“Firstly, I want you to not die from the cold,” Oliver said flatly. “That’s what I want right now. Everything else can wait until you’re warm and dry. Then I’ll explain more.”
The door opened and Webb entered, water dripping from his coat. He took one look at the tableau, Megan pressed against the wall, Oliver holding dry clothes, the tension thick between them, and sighed.
“I’ll step back outside, see to the horses properly. Give you both some privacy.” He left before Megan could respond.
She stared at the dry clothes, then at Oliver. “Why should I trust you?”
“I cannot give you a reason.” He moved away from her, settling himself on the far side of the hut with his back turned. “But you need to get dry, and I’m the only option you have right now. So, trust me or don’t. Just get warm before you make yourself ill. We can’t escape if you’re ill.”
Megan waited, watching him. He didn’t move. Didn’t turn. Just sat with his back to her, working quietly with wet gear, and she could hear the soft click of metal, a pistol being cleaned, put right again. Hands that knew what they were doing. She watched the line of his shoulders and told herself it meant nothing.
Slowly, shaking with more than cold, she grabbed the dry clothes and moved behind the hanging blanket.
Her fingers fumbled with the fastenings of her wet dress. Everything was soaked through. She’d had the presence of mind to wear a warm wool day gown and thick stockings, but they were saturated to her chemise, even her stays. She peeled themaway from her skin with numb fingers, hyperaware of every sound from the other side of the blanket.
Oliver didn’t move. Didn’t try to look. She could hear him still at his work, lighting the fire the only sound beneath the rain.
The dry shirt was enormous on her, hanging to her knees. The breeches were impossible, far too large, falling off her hips. She abandoned them and pulled the shirt down as far as it would go, then wrapped herself in one of the dry blankets.
“I’m decent,” she called out, her voice small.
Oliver turned.
His expression was carefully neutral as he took in her appearance. Swamped in his shirt, wrapped in a blanket, her wet hair hanging in tangles around her face.
And it was neutral, that expression. Megan had become expert at reading men’s faces, at cataloguing every shift from polite interest to the thing that came next, the thing she had learned to brace for. She read him carefully and found nothing to alarm her. Only something she couldn’t quite name, something that moved through his eyes and was put away very quickly, like a letter folded before someone else could read it.
She filed that away and looked at her hands.
“Better,” he said. “Hang your wet things by the fire to dry. And sit, get warm.”
She did, acutely aware of wearing so little in front of a man she didn’t know, but Oliver had already turned away again, building up the fire, and she found herself studying the back of his head the way she would study a landscape for the paths out of it. Mapping it. Noting it without meaning to.
“You need to get dry too,” she said, almost to herself.
“I will once we’ve organized food.”
The door opened and Webb returned, water still dripping from his coat. He moved to the fire without looking at Megan, stripping off his wet outer layers.
That was when she saw the blood.
“You’re hurt,” she said, the words automatic.
Webb glanced at his shoulder, where his shirt was soaked with blood as well as rain. “Caught a bullet in the escape. It’s nothing. Merely a scrape.”
“It’s not nothing. You’re bleeding.”
“I’ve had worse.”
But Megan was already moving, instinct taking over. The same instinct that had gotten her through years of tending the staff’s injuries, of learning to be useful in the hope that someone might eventually help her in return.
“Sit,” she ordered, pointing to the bench. “Let me see to it.”
Webb looked at Oliver, who nodded. The older man sat, and Megan carefully peeled away his wet shirt.
The wound was a graze rather than a true bullet wound, but it was deep and still bleeding. Hours old. If not treated it could fester.
“It needs to be cleaned,” she said. “Do you have whiskey?”
