The road to Merrow Park was not grand.
Rows of elms did not march along it in manicured splendor. There were no ornamental gatehouses, no picturesque gothic follies. The lane wound up from the village in a series of steady turns, bordered by rough hedgerows that had not been trimmed as neatly as they should, and topped a rise that gave a modest view of the house beyond.
Livia Harcourt, snug in her father’s well-sprung carriage, lifted the curtain and looked out as they creaked to a halt at the top of the hill.
She had not expected beauty.
She found… potential.
Merrow Park lay in a shallow valley, its main house a long, low structure of mellow stone. It lacked the towering impracticality of some country seats she’d glimpsed in illustrated volumes. A central block of three stories, flanked by two slightly lower wings, all with tall windows that caught what weak sunlight there was and turned it to a subtle gleam.
The facade bore the marks of neglect: shutters in need of paint, ivy allowed to crawl a bit too far, a patch on the roof where tiles were mismatched. But the bones were good. Behind the house, the land rolled down toward a copse of trees and a ribbon of water that glinted silver.
Farther out, she could make out tenant cottages, fields, the dark mass of a small wood.
“Tch,” Silas Harcourt grunted beside her, peering out in his turn. “Could be worse.”
“Father,” she murmured, amused.
“What? I’ve seen worse. Titled gent in Surrey tried to sell me his prize bull three years ago, ledgers so bad I wanted to set them on fire. House looked like a cake left in the rain. This—” He jerked his chin toward Merrow Park. “This could stand.”
Livia did not reply at once. Her attention had caught on figures gathering at the front steps as the carriage rolled forward again: a butler in somewhat shabby dignity, a maid hastily smoothing her apron, a footman who looked too young for his livery and a housekeeper tall and erect.
And at their forefront, Rowan Everly.
He came down the steps as their carriage drew up, his coat flapping open in the breeze, hair a little mussed as if he’d been out on horseback already that morning. He looked less polished here than he had in London, his boots bearing the honest scuffs of use, his cravat tied with a hint less precision.
The country suited him, Livia thought, with a faint clench in her chest.
He was handsome in town; here, he looked… *right.*
“Mr. Harcourt. Miss Harcourt.” He bowed as a footman opened the carriage door. “Welcome to Merrow Park. I hope the road was not too unpleasant.”
“We’ve had worse,” Harcourt said, hauling his bulk out of the carriage with a groan. “Had a wagon lose a wheel in sight of Bristol once. Walked the last two miles. This was a pleasure by comparison.”
“I am relieved,” Rowan said gravely, then turned to Livia, offering his hand.
She placed her gloved fingers in his palm and stepped down. The contact lasted only a heartbeat longer than needed.
“Miss Harcourt,” he said, voice lower. “Thank you for coming.”
“You did warn me you have leaking roofs,” she replied. “I confess, my curiosity got the better of me.”
“I will endeavor to disappoint it,” he said. “Allow me to present Mrs. Talbot, my housekeeper, and Mr. Pierce, the butler.”
Mrs. Talbot, a spare woman with intelligent eyes, curtseyed. “Mr. Harcourt, Miss Harcourt. We’re pleased to have you. His Grace has been fair dancing with impatience these three days.”
“Aunt,” Rowan said under his breath.
From the doorway, a short, sturdy woman in uncompromising gray silk snorted. “Don’t you dare blame me, boy. You’ve been fretting like a maiden with a new gown.”
Lady Agnes marched down the steps, feathers bristling. She favored Harcourt with a curt nod and Livia with a keen, searching gaze.
“So,” she said. “You’re the girl.”
Livia felt Harcourt bristle beside her like an affronted bear. She stepped slightly forward, inclining her head.
“I am Livia Harcourt, my lady,” she said, her tone poised between politeness and steel. “Your nephew has been… very frank about his position. We have come to see whether his honesty extends to his roof beams.”
Lady Agnes’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, I like you.”
