Rowan had faced battle before.
Not on a field, with cannon and drums; his war had been fought in gaming hells and drawing rooms, the weapons cards and charm, the wounds hidden beneath laughter.
This felt different.
He stood once again in Harcourt House’s blue parlor, the same place he had first laid out his financial shame before Livia and her father. The same pale walls. The same worn armchairs. The same unflattering light.
Only now, there was a tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with debt and everything to do with the woman sitting on the sofa by the hearth.
Livia wore a gown of deep green that made her eyes seem almost black. Her hair was coiled with less severity than usual, a curl escaping by her ear. She held no ledger in her hands today, only a cup of tea.
Harcourt occupied his armchair like a wary bear in a too-small cave.
“Your Grace,” he said, nodding. “Sit down before you fall down. You look like you’re going to the gallows.”
“Very nearly,” Rowan said, attempting a smile.
He took the offered chair facing them, his heart pounding.
There was a tray on the low table between them: teapot, cups, a plate of unassuming biscuits. The domesticity of it made his skin prickle.
He had imagined this moment a hundred ways in the past week. In none of them had his mouth been quite so dry.
“Mr. Harcourt,” he began, then stopped, cleared his throat. “Mr. Harcourt. Miss Harcourt. Thank you for receiving me.”
“Don’t thank us yet,” Harcourt said. “You don’t know what we’re going to say.”
Rowan glanced at Livia.
She met his gaze, her expression composed but not cold. A small pulse beat rapidly at the base of her throat.
He drew breath.
“I have… studied the drafts Channing sent,” he said, speaking first to Harcourt. “They are… thorough.”
“That’s one word for it,” Harcourt grunted.
“If you agree to the settlements as proposed,” Rowan went on steadily, “you will be giving me more than I deserve. More trust than my past might warrant. I do not… take that lightly.”
He shifted his gaze to Livia. “Nor will I take her lightly. Ever.”
Harcourt snorted. “Spare us the pretty speeches, boy. We know your situation. You know ours. You said your piece in the country. What I want today is plain words. No flourishes.”
Rowan nodded once. “Very well.”
He turned fully to Livia.
She set her cup down with a small, decisive click.
“Livia,” he said, and her name steadied him. “I am here to ask you, formally and in front of your father, to be my wife. To join your life to mine, your fortune to mine, your sharp, stubborn mind to my own in this… absurd endeavor.”
One corner of her mouth twitched. Harcourt’s brows climbed.
“I will not say I offer you comfort,” Rowan continued, voice low but clear. “Not at first. There will be work. There will be long days and longer nights. There will be whispers and glances and women who think a duke’s wife should not know the difference between profit and loss.”
He leaned forward slightly, hands braced on his knees. “I *will* say that I offer you partnership. I offer you a house where your intelligence will not be treated as a parlor trick, but as a foundation. I offer you my name, my lands, my tenants, my cursed ledgers, my aunt, my flaws, my temper, my…” His throat closed briefly. “Myself. Such as I am, and such as I am trying to be.”
He held her gaze. “Will you have me?”
Silence fell, thick enough to choke on.
Livia’s gaze did not waver.
“Father?” she said, without looking away from Rowan. “Before I answer, do you have anything more to say?”
Harcourt snorted. “I’ve said plenty. I’ll say this once more. You step into this with your eyes open, girl. No whining later that you didn’t know he snored or sulked or scattered his stockings. You’ve seen his worst. I reckon you’ve seen some of his best.” He shifted, joints creaking. “I like him more than I expected. I trust him more than most men I’ve done business with. That’s worth something. Maybe not enough for some folk. Maybe more than enough for us.”
He glanced at Rowan. “You hurt her, boy, I’ll gut you.”
Rowan inclined his head. “Understood.”
“Good. Then I’m done.” Harcourt tipped his head back and closed his eyes. “You two carry on. Wake me when you’re done ruin’ your lives.”
Livia’s lips quirked despite the tension.
She folded her hands in her lap.
“Rowan,” she said.
The sound of his name in her mouth did something dangerous to his insides.
“You have been… very honest,” she said. “Painfully so. You have given me more information than any sensible woman could wish for when choosing a husband.”
