never are. But your body is doing what it must.”
She exhaled shakily.
“And… the… delivery?” she forced out. “In time.”
He glanced at Rowan, then back at her, reading something in her face.
“We will… prepare,” he said. “Merrow has seen many babies born. Mrs. Talbot will know which women are worth trusting. We will minimize risk as best we can.”
That was all.
That was all there ever was.
Later, alone with Rowan in their room, she sat on the edge of the bed, her hands twisted in her skirt.
“My mother,” she said abruptly, “never… prepared. Or if she did, I did not see it. She… hoped. She prayed. She trusted… men in wigs. And she died.”
He sat beside her, his hand finding hers.
“We are not her,” he said quietly. “We have… more information. More… stubbornness.”
“You cannot simply will my body to cooperate,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “But I can will myself to listen when it tells us something is wrong. And to remove men in wigs who insist otherwise.”
She huffed a shaky laugh.
“You are very fond of removing men in wigs,” she said.
“Particularly when they look down their noses at you,” he said. “It is a hobby.”
She turned her hand, lacing their fingers.
“I am… happy,” she whispered, as if admitting a shameful secret. “Terrifyingly so.”
He drew in a sharp breath.
“Me too,” he said. “Which is, frankly, rude of life, given how often it has proven it cannot be trusted.”
She laughed, the sound catching.
He leaned over, resting his forehead against hers.
“If,” he said softly, “the worst… happens… we will break. Both of us. I will not pretend otherwise. But we will… break toward each other. Not away.”
She nodded, eyes burning.
“Yes,” she said. “Promise.”
“I promise,” he said.
They sat like that, two flawed people holding a line against an unknowable future.
***
Telling her father proved both easier and harder than she had imagined.
She waited until December, when the first snow dusted the Merrow fields and the physician, after another examination, declared himself “very pleased” with her progress.
Then she sat at the small desk in her bedchamber and stared at a blank sheet of paper until her hand cramped.
“How do you begin such a letter?” she muttered.
“‘Dear Father, I have been violently ill but it is apparently a good thing’?” Rowan suggested from the chaise, where he lay with one arm flung over his eyes in melodramatic despair after a morning of being trounced at chess by Miss Hartley.
She snorted. “He will think you have poisoned me.”
“Then,” Rowan said, lowering his arm to look at her, “you might as well be direct. He appreciates that.”
She dipped her pen.
*Father,* she wrote, then stopped.
Her mind filled with images: Harcourt at his desk, Harcourt on the docks, Harcourt in the blue parlor, glowering and gruff and unexpectedly tender.
He had watched her mother die.
He had watched two small graves dug.
She swallowed.
*Father,*
*I am, as you once called me with exasperation and pride, a “reckless girl.” I have done something now that may prove that true once more.*
Her pen moved, hesitating, then firming.
*I am with child.*
She stared at the words until they blurred.
“They sound… stark,” she said.
“They are,” Rowan said. “Truth often is.”
She continued.
*It is early yet. We are not fools. We know that much can go wrong. But the physician is… cautiously optimistic. I am as well, which surprises me as much as it may you.*
*I did not tell you sooner because I could not bear to bring you into uncertainty. If that was wrong, I ask your forgiveness. It was done not from mistrust but from cowardice.*
*Rowan has been… insufferable. In the best way. Mrs. Talbot has taken command. Miss Hartley has threatened to bring Greek amulets. Whitlow has begun drafting an entirely unnecessary codicil about the management of the estate should we both be struck by a falling tree. As you see, we are well supplied with fussing.*
Rowan made an affronted noise; she ignored him.
*I am… frightened, Father. More than I have ever been. But I am also… happy. I did not think those two things could live in the same room. They can. They argue, but they coexist.*
*I thought you should know. I wanted you to know. Whatever happens, this—this hope—is part of the life I have chosen. With him. I do not regret it.*
*Your stubborn girl,*
*Livia*
She sanded the letter, folded it, sealed it.
“Will he be angry?” Rowan asked.
“Yes,” she said. “At the world. At God. At me. At you. At Mrs. Talbot for letting me eat pickled onions. It is his way.”
“And you?” he asked.
“I will be… whatever I must to keep him from breaking,” she said. “If I break, he will drown.”
Rowan’s mouth tightened.
“And who keeps *you* from drowning?” he asked.
She met his gaze.
“You,” she said simply.
His throat worked.
“Then I had better learn to swim,” he murmured.
***
Harcourt’s reply came faster than she expected.
*Girl,* it began, without preamble.
Already, she could hear his voice.
*You should have told me sooner, you wretch. I could have worried longer. You know I like to start my fretting early.*
She smiled, tears pricking.
*Leaving that aside,* the letter went on, *I am… damned if I know what to say.*
*You know what happened before. You watched more than any child should. I swore then I’d not put you through it. And here you are, walking yourself right back into the fire, proud as you please.*
*Part of me wants to come up there and drag you home. Lock you in the counting house and feed you soup until you’re ninety.*
*The rest of me…*
Here, the ink blotched.
*The rest of me is… proud. And scared witless. And… hopeful. Which I resent. Hope is your mother’s trick, not mine.*
*If the worst happens, I will blame no one. Not you. Not that boy you married (much). Not God (much). I will blame wind and blood and bad chance. And I will still get on the next ship and come up there and shout at you until we’re both hoarse.*
*If the best happens… I will be the most intolerable grandfather London has ever seen.*
She laughed aloud.
Rowan, reading over her shoulder, grinned.
*Do as your Talbot woman says,* Harcourt’s scrawl continued. *Do as your doctor says. Do not do as that aunt of his says if she suggests anything involving leeches or prayer circles. Keep that boy from doing anything heroic and stupid. Keep yourself from doing anything heroic and stupid. I will come when it is nearer time. I’ve no patience for sittin’ about fussin’ over your ankles for months.*
*I love you. I love you. I love you. There. I’ve written it. Now don’t make me regret it.*
*Your father*
Livia pressed the letter to her chest.
“Well?” Rowan asked softly.
“He is… himself,” she said. “And he loves me. And he will come. Later. Like a storm.”
Rowan smiled faintly. “We will batten down the furniture.”
She laughed.
For the first time in days, the constant, low-level dread that had pulsed under her skin eased.
Joy, she realized, came with a cost.
You opened yourself.
You risked.
You paid in fear.
But so far, the ledger of this new venture was, improbably, in the black.
***