“Lady Agnes,” Rowan said, exasperated. “May I present Mr. Silas Harcourt, and Miss Livia Harcourt. Mr. Harcourt, my aunt, Lady Agnes Everly.”
“Ma’am,” Harcourt said, his bow stiff.
“Mr. Harcourt.” Lady Agnes’s smile was sharp and surprisingly warm. “I am given to understand that you know what a balance sheet looks like. I applaud you. Very few people in this county do.”
“You’d be surprised how many in London don’t, ma’am,” Harcourt said, startled into a chuckle.
Rowan exhaled softly. That, at least, was a promising beginning.
“Come,” he said. “You must be cold. We have a fire in the drawing room. And some food, before I drag you across the fields to inspect my sins.”
Livia’s lips ticked up. “You are presuming we will allow you to feed us before we see the worst.”
“If you do not,” Lady Agnes said, linking her arm with Livia’s as if it were the most natural thing in the world, “I assure you, *I* shall faint, and it will be shocking.”
“I have never seen you faint in my life,” Rowan muttered.
“Then you shall miss a rare performance. Come, Miss Harcourt. Tell me about these ships of yours while the men posture about oak beams.”
Livia found herself swept along, half-amused, half-bewildered, into the echoing hall.
The floors were stone, worn with years but clean. The portraits along the walls were of Everlys past, watching with varying degrees of disapproval as a merchant and his daughter crossed their domain.
She lifted her chin and met their painted eyes.
If any of them had truly done their duty, she thought, she would not be here at all.
***
The first hours at Merrow Park were a whirl of introductions and impressions.
The drawing room, as Rowan had promised, boasted a fire—and the faint, unmistakable scent of a leak somewhere in the walls. Over thin but flavorful soup and hearty cold meats, they spoke of roads and weather, of the journey, of absurd incidents at coaching inns.
Livia said little at first, watching.
Rowan was different here than in the City. Still courteous, still edged with humor, but there was a quietness to him he had not shown in Harcourt House. He listened more than he spoke; when he did speak, his words held more weight.
He did not try to dazzle.
He did not need to.
“And how many tenants’ cottages do you have, Your Grace?” Harcourt asked, reaching for a slice of ham. “Channing said—what was it, Livia?—forty-odd?”
“Forty-three,” Rowan said. “There are fifty holdings, but some tenants farm more than one plot. There are also twelve smallholders in the village who hold land from the parish.”
“And how many roofs leaking?” Harcourt pressed.
“Six,” Rowan said calmly. “One of which I repaired last month when I sacked the steward who had been ignoring it for a year.”
Livia’s gaze sharpened. “You sacked your steward.”
“Yes.” A faint shadow crossed his expression. “Mr. Hales served my father faithfully. Too faithfully. He learned to copy his master’s preferences: to avoid unpleasant truths. When I discovered the extent of the… disrepair… I dismissed him.”
“And who manages the accounts now?” she asked.
“I do,” he said.
She blinked. “All of them?”
“With Mr. Whitlow’s assistance,” Rowan said. “He has come down from London to help put matters in order. We are in the process of hiring a new steward, but I will not hand over the ledgers again until I am certain the man I choose is not afraid to tell me when I am an idiot.”
Lady Agnes snorted softly. “That will be a long list.”
“Indeed,” Livia murmured, but her lips curved.
“You’ve got good men on the land?” Harcourt persisted. “Farmers who know what they’re doing? Or is it all hobbyists playing at fields between London Seasons?”
“Most of my tenants,” Rowan said, “have been here for generations. They know these acres better than I do. There are two cottages I mean to clear at the end of the year; the men in them drink more than they plough. But on the whole, the people are… worth the work.”
“And the cottages?” Livia asked. “Are they… worth the work?”
“You shall see for yourself,” Rowan replied, his eyes meeting hers steadily.
“Good,” she said.
After private coffee—and a swift, conspiratorial glass of brandy shared between Harcourt and Lady Agnes in the corner, which Livia pretended not to see—Rowan led them out.
They walked.
