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Ephron had never been able to admit that he spoiled their youngest child.

The Blood Plague had carried off their boys, one by one, back in that hellish disease year.

Even now, close to twenty years later, Ronica felt the squeeze in her chest when she thought of it.

Three sons, three bright little boys, taken in less than a week.

Keffria had barely come through it alive.

Ronica had thought it would drive them both mad, to see the tree of their family stripped of every male flower.

Instead, Ephron had suddenly turned his attention and hopes to the babe that had sheltered inside her womb.

Attentive as he had never been during her other pregnancies, he had even tied up the ship for an extra two weeks to be sure of being home when the child was born.

When the babe had been a girl, Ronica had expected Ephron to be bitter.

Instead, he had given all his attention to his young daughter, as if somehow his will could make a man of her.

He had encouraged her wildness and stubbornness until Ronica despaired of her.

Ephron had always denied it was anything other than high spirits.

He refused her nothing, and when Althea one day demanded to go with him on his next voyage, Ephron had even consented to that.

It had been a short trip, and Ronica had met the ship at the docks, convinced she would get back a girl who had had more than enough of the rough living conditions on the ship.

Instead she’d seen a wild monkey up the rigging, her black hair cut back to no more than a brush, barefoot and bare-armed.

Ever since then, she had sailed with her father. And now she sailed without him.

They’d had words about that, too. It had taken all her words and his pain in addition to convince him that he should stay home for a time.

Ronica had assumed that, of course, Althea would stay home, too.

What business had she aboard a ship without her father?

When she had suggested as much to Ephron, he had been aghast.

‘Our family liveship leave port without one of our blood aboard her? Do you know the kind of ill luck you’d be inviting, woman?’

‘The Vivacia has not quickened yet. Surely Kyle, our marriagekin, should be sufficient. He has been Keffria’s husband for close on fifteen years!

Let Althea stay home for a time. It would do her hair and skin a world of good, and give her a chance to be seen about town.

She is of an age to marry, Ephron, or at least to be courted.

But to be courted, she must first be seen.

She appears but once or twice a year, a Spring Ball one year, a Harvest Gathering the next.

People scarcely recognize her on the street.

And when the young men of the Trader families do see her, she is in trousers and jacket with her hair queued down her back and her skin like a tanned hide.

It is scarcely a suitable way to present her if we wish her to marry well. ’

‘Marry well? Let her marry happy instead, as we did. Look at Keffria and Kyle. Remember how the talk raced through the town when I let an upstart sea-captain with Chalcedean blood start courting my eldest? But I knew he was a man, and she knew what was in her heart, and they’ve been happy enough.

Look at their children, healthy as gulls.

No, Ronica, if Althea has to be kept on a leash and primped and powdered to catch a man’s eyes, then he’s not the kind of man I want sniffing after her anyway.

Let her be seen by a man who admires her spirit and strength.

Soon enough she’ll have to settle down, to be lady, wife and mother.

I doubt she’ll find that kind of monotony to her taste much.

So let’s allow the lass a life while she can have one.

’ Having delivered this statement, Ephron had leaned back on his cushions, panting.

And Ronica, because he was so ill, had swallowed her ire that he could so disparage the life that she led, and thrust down the jealousy she felt for her own daughter’s freedom and careless ways.

Nor had she mentioned that the way the family fortunes were going, there might be a need for Althea to marry well.

Sourly Ronica now mused that if they tamed the girl down, perhaps they could wed her off to one of their creditors, preferably a generous one who would forgive the family’s debt as a wedding gift.

Ronica shook her head slowly. No. In his own subtle way, Ephron had taken the argument right to her weakest position.

She had married Ephron because she’d fallen in love with him.

Just as Keffria had succumbed to Kyle’s blond charms. And despite all the family faced, she hoped that when Althea married, she would love the man.

She looked with heartsick fondness on the man she still loved.

Afternoon sunlight pouring in the window was making Ephron frown in his sleep.

Ronica got up quietly to draw a curtain across the window.

She no longer enjoyed that view. Once it had been a great pleasure to look out that window and see the sturdy trunk and branches of their marriage tree.

Now it stood stark and leafless in the midst of the summer garden, bare as any skeleton.

She felt a shiver up her back as she drew the curtain across the sight.

He had so looked forward to seeing their tree in bloom.

But that spring the bud blight that had always spared the tree struck it full force.

The flowers browned and fell suddenly to the earth.

Not a one opened for them, and the scent of the rotting petals was like funeral herbs.

Neither of them spoke of it as an omen. Neither of them had ever been religious people.

But shortly after that, Ephron had begun to cough again.

Weak little bird coughs that brought up nothing, until the day that he had wiped his mouth and nose, and then frowned at the scarlet tracings of blood on the napkin.

It had been the longest summer of her life.

The hot days were a torment to him. He’d declared that breathing the heavy humid air was no better than breathing his own blood, and then coughed up stringy clots as if to prove his point.

The flesh had fallen from his body, and he’d had neither the appetite nor the will to take in sustenance.

Still, they did not speak of his death. It hovered over the whole house, more oppressive than the humid summer air; Ronica would not give it any more substance by speaking of it.

She moved silently, carefully picking up a small table and setting it close to her bedside chair.

She brought back to it her accounting ledgers, her ink and pen, and a handful of receipts to be entered.

She bent to her work, frowning as she did so.

The entries she made in her small, precise hand did nothing to cheer her.

Somehow it was more depressing now that she knew Ephron would insist on looking over the book the next time he awoke.

For years he had taken almost no interest in the running of the farms and orchards and other holdings.

‘I leave them in your competent hands, my dear,’ he would tell her whenever she tried to present her worries to him.

‘I’ll take care of the ship and see she pays herself off in my lifetime. To you I entrust the rest.’

It had been both heady and frightening to have her husband trust her so.

It was not that unusual for wives to manage the wealth they brought with them as dowries, and many of the women in time quietly handled substantially more than that, but when Ephron Vestrit openly turned over the directing of almost all his holdings to his young wife, it near scandalized Bingtown.

It was no longer the fashion for women to take a hand in the financial end of things; it smacked of their old pioneer life to revert to such a thing.

The old Bingtown Traders had always been known for their innovative ways, but as they prospered, it had become a symbol of wealth to keep one’s womenfolk free of such tasks.

Now it was seen as both plebeian and foolish to so entrust a Trader’s fortune to a woman.

Ronica had known that it was not just his fortune Ephron had put in her hands, but his reputation as well.

She had vowed to be worthy of that trust. For more than thirty years their holdings had prospered.

There had been bad harvests, grain blights, frosts both early and late to contend with, but always a good fruit crop had balanced out the grain not doing well, or the sheep had prospered when the orchards suffered.

Had they not had the heavy debt from constructing the Vivacia to pay off, they would have been wealthy folk.

Even as it had been, they’d been comfortable, and in some years a bit more than that.