The carriage rocked gently as it rumbled back toward London, but Livia’s thoughts jolted from point to point with none of the vehicle’s steady rhythm.
Her father, lulled by the motion and a generous helping of Lady Agnes’s brandy the previous night, slept with his mouth slightly open, his head tipped back against the squabs. Alice dozed on the opposite seat, bonnet askew, hands folded over her reticule as if guarding their meager treasures in her dreams.
Livia held her own reticule in her lap, fingers curled not around coins or lace, but around folded paper.
Rowan’s proposal.
Not the marriage offer—no, that had been spoken without banns or witnesses in the misted woods.
This was the other: the written outline of what life with him might be. The ledger of their future, if she chose to sign.
She had slipped the sheaf into her bag with more care than she bestowed on bonds worth thousands. Several pages already bore her cramped notes, question marks, tiny arrows. As the carriage swayed, she pulled it out again.
Numbers soothed her. They always had.
They did not soothe her now.
She read the line *We will stand together when they sneer* for the twentieth time and had to look away, out the window where the winter countryside slid past in blurred browns and grays.
You are being fanciful, she told herself sharply. It is ink. Letters on a page.
But she could hear his voice behind the words, feel the weight of his hand at her waist, the taste of mist and brandy when he had kissed her.
Heat shot through her, entirely out of proportion to the memory.
Stop it.
She forced her attention back to the columns—projected yields, potential investment in Derbyshire machinery, modest entertainments budgeted with a care that would have made half the *ton* faint.
He was serious.
He was not playing at ruin or redemption. He was… staking himself. On her.
Her stomach fluttered in an unnerving mixture of power and fear.
The carriage hit a rut; her father snorted awake.
“Where are we?” he muttered, blinking.
“Two hours from London,” Livia said. “If the roads hold.”
“Hmph.” He rubbed his face. “I dreamt Lady Agnes was chasing me with a quill and a prayer book.”
“That is not far from reality,” Livia said dryly.
He barked a laugh, then caught sight of the papers in her hand and sobered.
“Still at it, girl?”
“Yes.”
He hesitated. “And?”
“And,” she said carefully, “his figures are sound. More conservative than I’d expected, in some areas. Whitlow has a good head.”
“That for Whitlow,” Harcourt said impatiently. “What about the boy?”
Her heart thudded. “He is not a boy.”
“Hm. No.” A corner of her father’s mouth tugged. “Not anymore.”
He shifted, grimacing as his joints clicked. “Well, Livia? Does he pass muster? Not just his acres. *Him.*”
She looked back down at the paper, though the words blurred.
“He has… changed,” she said at last. “Or begun to.”
“Folk can pretend mightily for three days,” Harcourt grunted. “You think it’s more than that?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “He knows what he has been. He is not proud of it. He is not making excuses.”
Her father’s shrewd eyes narrowed. “And you?”
“What about me?”
“You’re not going starry-eyed over a title, are you?” he asked roughly. “Because if you are, I’ll turn this carriage around myself and set fire to that blasted house.”
She almost laughed. It came out strained.
“I assure you,” she said, “if I go starry-eyed over anything, it will not be his *title.*”
He grunted. “No, you’re not that sort.”
Silence fell again, broken only by the rattle of wheels and Alice’s soft snores.
“Do you like him?” Harcourt asked abruptly.
She stared at Rowan’s neat handwriting.
“Yes,” she said, the word small but solid.
Her father’s jaw flexed. “More than you liked that banker’s son last year?”
She fought a smile. “Considerably.”
“More than that naval captain what kept lookin’ at you like you was a new ship to put to sea?”
“Father,” she groaned.
“Well?”
She closed her eyes for a moment, seeing not fields and books but mist and trees and Rowan’s face when she had said she was inclined toward yes.
“More,” she admitted.
Harcurt let out a long breath.
“Then we’re truly in the soup,” he said. “Because I like him, too.”
She looked up, startled.
Her father’s gaze was on the window, his expression somewhere between disgruntled and resigned.
“He’s a damned fool sometimes,” Harcourt went on. “And he’s got habits that want watching. But he stood in that field and took every word I threw at him. Didn’t puff up. Didn’t simper. Didn’t sulk. Just listened. And gave as good as he got when it mattered.”
He scratched his chin. “Reminds me of me at his age. Only prettier. Damn him.”
A reluctant laugh escaped her.