He did not hurry them straight to the worst. He understood, she thought, instinctively, the rhythm of such things. He let them see the approach again, this time from within the estate: the avenue (not of elms, but of oaks, less tidy but robust), the small ornamental lake with its rather forlorn swan, the stables in need of paint but otherwise sound.
At each turn, he spoke quietly of what had been and what he meant to do.
“My father bred racers,” he said, gesturing to a smaller, more elegant barn. “I have kept three of the best broodmares. The rest I sold. I mean to focus on hunters. Less glamourous, more… practical. There is a market.”
“Practical,” Livia said. “You use that word often, Your Grace.”
“Do you disapprove?”
“I approve of the direction, not the frequency. Men who say ‘practical’ too often are sometimes trying to convince themselves.”
He glanced at her, surprised laughter in his eyes. “You see through everything, don’t you?”
“Not everything,” she said quietly. “Just some things.”
She did not elaborate. She did not say: I see the way you steel yourself before speaking of your father, the way your jaw tightens when you look at the stables where his horses had kept him away from his wife and son.
She did not say: I see the boy you were, desperate for his approval, and the man you are now, determined never to become him.
He led them to the tenant cottages.
They were small, neat in some places, a little ragged in others. Children peered from doorways; women wiped hands on aprons, men tugged caps. It was not a parade; there had been no time to arrange that. This was real life, interrupted.
Livia watched Rowan greet them.
He knew their names.
“How’s your Mary’s leg, Baines?” he asked one farmer. “Still mending?”
“Better, Your Grace,” the man said, ducking his head. “Doctor says she’ll be right as a trivet by summer.”
“And the baby?”
“Squalls all night, sir. Healthy as a piglet.”
“Excellent.” Rowan’s mouth softened. “Let me know if you need anything more. Send word to Whitlow if the roof gives you trouble again.”
He moved from cottage to cottage, checking on thatch, chimneys, fences. He did not put on a show for Livia or her father. He had already done these rounds, she realized; this was simply part of them.
At a cottage halfway down the row, the door flew open before they could knock.
A small boy barreled out, hair sticking up in all directions, face smudged with dirt. He skidded to a halt when he saw Rowan.
“Yer Grace!” he squeaked, then reddened. “Sorry, sir. Your Grace, I mean.”
Rowan crouched without hesitation, bringing his eyes level with the boy’s. “Thomas. Have you been terrorizing your sisters again?”
“No, sir—Your Grace! I mean—”
Rowan’s lips twitched. “We agreed: when we are alone, you may call me ‘sir.’ When we are in company, it is ‘Your Grace.’ But not ‘oy, you.’”
The boy’s freckled face split in a grin. “Yes, sir—Your Grace. Sorry, sir.”
Rowan ruffled his hair. “This is Miss Harcourt,” he said, glancing upward. “She has come to inspect whether I am keeping Merrow in good repair.”
Thomas’s eyes went comically wide. “You’re the lady what carries ledgers?”
Livia blinked. “I—yes. I do.”
“My ma says you count better than the vicar,” he confided, oblivious to Harcourt’s choked snort behind them. “She says if you marry His Grace, you’ll make him behave.”
“Thomas,” a woman’s voice hissed from the doorway. “Get inside this instant and keep your tongue.”
“Sorry, ma,” he muttered, scuttling backward.
Rowan rose, cheeks faintly pink. “News travels quickly,” he said.
“It does,” Livia agreed, her own face warm.
They walked on. Harcourt fell into step with Eames, who had joined them from the village, talking of grain prices. Lady Agnes drifted between, occasionally inserting a devastatingly pointed remark that made both men laugh and cringe.
At the far end of the lane, Rowan stopped in front of a cottage with a warped door and a chimney leaning at a faintly alarming angle.
“This,” he said, “is one of the worst.”
He did not sugarcoat it. Inside, the air was damp; the plaster along one wall showed clear water stains. The thatch above one bed had sagged, patched with a nailed-up strip of oiled cloth. A woman in her thirties, her hands raw from scrubbing, straightened when they entered, her eyes wary.