He gave a choked laugh. “That does sound like us.”
“You have also,” she went on, “kissed me in the woods, written me letters that made me swear in the street, and tempted me to make decisions with my body rather than my mind.”
“Livia,” he muttered, heat slamming through him. Harcourt’s eyelids twitched.
“I told you once,” she said, eyes unwavering, “that I feared losing myself. Becoming… less. Sanded down. You have, in the few weeks I have known you, done the opposite. You have sharpened me.”
Her voice softened. “You have made me angrier. More hopeful. More… alive.”
He could not breathe.
“I do not love you,” she said, and the words hit him like a slap, even as he’d expected them. “Not yet. I do not know you well enough to say such a thing and mean it.”
He sat very still.
“But I like you,” she continued. “Deeply. Irritatingly. I respect you. I want you. And I believe, with a stubbornness that will probably be my ruin, that we could—if we both work, if we do not lie, if we remember who we were before this—come to love each other. In time.”
Her hands tightened on each other. “I am willing to take that risk.”
His heart slammed against his ribs.
“Yes,” she said clearly. “I will marry you.”
For a second, the room tilted.
Rowan exhaled a breath he had not realized he’d been holding.
“Thank God,” Harcourt muttered, eyes still closed. “I can’t stand suspense.”
Rowan wanted, absurdly, to weep.
He did the next best thing.
He slid off his chair and went down on one knee on Harcourt’s worn carpet.
Livia’s eyes widened.
“Rowan,” she hissed. “Get up. You’ll ruin your breeches.”
“Let him,” Harcourt said without opening his eyes. “I paid enough for ‘em at your damned tailor.”
Rowan took Livia’s hand in both of his.
“Miss Harcourt—Livia,” he said, his voice rough. “You have just done me the greatest honor of my life. I intend—”
“To deserve it?” she supplied, faintly mocking, fiercely bright.
“Yes,” he said simply. “To deserve it. Daily.”
Her throat moved.
He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.
Her fingers trembled.
“Get up, boy,” Harcourt said more gently than Rowan had ever heard him. “Before you start praying to her like a saint.”
Rowan rose, reluctantly letting her hand go.
Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes shone. She looked… like a woman on the edge of a cliff, exhilarated and terrified.
Probably much like he did.
“We will have to tell my aunt,” he said inanely.
Livia laughed on a breath that sounded half hysterical. “We will have to tell all of London.”
“Oh, London already knows something’s afoot,” Harcourt said dryly. “This’ll just give ‘em better stories.”
Channing was sent for. There were witnesses to summon, papers to sign, announcements to compose.
But for a moment, the three of them sat in the blue parlor, the air buzzing with ink and promise.
“Congratulations,” Harcourt said at last, lifting his cup in a mock-toast. “You’ve both just made the worst and the best decision of your lives.”
Livia and Rowan exchanged a look over the rim of their teacups.
He grinned.
She smiled back, slow and fierce.
“Good,” she said. “I would hate for it to be dull.”
***
The engagement was announced in the *Morning Post* two days later.
*We are requested to state that a marriage has been arranged, and will shortly take place, between His Grace Rowan Everly, Duke of Merrow, and Miss Livia Harcourt, only daughter and heiress of Mr. Silas Harcourt of Harcourt Trading.*
London erupted.
“Miss Harcourt!” Mrs. Barstow shrieked when Livia stepped into the modiste’s shop that afternoon. “You wicked girl. Why did you not *tell* me?”
“I am fairly certain the entire city knows,” Livia said, bemused. “I thought you might have guessed.”
“Guessed?” Mrs. Barstow fluttered. “We *hoped.* But one never knows with dukes. They’re like cats. Fickle. You must have snaffled him with your,” she lowered her voice dramatically, “*brains.*”
Livia snorted. “Yes, that was his chief criterion.”
Behind her, Amelia Fortescue materialized like a gossip-scenting wraith.
“Livia!” she cried. “It’s *true!*”
Livia braced.
“You’re to be a duchess. A *duchess.* Oh, *do* you realize what this means?”
“That I shall have to be fitted for more gowns?” Livia asked.
Amelia stared at her as if she were mad.
