The Last Longitude

The Meridian Compact has stopped hiding. After years of pursuit across false maps, vanished routes, and deliberately erased histories, Lady Verena Ashdown and Dr. Ginevra Quade finally have a chance to expose the network that stole three years of Verena's life. But the Compact's most dangerous defense is not a gun or a fortress. It is credibility. From Alexandria, sabotage drives the expedition into a trail of falsified cargo records and coded longitudes. Across the Mediterranean and into the Adriatic, a poisoned passage, a false coastal light, a stolen ledger, and an apparent betrayal turn every surviving fragment of evidence into something worth killing for. The trail then climbs into the Alps before pointing back to the one place Verena least expected: respectable London. There, Sir Leofric Gault is protected by wealth, institutions, and a reputation society is eager to believe. Verena, once officially declared dead, possesses a story his allies can dismiss as trauma and obsession. To defeat him, she and Ginevra must build a chain of proof stronger than either woman's testimony alone—and reach the Black Meridian Archive before its records disappear forever. As the final pursuit tests their allies and forces old habits of secrecy and sacrifice into the open, Verena and Ginevra must decide not merely how to survive the last longitude, but what kind of shared life they will choose when the chase is over. The Last Longitude is Book Five of The Uncharted Ladies, a historically grounded Victorian adventure-romance series of maps, mysteries, dangerous travel, and two women determined to build a partnership on equal ground.