Chapter 5 #3
Oliver Sommerset. Marquess of Astor, heir to the Duke of Saxton. She let the name settle against the reality of him and found they fit. Aristocratic. Precise. The kind of man who took up space in a room not by raising his voice but by simply being in it.
He was handsome. She registered this the way she registered all useful information about men, as data, as something to file away and account for.
But accounting for it was proving more difficult than she’d expected, because his wasn’t the kind of handsome she knew.
The men at the lodge had been handsome in obvious ways, pretty and calculating.
This was something harder. A jaw that looked carved from stone, high cheekbones catching the firelight, a straight nose that had been broken at some point and set cleanly.
The kind of face that would have looked correct on a Roman coin.
She’d noticed that when she’d been studying him from behind the borrowed shirt, when he’d thought her busy with the changing and she’d had a moment to simply look.
She had studied men’s faces long enough to know which details would matter later.
His hands, for instance. Long-fingered, well-kept, but scored with the calluses of someone who used them for more than signing papers.
There were scars. A puckered mark on his left forearm that had the particular look of an old bullet wound. Fine white lines across his knuckles.
She’d noticed it all. It was practical. It was sensible.
What was less sensible was that now, half-asleep by the fire with her eyes mostly closed, she could not seem to stop noticing other things.
The way the firelight moved across his face.
The particular line of his shoulders when he leaned forward.
The way he’d turned his back and kept it turned, without being asked again, without any of the small performative gestures men sometimes made of their own virtue.
He’d turned his back and stayed there.
Most men never left her alone. They all wanted something from her. Oliver wanted something too—her to help him avenge James.
She had kept her eyes down around men since she was old enough to understand the consequences of looking.
It had become habit, then instinct, then something so deeply ingrained she had stopped thinking of it as a choice.
You kept your eyes down. You watched from the periphery.
You learned what you needed to learn without ever appearing to look directly.
She was looking directly.
Not because she wanted to, but because something about his face wouldn’t leave her alone, and for the first time in a very long time, keeping her eyes down felt like an effort rather than a reflex. A small betrayal of something she didn’t have a name for, yet.
She caught herself and forced her gaze to the fire instead.
He is a man, she told herself, with the flat precision of someone reminding themselves of something they cannot afford to forget. And you have learned, at considerable cost, exactly what men are.
But the thought was quieter than it should have been. Less certain than it should have been.
Across the room, Oliver moved to put another piece of wood on the fire. His gaze swept over her as he straightened, and she went very still with her eyes mostly shut and her breathing even, performing sleep, performing the absence of herself.
For a moment he was simply still.
She could feel it without seeing it, the quality of his attention. Not the measuring look she’d learned to brace against. Something different. Something that was there and then very deliberately put away, the way you set down something you’re not yet sure you’re permitted to hold.
Then he moved back to his position against the wall and didn’t look at her again.
Megan lay still and thought, with the cold clarity she had honed across years, that she was in a great deal of trouble. Not the kind she knew how to navigate. The other kind.
Outside, the rain continued. Somewhere in the distance, pursuit was still searching. But Oliver was clever, heading north instead of east. Penharrow’s men were brawn rather than intelligence. They’d look for the closest border.
And Megan lay in borrowed clothes in a stranger’s blanket and thought about Scotland.
About whether she could manage it alone.
About whether she knew enough of healing to trade for work and food without references.
About whether there was any version of this that ended with her belonging entirely to herself.
The last thing she’d ever do again was surrender herself to a man she didn’t want.
She watched the fire and told herself she didn’t want anything at all.
It was important to keep telling herself that.
“You should sleep,” Oliver said, without looking at her. His voice was quiet enough that Webb wouldn’t hear. “We’re not going anywhere until first light. You’re safe until then.”
Megan didn’t answer. Kept her breathing even. Kept her eyes soft and still beneath their lids.
A pause.
Then, more quietly, “Rest.”
And Megan, against every instinct she possessed, found that her body believed him even if her mind was not yet ready to.
Sleep took her before she could decide how she felt about that.