“And more than that,” Harcourt said more quietly, eyes flicking to her. “He *sees* you. Not just your purse. Not just your blasted cleverness. *You.*”
Her throat tightened.
“You are certain?” she said. “You are not… imagining it because you want to be rid of me and my ledgers?”
He snorted. “As if I’d ever be rid of you. Who’d keep me from buying up every fool factory from here to York?”
His weathered face softened.
“I’m not in a hurry to lose you, girl,” he said gruffly. “But I’m not about to keep you from a chance at something... more. You’ve been standing on your own feet so long you’ve forgot what it’s like to lean.”
“I am not in the habit of leaning,” she said.
“Maybe you ought to be,” he muttered. “On the right man.”
“And if he ceases to be ‘right’?” she challenged. “If he falls? If he disappoints?”
“Then you leave,” Harcourt said flatly. “With your head up and your purse in hand, if I’ve anything to do with the settlements. I’d *prefer* that don’t happen, mind—divorce is messy business—but I won’t see you chained to a wastrel because he’s got a coronet on his carriage.”
Relief and fear twisted together in her chest.
“Father,” she whispered, “you know what they would say. About a duchess walking away.”
“Let ‘em,” Harcourt said. “They talk now, don’t they? ‘There goes Harcourt’s girl, thinks she’s a man, pokes her nose in things what don’t concern her.’”
She flinched. He saw it.
“I hear ‘em, Livia,” he said more gently. “I ain’t deaf. But they’ve never stopped you. Don’t let a title make you more timid than you’ve ever been.”
Her eyes stung suddenly. She blinked hard.
“You… would let me go,” she said, half in wonder. “If I needed.”
“I’d drive the carriage myself,” he said. “And if he gave you trouble, I’d beat him bloody in his own damned drawing room.”
She laughed, the sound wet.
He reached across and patted her knee, awkward as ever with comfort.
“Now,” he said roughly, “I’ll talk to Channing. We’ll see what we can set down in ink to protect you both. You—you talk to yourself. Figure if you can stand the thought of sharing a roof and a bed with that boy.”
Heat rushed to her face. “Father.”
“What? It’s a consideration,” he said, entirely unembarrassed. “There’s money, there’s land, and there’s waking up to the same blasted face every morning. You don’t want to be startled by it.”
She muttered something unladylike and looked back at the paper.
*I will stand beside you.*
“Yes,” she said very quietly, too low for him to hear. “It seems I can.”
***
Rowan’s letter arrived three days after their return to London.
It came with the morning’s post, nestled between a sober packet from Mr. Channing and a floridly perfumed envelope addressed to “Miss L. Harcourt” in a hand she recognized with faint irritation as belonging to Miss Amelia Fortescue, a distant acquaintance whose idea of entertainment was passing on the latest scandal with gasping delight.
She flicked the Fortescue letter aside for later disposal and opened Channing’s first.
Settlements. Drafts. Neat, constraining lines.
Channing’s covering note was brisk: *I await Mr. Harcourt’s convenience for a meeting. His Grace of Merrow has shown admirable candor. There is room here for a very strong agreement, if both parties are of a mind.*
If.
Livia folded it and set it down.
Only then did she pick up Rowan’s envelope.
Her name was written in a hand she knew now—long, clean strokes, slightly heavier at the ends, as if he pressed a fraction too hard when finishing a thought.
She hesitated, pulse picking up, then slid a finger under the seal.
*Miss Harcourt—*
The opening was formal. The rest was not.
*I hope your journey was not too unpleasant and that Mr. Harcourt has forgiven me for subjecting him to my tenants.*
*I find myself at a loss for how to write this without sounding either too sober or too foolish. The sober part you have already seen in ledgers and outlines. This, then, must be the foolish.*
Her lips curved, tension easing.
*I miss you.*
The simple sentence knocked the breath out of her.
*It has been three days. In that time I have inspected a fence, spoken with Whitlow about Pike’s seeds, read two newspapers, and attempted to converse with my aunt on the subject of charitable works. None of these things were improved by your absence. I find myself turning to make some remark and discovering that the one person I most wish to hear it is two counties away.*
*This is tiresome of me. I do not wish to become one of those men who sigh at windows and neglect their duties because a woman is not in the room. You would contemptuously correct such a man—and rightly. But I thought you ought to know that your presence has become, very quickly, a… habit. One I am reluctant to break.*
Heat bloomed in her chest, spreading outward.
