She would need to be careful. Plan meticulously. Penharrow was intelligent and suspicious, and any unusual behavior would alert him, but she had advantages too. He thought her broken, compliant, too afraid to act. He thought fourteen years of captivity had taught her helplessness.
He was wrong.
Megan stood, brushing the dirt from her skirts. Thecrocuses nodded in the breeze, delicate and resilient. They’d pushed through frozen earth to reach the light. They’d survived.
So would she.
She turned toward the house, her decision made. She would bathe as commanded. She would wear the green silk. She would submit to him tonight, as she had submitted countless nights before.
But she would also watch and wait and plan.
And when the moment came—when she’d prepared everything perfectly, when she was certain of success—she would act.
Penharrow had taken everything from her. Her childhood. Her innocence. Her freedom. He’d stolen her very name, her identity, transforming her from whatever she’d been at seven years old into this creature he’d molded for his pleasure.
But he’d made one critical mistake.
He’d kept her alive.
And as long as she lived, she was dangerous.
“My lady?” Thomas called from the gate. “Best get inside. Rain’s coming.”
Megan nodded and walked toward the house, her spine straight, her face composed. She looked, she knew, like the perfect lady. Beautiful, refined, obedient.
Penharrow’s prisoner.
But inside, where he couldn’t see, something had shifted. A spark had caught, small but growing. Not hope—she’d learned better than to hope. But something harder. Something cold and sharp as a blade.
Determination.
She would escape this life. Either by running far enough that he’d never find her, or by ensuring he never drew breath to search.
One way or another, Megan would be free.
Or she would die trying.
CHAPTER 1
London-November, eight months later
The rain lashed against the windows of White’s with a fury that matched the tempest building in Oliver Sommerset, Marquess of Astor’s, chest. He stood before the fire in the club’s reading room, one hand braced against the mantelpiece, the other crushing the letter he’d been expecting but hoping would never come. It had arrived not ten minutes prior. Around him, the usual denizens of London’s most exclusive gentlemen’s club continued their evening rituals—cards, brandy, gossip—oblivious to the fact that his world had just shattered.
“Bad news, Astor?”
Oliver didn’t turn at the sound of Lord Weatherby’s voice. He couldn’t trust himself to school his features into the mask of aristocratic indifference that was expected of a man of his station. Instead, he focused on the flames, watching them devour a log with the same methodical efficiency he would soon apply to destroying the man who had murdered his closest friend.
“Family matter,” Oliver said, his voice flat, emotionless. Itwas not entirely a lie. James Hartley had been closer than family. Closer than the cold uncle who had raised him after his parents’ deaths, closer than the distant second-cousins who circled his eventual dukedom like vultures. James had been the only person in England who knew Oliver Sommerset, not just the Marquess of Astor, and heir to the Saxton dukedom, one of the oldest titles in the realm.
And now James was dead.
“Ah.” Weatherby, sensing the dismissal, retreated with a murmured condolence.
Oliver waited until the man’s footsteps faded before he smoothed out the crumpled letter. The paper was of good quality, the handwriting precise—the work of some country solicitor tasked with informing him that Captain James Hartley, late of His Majesty’s cavalry, had been found dead in Wales. A riding accident, the letter claimed. The captain’s horse had thrown him on a rocky hillside, and he’d struck his head. Death was instantaneous.
A tragic mishap. The man sent his regrets.
Oliver’s jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. James Hartley had been one of the finest horsemen in the cavalry. He’d ridden through the chaos of the Peninsular War, navigating terrain that would have killed lesser men, dodging French musket fire and Portuguese bandits with equal skill. The notion that a Welsh hillside had bested him was an insult to both men’s intelligence.
