“I am sorry about the three seconds.”
“Do not be sorry about the three seconds.” Something moved in his face that he did not trouble to conceal. “Be sorry for nothing. Not a single moment of any of it. You were very brave and clever.” His hand tightened on hers. “I have you now. Whatever comes next, I have you.”
Oliver had turned back to her and the look on his face was such that she reached up with her good hand and pressed her palm flat against his jaw before she had decided to do it. He turned his face into it, closed his eyes for a moment, opened them again.
“You stepped in front of a bullet meant for me,” he said. His voice was very quiet. “I need you to promise me you’ll never do anything like that again.”
“I couldn’t let anyone else die for me,” she said. “Not after everything.”
“I know.” He covered her hand with his and held it there. “I know that. But Megan.” He met her eyes, and whatever composurehe had reassembled in the past few minutes came apart at the edges in a way she suspected he was not aware of. “I would not have survived it. Do you understand me? I would not.”
“I do now,” she said softly.
“Good.” His thumb moved across her knuckles. “Good. Never again.”
His pulse beat hard under her fingers and for a moment neither of them said anything at all.
Outside, London went on in its indifferent way, the sounds of the street drifting up through the window, the ordinary world unaware that anything of significance had happened in an unremarkable house in an unremarkable lane. Webb was directing men with the competent calm of a man restoring order. Harry was speaking in a low voice to someone in the doorway, already thinking about what came next.
Megan leaned her head back against the wall and let Oliver hold her hand and decided that for the next five minutes she was simply going to breathe.
There was time enough for everything else.
CHAPTER 23
The doctor came every other day. He was a small, precise man named Fellowes who had the particular manner of a physician accustomed to patients of rank, which was to say he delivered his pronouncements with enough authority to discourage argument while remaining carefully non-committal about timelines.
“The wound is clean,” he announced, on his fourth visit to her bedchamber at Newbury House. “The shoulder will be stiff for some weeks yet. You are not to lift anything heavier than a teacup with that arm, my lady.”
“And if I do?” Megan asked.
He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“If I lift something heavier. What precisely will happen?”
Dr Fellowes glanced at Oliver, who was standing near the window with his arms folded, not daring to say a word.
“You risk tearing the healing tissue,” the doctor said, recovering himself. “Which would set your recovery back by several weeks, cause scaring, and lead to considerable pain.”
“Then several weeks it will be,” Megan said pleasantly. “Thank you, Dr Fellowes. I shall endeavor to disappoint you as little as possible.”
After he had gone, Oliver turned from the window.
“You are the worst patient in England.”
“That is an extraordinary claim. Have you met many?”
“I’ve met Webb.”
She considered this. “All right. Second worst.”
From the corridor came Webb’s voice, raised in mild indignation. “I heard that.”
“You were meant to,” Oliver called back. He came and sat in the chair beside the bed, the one he had occupied so regularly over the past days that she suspected it had begun to conform to him. “How does it actually feel?”
“Like someone put a bullet in it,” she said. “But less so than yesterday, which I understand is progress.”
“That is progress.” He was quiet for a moment. “Fellowes says another fortnight before you can think about resuming normal activity.”
