Chapter 12 #2
She rose and moved to the sideboard before she could see his reaction, filling her plate with the sort of unhurried composure she had spent fourteen years perfecting, and thought that wherever Oliver was this morning, she hoped someone was looking after him half as well as this castle’s cook was evidently capable of looking after her.
She sat back down.
Outside the windows, the frost-silver grounds glittered in the pale winter sun, and nowhere in this room were there bars on the windows.
She ate her breakfast.
Nothing had ever tasted so good.
She’d almost finished eating when the Duke folded up his paper, stood and tucked it under his arm.
“Please excuse me. I do hate leaving a guest to eat alone, but Oliver should be here shortly. I suspect he’s seeing to the guards.
” He turned, then turned back. “You are welcome to stay in my home as long as you please, Miss Megan. God help me, but I can see what my nephew sees in you and why he believes he can defeat Penharrow. I hope you are both right.”
She merely nodded her head. She didn’t know how long she would be staying. That was up to Oliver and his plan.
No sooner than the Duke left than Oliver arrived.
He filled the doorway the way he always seemed to fill every space he entered, not through any effort or performance of presence, simply because nature had made him the kind of man that rooms rearranged themselves around.
Megan had seen him exhausted and filthy and half-frozen, and he had still been the most devastatingly handsome man she’d ever encountered. She had not prepared herself adequately for his clean appearance.
He’d shaved. His jaw was smooth and strong, the sharp angles of his face no longer obscured by days of travel and weather.
His dark hair was brushed back from his forehead, and he wore a coat that fit him the way only a London tailor’s work fitted a man, dark blue superfine across shoulders that genuinely had no right to exist. He looked exactly like who he was: a wealthy, powerful, impossibly attractive English lord, utterly at home in his castle, utterly in command of every inch of the world he moved through.
Megan set her teacup down very carefully, so she didn’t spill it.
He saw her the moment he walked in and something in his expression shifted—not surprise exactly, more the particular quality of attention a person gives to something they’ve been thinking about.
His eyes moved over her once, quickly, and she watched him file the information away in that methodical way he had, the way he catalogued everything around him without appearing to.
“You look well,” he said. “The dress suits you.”
“It belongs to your cousin. Annie was very proud of herself.”
“It shows.” He crossed to the sideboard, lifted the coffee pot, and poured himself a cup with the ease of a man who had done this over ten thousand times in this room. “Did you sleep?”
“I did.” She hesitated. Then, because she had never been a coward even when she’d wanted to be: “I woke up in the bed.”
Oliver looked at her over the rim of his cup.
“I fell asleep in the chair,” she continued. “I’m fairly certain chairs don’t carry people to beds on their own initiative.”
“They don’t,” he agreed, and returned his attention to his coffee.
“You should have woken me.”
“You were dead to the world. It seemed wasteful.”
There was nothing in his voice that required anything from her.
No expectation, no significance attached.
He’d simply seen something that needed doing and he’d done it; in the same way he’d pulled her from a frozen river and shared the larger portion of every meal and stood guard in the cold while she slept.
As if caring for her were simply something that fell under his natural purview.
“Thank you,” Megan said. “For that, and for all of it. The last week. All of it.”
Oliver looked up at her then, and for a moment there was something in his expression that she couldn’t quite name. Something that moved behind the calm, controlled surface of him like a current under ice.
“Don’t thank me yet,” he said. “We still have a great deal to do.”
He pulled out the chair across from her and sat, and she was grateful for the table between them. It helped. Marginally.
“The guards?” she asked.
“Posted. I’ve been out since before dawn reviewing the positions.
There are six men covering the main approaches to the castle and two stationed outside the east wing, where your room is.
Harold has been instructed that no unfamiliar staff are to be admitted to the house without my prior approval.
” He took a sip of his coffee. “You are safe here, Megan. I give you my word on that.”
She believed him. She believed him absolutely, which was still slightly bewildering, given that a few weeks ago she had not believed any man capable of anything.
“What happens next?” she asked.
Oliver set down his cup. “I go to London.”
The words landed in the room like stones into still water.
