Chapter 4
“Ready?” Webb asked as it grew closer to dawn. They’d decided to wait so that part of their escape would be as the dawn broke and they could push the horses to run faster. It would be too dangerous in the dark.
Oliver checked his pistols one final time, made sure his knife was secure in his boot, adjusted the dark scarf he’d use to cover the lower half of his face.
“Ready.”
They began their descent from the ridge as the new moon rose, or rather as the absence of moon left the sky dark and filled with stars. Perfect conditions for what they were about to do.
The hunting lodge waited below, its windows glowing softly in the darkness. Inside, Megan was likely in bed, unaware that in a few minutes, her life was about to change forever.
Oliver had freed prisoners before, had led raids behind enemy lines, had faced death more times than he could count, but this felt different. More important somehow. As if everything in his life had led to this moment.
He thought of James, lying dead in some Welsh churchyard, his murder unpunished. He thought of all Penharrow’s victims, the women trafficked, the men killed, the lives destroyed.
And he thought of Megan, trapped in her golden cage, waiting for a freedom she’d probably stopped believing would ever come.
Tonight, she would be free.
Oliver crouched at the edge of the forest, watching the hunting lodge with the patient stillness of a predator.
The building sat quiet in the darkness, only two windows showing light, one on the ground floor where the night guard made his rounds, and one on the second floor.
It looked as if it was coming from Megan’s room.
He hoped it was because Mrs. Griffth had told her to be ready.
Webb touched his arm, pointing. The exterior guard was making his circuit, walking the perimeter with the bored shuffle of someone who’d performed this duty too many times to believe anything would ever happen.
They’d timed his pattern. Twenty minutes for a full circuit, then fifteen minutes inside warming himself by the kitchen fire before resuming his patrol.
“Now,” Oliver breathed.
They moved in practiced silence, covering the fifty yards from forest to lodge in a crouch, using the shadows and terrain for concealment. Webb split off toward the guard house while Oliver made for the servants’ entrance on the eastern side.
The door opened with a soft creak that seemed thunderous in the night silence. Oliver froze, listening. No shouts of alarm. No running footsteps. He slipped inside, closing the door behind him.
The hallway was dark, but thin moonlight from a window at the far end provided enough illumination to navigate by. His eyes adjusted quickly, taking in the narrow corridor lined with doors; larder, scullery, servants’ quarters. At the end of the hall, stairs led upward to the main floor.
He’d just reached the base of the stairs when he heard voices.
“—don’t care what she wants. His Lordship said—”
“His Lordship isn’t here, Thomas, and she’s hardly going to run away in the middle of the night.”
Two men. The night guard and one of the exterior guards who must have come inside. Oliver pressed himself against the wall, hand on his pistol.
“You know what happened to the last man who got soft about her,” the first voice—Thomas—said. “Daniel swung for it.”
“I’m not getting soft. I’m saying there’s no harm in her being awake past her curfew if it keeps her quiet. Better than having her start screaming again like she did last month.”
Footsteps approached. Oliver calculated distances, angles, the likelihood of being discovered. The pistol would be loud, would alert everyone in the lodge. The knife would be quieter but messier.
The footsteps paused at the far end of the hall.
“Fine. Leave her be. But if His Lordship asks—”
“He won’t. Man’s too busy with his London tarts to care what we do here as long as she’s here when he gets back.”
They laughed, a sound Oliver filed away to remember later. When this was over. When Penharrow answered for his crimes.
The footsteps retreated. Oliver waited until he heard a door close, then moved swiftly up the stairs to the main floor.
The layout matched Mrs. Griffiths’s description of a central hall with rooms opening off it. The grand staircase to the second floor was at the far end, and he could see lamplight from beneath a door to the left. The guard’s room.
He considered his options. He could wait for the guard to resume his rounds, slip past when the man’s back was turned. Or he could be more direct.
Oliver chose directness. He crossed to the guard’s door and knocked softly.
“Thomas?” The door opened. The guard, a burly man in his forties, ex-army by his bearing, froze at the sight of Oliver, eyes widening.
Oliver’s fist caught him in the solar plexus, driving the air from his lungs and doubling him over.
A second blow to the temple and the man collapsed.
Oliver caught him, dragging him back into the room and lowering him to the floor.