“It means,” Amelia said, clutching her hands, “that every man who ever snubbed you is now gnashing his teeth. That Lady Tansley’s daughter will never forgive you. That Mrs. Dovecote will have to invite a *merchant’s daughter* to her ball or lose her place in the pecking order. It is *glorious.*”
Livia blinked.
“I had not… considered it in quite those terms,” she admitted.
“Well, I have,” Amelia said fiercely. “On your behalf. And on behalf of every girl who was ever told to simper and not frown because ‘men don’t like clever women.’ You’ve caught a duke with your ledgers. Oh, they will say he’s ruined and needs your money—but we will know better.”
Her eyes flashed. “We will know he needs your *mind.*”
Livia stared at her, thrown.
“Miss Fortescue,” she said carefully, “you are not at all what I thought you were.”
Amelia tossed her head. “I am shallow *and* vengeful. It is a powerful combination.”
Livia laughed, the sound bubbling up unexpectedly.
“Now,” Amelia said briskly, wiping away a suspicious sheen from her eyes. “Mrs. Barstow. We require at least three new gowns, a wedding dress, and something that will make Lady Tansley choke on her lemon ice.”
“Leave it to me,” the modiste said, eyes gleaming.
As they buried her in silk and muslin, as Amelia chattered about fabrics and revenge, as pins pricked and tapes measured, Livia felt something inside her loosen.
She would face cruelty. She knew that. Sneers. Condescension. Half the peerage would call her an interloper, the other half a fortunate upstart.
But she would not face it alone.
Not with Rowan beside her.
And—she realized with a small jolt—not with women like Amelia, either.
There would be allies in unexpected places.
She would find them. She would keep them.
And if anyone tried to reduce her to a dress and a title, she would show them her ledgers.
***
For Rowan, the engagement brought with it a different kind of chaos.
His mother’s relations descended in waves, each bearing congratulations laced with varying degrees of condescension.
“An heiress,” sniffed Lady Trescott, his cousin by marriage. “Well, I suppose one must do something about the old duke’s… excesses. At least she has the decency to be passably pretty.”
“She is more than passably everything,” Rowan said coolly.
Lady Trescott blinked. “You sound quite taken, cousin. How… quaint.”
Lady Agnes, hovering in the doorway, raised one brow and stepped in.
“Trescott,” she said sharply. “Do stop being a bore. The boy’s finally done something useful with himself. Try not to smother it with your lace.”
Rowan caught Aunt Agnes’s eye and inclined his head in silent thanks.
He did not tell her about Livia’s letter.
He had not expected one so soon after his.
It had arrived the day after the engagement, delivered by a footman who had looked faintly offended by the mud on the Merrow Park crest.
*Your Grace—*
*I suppose I must begin as soberly as you did, if only to reassure you that I have not been wholly overtaken by foolishness. I have read the settlements. I have spoken with my father. I have, in a very literal sense, paced grooves into the carpet.*
*You asked, in the woods, whether I feared losing myself. I still do. I suspect I always will. You did not tell me, in turn, that you fear losing yourself in another way—that you fear becoming a man you used to be. You implied it. You did not name it.*
*Permit me, then, to name it: you are afraid that the weight of your house and your past will drag you back into ruin. You are afraid that you will disappoint me. You are afraid that you are not worth what I am risking.*
Rowan had gone very still in his chair.
*You may be right,* the letter went on. *You may not be worth it. I may not be either. But worth, in this context, is not a fixed quantity. It is something we choose—daily, hourly—to increase or squander. You have begun increasing it. So have I. That will have to be enough.*
*As for the foolishness: I miss you, too. It is irritating. Please do not let it go to your head.*
*You are correct that your third promise was not noble. It was, however, most… persuasive. You may consider it one of the factors that tipped the scale.*
*Yours (heaven help us both),*
*Livia Harcourt*
Rowan had read it three times, then laughed aloud until Whitlow peered in, alarmed.
Now, as he fended off cousins and creditors with equal aplomb, that letter sat folded in his pocket, a talisman.
He was not good enough.
He might never be.
But she was right. Worth was not a static thing.
He would spend the rest of his life, if she let him, increasing his.
For both of them.
***