I enter her room, and her mother and father turn to me, from where they are gathered around her bed.

“Oh, Sam.” Her mother comes to me and hugs me.

They know we are in a relationship. We told them the day after Carolina was admitted.

“So good to see you. Our girl is coming home today.” She beams at me.

The plan is for her to go to her parents’ house for the remainder of the week and then transfer to rehab. I want her to transfer to Montana.

Her parents know I’m going to ask her. I’ve discussed it with them, and have their blessing. Her father says he thinks the London media life is toxic, and this has opened his eyes to how messed up it all is.

I didn’t tell him anyone can get a stalker, anywhere, in any walk of life. Why give away the advantage that having him onside is?

Not that either of them will interfere with Carolina’s decision, but it feels good to know I have their blessing.

“Good luck, darling,” her mother whispers as she ends her hug and walks to the door.

“We will come back to collect you in an hour,” Lord Henningborne says, kissing his daughter on the forehead.

I walk toward the bed and smile down at the woman in it. She looks smaller somehow in that bed. Fragile. It makes me want to protect her forever. I don’t want to be her bodyguard temporarily; I want to be it for life. I will defend her savagely with every fibre of my being, if she’ll let me.

I sit and take out my phone, my weapon in this war to win her over to my suggestion of rehabbing in Montana, with me.

Then I take a deep breath and prepare to make the most important sales pitch of my life.

Epilogue

Carolina

The air here is so clear. It’s as if every time I breathe, it clears some of the soot and filth of London out of my lungs.

It’s so beautiful everywhere I look it hurts my eyes.

Nothing is more beautiful, though, than the man I love riding his horse toward me across the fields.

I’ve been here in Montana for three months now. Samuel wanted me to come here straight out of hospital, but I stuck to my guns and my original plan.

I needed time to get my thoughts together. Even more so after the attack.

Some of my memories were blurry. My feelings more so.

My man was disappointed, but he’d done as he promised. He waited. He also visited. He flew in from America three times in the two months I spent in the rehab clinic.