“Mrs. Dobbins,” Rowan said. “I told you I’d bring someone to see the damage.”
Her gaze slid past him and landed on Livia. Something like calculation flashed. “This the lady they’re talking about, then?”
“Mrs. Dobbins,” Rowan said mildly, “this is Miss Harcourt. Miss Harcourt, Mrs. Dobbins. Her husband works on the western fields.”
“At least, he does when he’s not in his cups,” the woman said, folding her arms. “Beggin’ your pardon, Your Grace.”
“No pardon needed,” Rowan said. “I have already spoken with him about that.”
“And he listened as well as he ever does,” she muttered. “Which is to say, not at all.”
Livia stepped forward. “May I?” she asked, nodding toward the damaged wall.
Mrs. Dobbins eyed her, then shrugged. “You mark down what you like, miss. Can’t make it worse.”
Livia crossed to the wall, ran her fingertips lightly along the flaking plaster. She crouched to peer at the base where damp had crept along the floor. She moved to the window, noting where the frame had warped.
Rowan watched her, heat and unease coiled together.
“What will you do about this?” she asked at last, straightening.
“I have a mason scheduled for next month,” Rowan said. “He will repair the wall and chimney. The roof will be re-thatched in summer, when it can be done properly.”
“And until then?” Her gaze flicked to the patched cloth over the bed.
“Until then,” he said quietly, “I have arranged for the Dobbins to stay with his brother’s family in the village if the weather turns worse.”
Mrs. Dobbins snorted. “Tommy won’t go. Says he won’t leave his pigs. Thinks someone’ll steal ‘em.”
Livia looked between them. “In other words,” she said, “you have done what you can without entirely overruling a man who refuses to be sensible.”
“Something like that,” Rowan admitted.
“Men like that,” Harcourt growled, “need their ears boxed.”
“Would you like me to have him flogged for you, Mrs. Dobbins?” Livia asked, deadpan.
The woman started, then laughed, surprised. “Lord, miss, you sound like my mother.”
“She must be a formidable woman,” Livia said.
“She were,” Mrs. Dobbins said, eyes softening. “God rest ‘er. You a Londoner, then?”
“Of a sort,” Livia said. “But I deal with men like your husband every day. They sit in offices instead of cottages, but they sulk the same when told they must be sensible.”
Mrs. Dobbins’ grin widened. “I *like* you, miss. You rake him over the coals if he don’t fix this roof.”
“I intend to,” Livia murmured.
When they left the cottage, Harcourt exhaled hard. “That,” he said, nodding back over his shoulder, “is what you’re asking her to help you fix, boy. Not just roofs. People.”
“I know,” Rowan said.
“It’s not a quick job,” Harcourt went on. “Not like paying off a debt and being done with it. These folk—” He jerked his chin toward the cottages. “They’ll need watching. Year in, year out. Aye?”
“I am aware,” Rowan said, quieter now. “I have been here more in the last six months than in the previous six years.”
“And before that?” Harcourt pressed.
“Before that, I was an idiot in London,” Rowan said flatly.
Livia glanced at him. His jaw was rigid; his shoulders held an extra line of tension.
“You were not given much encouragement to be otherwise,” she said.
“No,” he said. “But I might have chosen differently all the same. I did not.”
He looked out over the fields, the bare shapes of winter promising spring. “I will not pretend to you that I am… reformed. That I am suddenly a paragon of duty. I am learning, still. Clumsily. I will make mistakes. Many of them.”
“You already have,” Lady Agnes put in. “Enough for any two men. But you’re not the worst of the batch.”
“Thank you, Aunt,” Rowan muttered.
“My point,” Agnes said to Harcourt and Livia, “is that if you come into this—and I’m not saying you should, mind—do not expect him to be some saintly rural patriarch. He’s a man. A stubborn, prideful, occasionally foolish man. You’d be taking him on along with the thatch.”
“I would not have it otherwise,” Livia said before she could stop herself.
They all looked at her.