*I will not ask you again in this letter what you have already agreed to consider. I will only say that whatever your decision, you have already altered the course of my life. I cannot undo the way you have forced me to look at my own actions, my own estate, my own… desires. If you say no, I will not slink gratefully back into dissipation. The mud pies will remain mud pies, but I will no longer be able to pretend they are plum cake.*
She laughed helplessly at that.
*If you say yes…*
Here the ink had blotted slightly, as if he had paused too long.
*If you say yes, I promise you three things, absurd as it may be to put them in a letter before any clergyman has mumbled over us.*
*First: I will never ask you to pretend stupidity for another person’s comfort. Not mine, not anyone’s. If you ever hear those words come from my mouth, I give you leave to demand my head.*
*Second: I will listen when you are angry. Even when you are angry with me. Especially then.*
*Third: I will kiss you again. Often. In more places than the woods. I do not pretend this last is noble, but it is, I hope, honest.*
She went very still.
*I remain, inconveniently and increasingly,*
*Yours,*
*Merrow*
Her hands shook a little as she folded the letter.
He missed her.
He was thinking of her not as a convenient solution but as a… absence. An ache.
And he had not tried to dress it up in overblown phrases. There had been no declarations of eternal passion, no odes to her hair or eyes. Just an admission of lack, of desire, and a wry awareness of his own susceptibility.
It was, she realized, exactly the kind of letter she might have written in his place.
“Bad news?” her father’s voice came from the doorway.
She started, hastily slipping the letter back into its envelope.
“Eavesdropping, Father?” she said, aiming for arch and missing by a fraction.
“Door was open.” He shuffled in, coffee cup in hand. “Channing’s been. Left this.” He waved a packet of his own. “Figures as long as my arm. You want to look.”
“Yes,” she said immediately.
“Thought so.” He squinted at her. “You’re pink.”
“It is cold,” she lied.
“In the middle of the morning room? With the fire going?” He snorted. “If you’re going to fib, girl, at least make it believable.”
She rolled her eyes.
His gaze dropped to the envelope in her hand.
“From him?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He studied her face for a long moment, then nodded once.
“All right, then,” he said gruffly. “We’ll see what we can make of this mess.”
***
Mr. Channing arrived that afternoon, brisk and neat as ever, his ink-stained fingers belying the impeccable cut of his coat.
He and Harcourt retired to the study with armfuls of papers; Livia, after pacing the hall like a caged animal for ten minutes, followed.
“This concerns me as well,” she said when her father opened his mouth to object. “You will not sign my future without me in the room.”
Channing’s eyes crinkled. “I should not care to explain to Miss Harcourt, ten years hence, why I excluded her from negotiations. Do let her stay, Mr. Harcourt.”
Her father grunted and waved her in.
They spent the next two hours in the dense, airless world of legal phrases and contingencies.
Channing outlined Rowan’s proposal: a jointure for Livia that would be hers regardless of issue; a separate allowance she might dispose of at her discretion; explicit language granting her oversight of certain funds directed to estate improvements; her right to retain personal control of substantial investments in Harcourt Trading.
“The duke has been… unusually open to such provisions,” Channing said, hands steepled. “He insists, in fact, that his future duchess have access to the accounts and a voice in decisions relating to land and investments.”
Harcourt grunted. “Good. Saves me the trouble of shouting at him later.”
“There are, of course, considerations,” Channing went on. “Titles are curious beasts. Certain properties must be entailed. Certain funds cannot be separated from the dukedom.”
“We are not trying to dismantle the peerage, Mr. Channing,” Livia said dryly. “Only to make it less likely to devour me.”
“I applaud your moderation, Miss Harcourt,” Channing said, amused. “Few ladies show such restraint.”
He walked them through clause after clause, his precise voice smoothing the barbs of the legal language.
“If the marriage should be… dissolved,” he said at one point delicately, “there would be difficulties. Parliament, public scrutiny, all that nuisance. But as your father has insisted, my lady, you would not be left without means. The duke has agreed to settle on you—”
Livia held up a hand. “Stop.”
Channing blinked. “Miss Harcourt?”
“I…” She swallowed. “I do not wish to speak of divorce before I am even engaged.”
“Very sensible,” Harcourt muttered. “Superstition’s not all bad.”
“It is not superstition,” she said sharply. “It is… distaste. If I… make this choice, I will not do so with one eye on the exit. That way lies… ruin.”
Harcourt and Channing exchanged a glance.