“When?”
“Tomorrow, if the roads are passable. The day after at the latest. I need to move quickly before Penharrow has time to consolidate his position.” He looked at her steadily.
“I have contacts in the Home Office. Men who served with me, men I trust, who have the access and the authority to begin an official inquiry if I bring them the right evidence. I also need to consult a lawyer, someone with experience in criminal proceedings at the highest level, someone who understands exactly what a case against a peer of the realm requires before it goes anywhere near a courtroom.”
“And what does it require?”
“More than your testimony alone, though yours is the foundation everything else rests on. I also have Jame’s letter.
We need documentation. Records of his financial dealings, the properties he controls, any formal complaints that were made and buried.
I need to find witnesses, and I know where to start looking.
There are people in London who owe me considerably, and I intend to call in every debt at once.
” Something hardened in his expression. “Penharrow has been untouchable because he’s been invisible.
I intend to make him very visible indeed. ”
Megan turned her teacup in its saucer. Once. Twice.
“And while you’re in London,” she said, “I stay here.”
“Yes.”
“At Saxton Castle.”
“You’ll be safe here. My uncle—”
“Your uncle made a very polished attempt to suggest that my continued presence here represents an inconvenience to the family’s standing.
” She watched Oliver’s jaw tighten and felt a flicker of satisfaction at it.
“Don’t worry, I handled him, and he told me I was welcome here as long as I liked, but I want to be clear about what I’m saying, which is not that I’m concerned about your uncle’s hospitality.
The castle is beautiful. The staff are kind.
The food is extraordinary.” She paused. “But I am not safe here without you.”
Oliver’s eyes met hers.
“The guards—”
“Are not you.” She heard how that sounded and kept going anyway, because she had learned in the last week that honesty with Oliver was the only currency that actually worked.
“When you are here, I believe it will be all right. That is not something I can say about six men I don’t know standing at the gate.
I have spent fourteen years learning to measure my safety by a single variable, and that variable is how close or how far the danger is from me.
Penharrow is not in this room, and so I am safe.
You are in this room, and so I am safe. Take yourself to London and those two things are no longer both true. ”
Oliver was quiet for a moment. She could see him working through it, the careful, methodical consideration he gave to everything, and she waited.
“No,” he said at last.
“Oliver—”
“I’ve considered it. The answer is no. Traveling with you is too dangerous. I can’t protect you.”
Her spine straightened. “You’ve considered it. In the five seconds since I raised it.”
“I’ve been considering it since before you came down to breakfast.” He held her gaze without any discomfort whatsoever.
“You are safer here than you would be on the road to London. The journey itself is a risk. London is a risk. Everything I need to do in the city requires me to move quickly and without constraint, which is considerably harder to manage if I’m simultaneously managing your safety.
And Penharrow’s reach extends to London.
He has acquaintances there, people who would recognize you or report your presence if we were seen together in public.
” He picked up his coffee again with infuriating composure.
“You stay here. I will be gone no longer than a fortnight, likely less.”
“A fortnight.”
“Perhaps less.”
“That is not…” She stopped. Drew one breath. “Oliver, I am not asking you to manage my safety. I am asking you to take me with you. I can be useful. I know things about Penharrow’s operations, his contacts, the names of the men who came to the house.”
“Which I will need you to write down in detail, before I leave, in a documented statement that can be used with the solicitor.”
She felt heat invade her face. “I can’t do that”—
“You promised to give testimony,” Oliver’s tone was heavy with disappointment.”
“I can’t read or write. I can tell you the details and you’ll have to write them.” She said softly and listened as Oliver cursed Penharrow to hell.
“I had forgotten that fact, I’m sorry.”
“So, you see, I need to come to London with you. I have to testify in person.”
“No,” he said, pleasantly, finally, in a tone that made it clear that the word would remain the same regardless of how many directions she attacked from.
Megan looked at him. At the absolute, infuriating, completely self-assured set of him. At the fact that he was almost certainly right about the risks, which made the whole thing considerably worse.
“You are the most provoking man,” she said.
“So I’ve been told.”