She flushed, but did not retract it. “I have no desire to marry a saint,” she said crisply. “Saints are terrible at compromise.”
Rowan’s gaze caught hers, something raw and grateful in it.
“The question,” she went on, “is not whether he will err, but whether he will listen when told he has done so.”
He held her gaze. “I will.”
Silence pressed for a moment, heavy with what lay between the words.
Then Harcourt snorted. “Well, you bloody well better. Because if you don’t listen to her, you’ll listen to me, and I shout louder.”
“On that, at least,” Rowan said gravely, “I have no doubt.”
***
They returned to the house as dusk began to deepen, boots muddy, cheeks flushed from the cold. Dinner was simple but well executed: roasted chicken, potatoes, winter greens. The candles on the table shone in polished but slightly mismatched holders.
It was not opulence.
It was… honest.
Afterward, Lady Agnes claimed Harcourt for a hand of piquet in the smaller sitting room, their bickering already rising. Rowan led Livia to the library.
“I thought,” he said as he opened the door, “that you might appreciate this.”
Livia stepped inside and forgot, for a moment, how to breathe.
The library ran the length of one wing, tall windows overlooking the gardens and the darking fields beyond. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, crammed with volumes. Some were leather-bound and dignified; others bore the worn, faded cloth of multiple readings. Ladders on brass rails waited at intervals.
A large table stood in the center, papers neatly stacked at one end, a globe at the other.
“This,” she said softly, “is a serious inducement.”
He laughed, relieved. “If all else fails, I shall offer you the keys to it in lieu of jewels.”
“Jewelers cannot provide this many arguments,” she murmured, drifting toward the nearest shelf.
“Arguments?”
“Books argue,” she said. “With each other. With their authors. With the reader.”
“You actually *read* them, then?” he asked. “Not just look at their bindings?”
She turned her head slowly and gave him exactly the sort of look she reserved for men who asked whether she truly understood what ‘compound interest’ meant.
“Well,” he said hastily, “that is an improvement on their usual treatment in this house.”
“You do not read?” she asked, brows drawing together.
“I do.” He joined her at the shelf, running a finger along the spines. “Just… not as much as I should have. Not what I should have. Too many novels, not enough treatises. Too many essays on fashion, not enough on… the Corn Laws.”
“They are very dull,” she conceded. “Even I avoid them when possible.”
“You?” he feigned shock. “Avoid reading?”
“I did not say *all* reading.” She drew out a volume at random. It was a slim collection of essays on trade between England and the Continent. She flipped it open, smiling faintly. “Your grandfather had good taste.”
“Did he?” Rowan leaned against the shelf, watching her. “I’m glad someone did.”
She looked up at him. The candlelight caught the line of his cheekbone, the curve of his mouth. The library felt suddenly… smaller.
“You wished to show me something,” she said, closing the book with care.
“Yes.” He pushed away from the shelf and went to the table, picking up a sheaf of papers. He handed them to her.
“What is this?” she asked, scanning the top page.
“A proposal,” he said. “Of sorts.”
Her heart perked. “You wrote this?”
“With Whitlow’s help,” he said. “It is… a rough outline of what I imagine the next ten years might look like. If we—” His gaze held hers. “If you and I were to join our fortunes.”
She looked down, her throat tightening.
The first page laid out, in neat, unembellished lines, projected income and expenditure for Merrow Park, London, and the remaining investments, assuming an injection of capital at varying levels. The scenarios ranged from “Conservative” to “Optimistic” to “Aggressive.”
“You have done this much already?” she asked, impressed despite herself.
“Numbers soothe me,” he said with a crooked smile. “When everything else is chaos, they give… boundaries.”
She read, lips moving faintly as she followed the columns. “You intend to sell the remaining London warehouse shares.”
“Yes. Mr. Harcourt has agreed to take them at a fair price if we proceed. That capital would clear the most onerous of the loans. Your dowry, if you were willing to risk attaching it to this… mud pie, would then be directed almost entirely to long-term improvements.”
