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 hisforties, ex-army by his bearing, froze at the sight of Oliver, eyes widening.