Not dead—he hadn’t hit hard enough for that—but unconscious for a while.
Oliver bound and gagged him, then moved to the grand staircase.
The second floor was quieter. Darker. Most of the servants would be asleep in their attic quarters. Oliver counted doors, matching them to Mrs. Griffiths’s description. Third door on the right. Eastern side.
The door was locked, but the lock was simple—designed to keep someone in, not to keep skilled intruders out. Oliver had it open in less than a minute, slipping inside and closing it softly behind him.
The room was everything Mrs. Griffiths had described. Luxurious, beautiful, a cage dressed in silk and velvet. Fine furniture, expensive draperies, a four-poster bed with embroidered hangings.
And sitting in a chair by the window was Megan.
Oliver’s heart stopped.
He’d seen her from a distance through the spyglass. Had thought himself prepared. But nothing—not the surveillance, not Mrs. Griffiths’s descriptions, not his own imagination—had prepared him for the visceral punch of seeing her up close.
She was exquisite. Not in the painted, artificial way of London courtesans, but with a natural beauty that hit him like a fist to the sternum.
Fair hair fell in soft waves past her shoulders, catching the lamplight.
Her face—God, that face—belonged in a Renaissance painting.
High cheekbones, full pink lips, skin like cream despite years of captivity.
She wore a simple dress of deep green wool that made her look like some forest nymph caught in a hunter’s trap.
And her eyes. Those extraordinary eyes Mrs. Griffiths had mentioned, leaf-green flecked with gold, lifted to meet his.
She froze.
Not screaming panic. Not shocked surprise. Just frozen terror. The instinctive stillness of prey that’s learned sudden movements bring pain. The response of someone accustomed to threats, to unexpected intrusions, to violations of her space and her person.
Oliver’s chest tightened with a rage so intense it nearly choked him. This is what he’s done to her. Reduced her to this. Beautiful and terrified and trapped.
But beneath the rage, something darker stirred. Desire, immediate and unwelcome, coiling hot in his belly. He wanted her. Wanted to cross this room and touch that perfect skin, taste those lips, bury his hands in that luscious hair. The thought rose unbidden and left him sick with self-loathing.
Christ. She’s a victim, and you’re standing here lusting after her like some rutting animal.
In that moment, he was no better than Penharrow, seeing her, wanting her, and he hated himself for it even as his body refused to stop responding to her proximity.
This woman had been violated, broken, kept like a possession.
She deserved rescue, protection, justice.
Not another man looking at her with hunger in his eyes.
And yet he couldn’t stop.
She was looking at him now, those remarkable eyes wide with terror, and Oliver felt the full weight of what he’d planned to do.
He’d come here to use her, take her as bait, as witness, as a weapon against Penharrow.
He’d told himself it was rescue, but it was manipulation.
He wanted to use her beauty, her testimony, her trauma, as tools for his revenge.
The realization made him feel dirty.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Oliver said quietly, keeping his distance even as everything in him wanted to move closer. He forced his hands to stay visible, away from his weapons, trying to appear less threatening despite the weapons at his belt and the scarf concealing half his face.
In the lamplight, she was even more devastating than she’d appeared from afar. That extraordinary face tilted toward him, lamplight gilding her skin, making her look both ethereal and heartbreakingly real. He had to dig his fingernails into his palms to keep from reaching for her.
Focus. She’s not yours to want. She’s a mission. A witness. A victim who needs help.
But his body cared nothing about noble intentions. It only registered the curve of her throat, the rise and fall of her breathing, the way her lips parted slightly in fear. He imagined covering that mouth with his, swallowing her gasps, feeling her melt against him—
No.
Oliver savagely crushed the thought. This was Penharrow’s doing too. This unwanted desire was what the Earl had cultivated in her, had used to justify keeping her. Every man who looked at Megan and saw only her beauty perpetuated what Penharrow had done. She was a person, not an object of lust.
Even if his body hadn’t received that message.
“I’m taking you away from here,” he managed, his voice rougher than he’d intended.
“Mrs. Griffiths told me men who are obviously mad, were coming to rescue me,” she whispered, and her voice, God, even her voice, was perfect, low and slightly husky as if she didn’t use it often. “He’ll kill us both.”
The sound of it went through him like lightning.