He pointed. “Drainage in the low fields. New ploughs. Repairs to cottages. And some investment in the manufactory near Derby—they produce a good cloth but are strangled by lack of machines.”
“You would risk capital in industry,” she murmured, intrigued. “Not just land.”
He smiled faintly. “I have been told lately that land can no longer stand alone. That the future belongs to men who understand *both.*”
“Who told you that?” she asked, though she suspected.
He met her gaze levelly. “You did. When you spoke of the interdependence of docks and warehouses and looms.”
Heat curled low in her. She forced herself back to the paper.
Beyond the numbers, he had written in a different hand—less formal, more hesitant.
*Year 1–2: London presence reduced. Merrow Park primary residence. Focus on repairs, re-establishing trust with tenants.*
*Year 3–5: Increase yields, begin rebuilding reserves. Fewer journeys to Town; attend Season only as necessary. Encourage discreet but genuine social ties for Miss/Mrs. Harcourt among those willing to accept her competence.*
She swallowed. “You intend to… limit your time in London.”
“Yes.” His voice was quiet. “Not to avoid my creditors—they will be dealt with—but to avoid falling back into habits formed under my father’s eye. I breathe easier here.”
“And I,” she said, even more softly, “breathe easier in London.”
His jaw flexed. “I know. That is… part of the compromise, if we proceed. I will not drag you away from the City entirely. We could keep the London house, in reduced fashion, or purchase a smaller place nearer your… work.”
“You would permit me to continue…?”
“I would expect you,” he interrupted gently, “to keep some connection to your trade. We would need your eye, your counsel. And I—” He hesitated. “I do not have the right to ask you to give up the thing that gives your days shape and meaning.”
She looked at him, startled. Men had asked her for many things: her money, her patience, her silence. None had ever acknowledged that her life already had purpose.
“And you?” she said. “What gives your days shape, if not this?” She tapped the pages.
“Once,” he said, a shadow of rueful humor in his eyes, “it was cards and horses and flirtations.”
“And now?”
“Now…” He looked away, toward the dark window. In the reflection, his profile was etched in candlelight, the planes of his face caught between boy and man. “Now, I am… building something. Slowly. Clumsily. I measure the day in roofs repaired and fields inspected and conversations in which I do not disgrace my mother’s memory.”
He looked back. “I cannot yet say that it… fills me. But it… *occupies* me. And gives me fewer nights staring at the ceiling in a drunken haze.”
Her chest ached unexpectedly. “How long since—”
“Since I drank to relieve rather than to accompany?” he finished, blunt. “Months. Not as long as it should be. But long enough to know I prefer waking with a clear head.”
“And you intend to continue this… preference,” she said.
“Yes.” His eyes held hers. “I do not promise I will never drink again. That would be a lie. But I promise I will not drown myself in it, and that if you see me beginning to, you may—must—drag me out, by whatever means you see fit.”
Her mouth quirked. “Whatever means?”
“Within the bounds of the law,” he amended. “And some decency.”
“Some,” she echoed, lips curving more. “Not all?”
“Decency has been overrated in my experience,” he said. “Honesty is of more use.”
Tension thickened between them, threaded with something that had nothing to do with ledgers.
“You speak,” she said at last, “as if you intend to make me your… keeper.”
“I intend,” he said slowly, “to make you my partner. In this.” He tapped the papers. “In the house, in the estate, in… everything. That includes my weaknesses. I would rather you see them now than discover them when it is too late to run.”
“I do not run easily,” she said.
“I had begun to suspect that,” he murmured.
They stood very close now, the table between them a narrow barrier. She could see the faint gold in his eyes where the candlelight caught. His hand, resting on the paper, was large, the knuckles scarred faintly from some long-ago fight.
“Miss Harcourt,” he said quietly. “Livia.”
Her name in his mouth did strange things to her spine.
“Yes,” she managed.
“I know you have not decided. I would not press you to. But I… need you to know…” He drew a breath. “This is not… only… about money for me any longer.”