“Lass,” her father said gently, “you asked me, in that carriage, what I’d do if you needed out. I answered. But you’re not required to plan for disaster yourself. Let me and this ink-slinger do that. You—” He gestured awkwardly. “You can… hope.”
Her throat tightened. “Hope,” she said, “is dangerous.”
“That’s the second time you’ve said that this week,” Harcourt grunted. “Maybe it is. But so’s crossing a street. You still do it when there’s something worth reaching on t’other side.”
She looked down at the papers.
They were… solid. Thoughtful. Protective without being suffocating.
Rowan had not tried to keep her fortune in a net only he could untie.
He had left doors open.
She thought of his letter. *I will listen when you are angry.*
“Proceed,” she said quietly to Channing. “Draw it up as you think best. My father will review it. I… will read it as well. And then—”
“And then,” Harcourt cut in, “the boy can come up to town and ask you proper. In front of me. None of this woods nonsense.”
Livia flushed scarlet. “Father.”
Channing’s brows went up. A corner of his mouth twitched.
“Woods, Miss Harcourt?” he inquired mildly.
“Do not make me change solicitors, Mr. Channing,” she said, too quickly.
He chuckled and inclined his head. “As you wish.”
***
Society became aware, within a week, that something was afoot.
Livia might have liked to pretend that her life could proceed as usual while settlements were discussed and letters exchanged.
London did not intend to permit that.
“You’ve heard?” Miss Amelia Fortescue breathed, catching Livia’s arm as they crossed the overheated tearoom at Gunter’s one afternoon.
“I hear many things, Miss Fortescue,” Livia said, extricating her sleeve with care. “You will have to be more specific.”
“The Duke of Merrow,” Amelia hissed, eyes shining. “They say he’s ruined. Well, nearly. His father, you know, awful gambler. Cards, horses, everything. But now—”
“Now,” Livia said coolly, “he is attempting to repair the damage. A commendable enterprise.”
“Oh, you’re so odd,” Amelia said, half admiring, half perplexed. “That is not the interesting part. The interesting part is that he is apparently very much in the market for a wife. And we have all been wondering whom he will choose. Lady Honoria, perhaps, or that silly Miss Bellamy with the hair. But now—” She leaned closer. “Now there are whispers that he’s been *seen* at a merchant’s house.”
“Merchants do occasionally have chairs,” Livia said. “Even tables. A duke might sit at one without crumbling to dust.”
Amelia giggled. “You are *wicked.* But really, Livia, you must be careful. Men like that—proud men—their attentions are never… simple.”
Livia wondered what Amelia would say if she knew that a proud man had kissed her in a misty wood and offered to let her explore her own desire without demanding her answer in exchange.
Probably faint.
“I am aware,” Livia said. “And I am not in the habit of receiving attentions unexamined.”
Amelia sighed. “You are in the habit of examining *everything.* It’s exhausting. You should let yourself be carried away, just once. Imagine—the Duke of Merrow, on his knees, begging for your hand.”
Livia’s imagination did nothing of the sort.
It supplied, instead, the image of Rowan in the library at Merrow Park, not on his knees but braced over the table, eyes dark, voice rough as he had promised to kiss her again.
Her cheeks heated.
“Oh,” Amelia trilled, fanning herself. “You’re blushing! How delicious. Who is he?”
“No one,” Livia said too quickly.
“Liar,” Amelia sang. “Tell me! Is it that dull viscount with the whiskers? The one who talks of drainage? You always look as if you’re doing sums in your head when he addresses you.”
“I am,” Livia muttered. “To stay awake.”
“You’re impossible,” Amelia said, but her tone was fond.
As Livia escaped to a table in the corner, she realized with a faint jolt that Amelia—the fluttering gossip—had, in her way, been kinder than many.
Be careful, she had said. Men like that are not simple.
True enough.
***
Rowan arrived in town a fortnight after Livia’s return.
He wrote to inform Harcourt of his intention. The letter was brief, almost brusque: *I am coming to London to finalize matters with Channing. With your permission, sir, I would also speak with your daughter in your presence, to make my position clear. I will attend on you at your convenience.*
Harcourt read it, grunted, and slid it across the table to Livia.
“He’s coming,” he said unnecessarily.
Her fingers tightened on the letter. “So he is.”
“You going to make him sweat?” Harcourt asked.
“Yes,” she said.
He smiled, slow and vicious. “That’s my girl.”
***