London, 1814

Were she not alone in the chaise that transported her to Grovesnor Square, any companion who shared that confined space would have observed at once how tense she was.

Her shoulders were drawn back. Her back was a straight rod. Her hands here clasped tightly together in her lap.

It took a while for the butler to announce her arrival at Starling House, but that tenseness did not leave her body even when she laid eyes on an old friend in the person of the Duchess of Starling.

"He arrived this morning," said Felicity, approaching her not without some difficulty owing to the large swell of her belly. The duchess was with child and due to give birth soon, something which also showed in the awkward amble of her gait and the hand she had propped behind her back to support the weight of the babe she carried. She took her tense hands into her own. "I'm so sorry, Caitlin. I truly am."

"I want to see him."

It had been that way ever since she received the news of his return to England. She had been allowing some other person who responded to her name to take her through the preparations required for a journey from Lincolnshire to London, to give directions for the care of her patients should she fail to return in time, and then to make the journey itself.

It was this other Caitlin Snow that responded to the duchess now, who asked to see the duke's cousin who had been discharged from his service in the navy on account of his injuries, and then sent straight to his cousin's house in London when there was no where else in the city for him to go to. If she kept thinking of him as merely the duke's cousin, then this Caitin could continue to operate as though he were some other patient that she was invited to examine.

Felicity opened her mouth, and then closed it, and looked away. "I will take you to him."

Perhaps it was a good thing that the duchess's pregnancy prevented her from rushing, for it gave Caitlin time to further compose herself. She had not acquired her icy reputation for naught, and while her longstanding friendship with Felicity prevented the duchess from truly believing in Caitlin's mask of reserve, at least she would not alarm the patient with her own feelings.

It was imperative as a doctor that she put the patient first.

She waited for the duchess's footman to knock on the door to a guest room, and the duke's forbidding face appeared in the crack. His gaze softened as he laid eyes on his beloved wife, and it hurt her to see how they communicated a wealth of information merely in the way they looked at each other.

On most days the fourteenth Duke of Starling could match her in the frostiness of his dismeanour, but he was most solicitous as he allowed her to enter the dark room where her patient lay, covered by blankets.

"Leave me alone as I asked, Ollie," she heard him say in a rough voice, so different from the softer one she had become accustomed to recalling as she pressed her lips to his letters, and she had to strengthen her resolve as she brought herself next to the bed so she could see him better.

The lower half of his face was covered in a five o'clock shadow, a look that was more commonly sported by his ducal cousin, but the blue eyes that widened upon catching sight of her person were unmistakably his.

"Ronnie," Caitlin said, her voice cracking and tears welling up in her eyes.

Her fiance turned his face away from her and addressed his cousin, his tone accusatory. "I said I wouldn't see her, Ollie. Send her out of my room at once."

Tears were streaming down her cheek as the duchess came to usher her out, but Caitlin could see how he closed his eyes as if the sight of her repulsed him, as if the woman he had once professed to loved and cherish was now anathema to him.

"He didn't mean it, Caitlin," said the duchess softly, rubbing her shoulder.

"Much as I hate to say it, Miss Snow, I was the same when I first returned to England and Ronnie will come around," said the duke, who had never been to war but whose famous story of abduction and possibly torture aboard a prison hulk in 1807 was still talked about amongst the ton, and that barely scratched the surface of his five years away. "He just needs time."

They respected her desire to be alone, and she was shown to another guest room, some considerable distance away from the one occupied by Ronnie. Her things had been left there for her, and she sat on the bed for a long spell of silence before rushing to her valise and tearing it open with her nerveless fingers.

The objects of her desire lay on top of her clothes, and she could no longer maintain the shell of cool that she had been wearing all day when she saw it. Clutching the first of his letters to her to her chest, she sobbed and shuddered from the bitter pain that coursed through her entire person.

The letter she held had been unfolded and folded away again and again throughout the years, and the words that were pressed to her breast were familiar from the numerous times she had read them, sometimes out loud, sometimes silently, but always with the sweet feeling of knowing she had his love.

They were her only coherent thought as she wept, the words that he had first sent her when he had gone to serve as a physician for the Royal Navy:

7th October 1809

Dearest Cait,

I have been assigned to the HMS Firestorm, which is by far the worst name that anyone could possibly christen a ship. I feel almost ashamed of it as I write you, save for the knowledge that you have such a peculiar sense of humour that I am obliged to tell you everything that happens to me in the off-chance you find it funny. Are you laughing now, my darling?

I find myself cringing even though I have written the above words and will not cross them out. We never were the sort to exchange endearments, and though I have resolved to be as loving as possible in my letters to you, I find myself almost chafing at the self-imposed requirement of giving you love-words. Instead I make note of your oddities and remind you of their fixation in my memory of you, though never fear, I have yet to mention my close acquaintance with the oddest woman in Lincolnshire to any of my shipmates in this first week, mostly because I've not yet judged them worthy of the privilege of knowing you, seeing how I scarcely know them as of yet. The only one worthy of mention at this stage is the captain, a Harrison Wells, who is the most enigmatic fellow you can possibly imagine. He retreats into his personal cabin in every spare minute he has, and will not socialise with the rest of the crew. I think he may match you in being standoffish, Cait, and I look forward to cracking that façade as I did with you.

Give my love to my father and my stepmother, and do take care during your house calls not to overexert yourself.

Yours, etc.

PS: Your oddities and tendency to prickiness are two of the things I love most about you.

To readers that have followed me from The Dark Prodigal, I am so sorry, I know you all are waiting for me to update you with regard to Felicity's status but at least you now know she marries Oliver by 1814. Typical of my wanderlust, I find myself tiring of London as a setting after painstakingly taking Oliver and Digg back from Bristol and I really wanted to write a story set in the countryside (they'll be heading to Lincolnshire soon). I also wanted to write a more romantic story, which is why I dropped the side story about how Barry met Felicity (set in Cambridgeshire) and wrote this instead. I tried to be neutral when I wrote The Orion Inquest but it should be very clear now that I'm a SnowStorm shipper as opposed to SnowBarry. I also kinda wanted to write the scene which led to the line about Ronnie swimming nude in the lake near Caitlin's house, which is a throwaway remark in The Orion Inquest (the side story I was writing about Barry happens to be the result of the throwaway remark in The Dark Prodigal Felicity makes about their meeting).

To any new readers, it's very nice to meet you, and you should know now that I have the habit of writing notes at the end of the chapter to explain any historical details. This chapter is very sparse on such since it just sets things up, but I should mention that Ronnie fought in the Napoleonic Wars, and research for Chapter Two has led me to read about Joseph Manton and James Miranda Barry, who were actual people in the 19th century. I can't wait to get there - though I do need to write Chapter 28 of The Dark Prodigal first.