Her heart thudded. “No?”
“No.” He held her gaze, something fierce and vulnerable in the line of his mouth. “You intrigue me. You infuriate me. You make me feel like I am… more. More than I have been. When I speak with you, when you look at me as if you truly *see* me, I—”
His hand flexed on the table. “I do not want to lose that.”
Her throat constricted. “You speak,” she said faintly, “very nearly like a man in love.”
He gave a rough sound that might have been a laugh. “Do I? I do not know. I have said those words before, to other women, and meant… almost nothing. It seems obscene to apply them here, so quickly, when what I feel is… not pretty. It is sharp. Uncomfortable.”
“My father says love is usually uncomfortable,” she said, before she could weigh the prudence of equal frankness.
“He may be right,” Rowan said. “But I do not ask you to love me. Not now. Perhaps not ever, if you cannot. I ask—” He swallowed. “I ask whether you could… want… me. Not only as a financial proposition.”
Heat flushed her skin. “You are… not an unappealing prospect, Your Grace.”
His eyes darkened. “That is the most cautious compliment I have ever received.”
“I am a cautious woman,” she said, breathless.
“I am very grateful for that,” he murmured.
They were inches apart now. The space between them hummed, charged.
Livia had never stood so close to a man not related to her in her life. Her body was suddenly, acutely aware of itself: the weight of her breasts under her gown, the flutter low in her belly, the way her pulse throbbed at the base of her throat.
She saw his gaze drop for one treacherous instant to the line where her bodice met her skin. He inhaled, sharply, then dragged his eyes back up as if it cost him.
“If I were… any other man,” he said hoarsely, “this is the moment I would kiss you without asking. And later, claim that the mood compelled me.”
Her heart skittered. “And because you are… not any other man?”
“Because I cannot afford,” he said, “to make you feel cornered. I will not steal something from you when I am still asking you to give so much.”
Her fingers trembled on the edge of the paper. “You are assuming I would feel… stolen from.”
He went very still.
“Would you not?” he asked, voice almost a whisper.
She did not answer at once. She let herself *feel* the question.
Did she wish to be kissed by him?
The answer slammed into her with humiliating clarity.
“Yes,” she heard herself say, barely audible. “I would.”
His hand clenched into a fist.
“But,” she added quickly, before impulse could outrun sense, “I… also know myself. If we—” She wet her lips. His eyes followed the movement with aching hunger. “If we begin with… that… I will be tempted to weigh my decision by the heat of it. Not by—”
“Not by ledgers,” he finished, a strained smile tugging at his mouth.
“Yes.” Her own lips curved, shaky. “And that would be… irresponsible.”
“You are determined,” he said, voice a low thread, “to make this as difficult as possible.”
“For which of us?” she whispered.
“For both.” His gaze devoured her. “If I do not kiss you now, it may haunt me.”
“If you do,” she said, “it will haunt me.”
Their breathing, for a few charged heartbeats, seemed the only sound in the room.
Finally, he stepped back, as if tearing himself away physically hurt.
“Then we had better both acquire stronger nerves,” he said, his tone rough.
She exhaled, feeling hollowed and somehow fuller all at once.
“I did not think,” she managed, “that I would find… temptation… in a library.”
“I did,” he said weakly. “Books hide many sins.”
She laughed then, the sound shaky but real. The tension broke, just enough for her to breathe.
“I will read this,” she said, lifting the sheaf. “All of it. Carefully. And I will speak with my father. And then”—her gaze met his again, steady this time—“I will answer you.”
He swallowed. “Fairly?”
“As fairly,” she said quietly, “as you have dealt with me.”
He inclined his head. “That is all I can ask.”
Outside, beyond the tall windows, the night pressed against the glass.
Inside, in the circle of candlelight, Livia dropped her gaze to the pages in her hands.
It was not a proposal of marriage.
Not yet.
It was… the blueprint of a life.
She did not know yet whether she would sign her name to it. But for the first time, she wanted to pick up a pen.
***