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Chapter One

The dog was getting closer.

Meg could hear it snuffling through the undergrowth, the lanterns its owners held aloft casting glowing orbs in the gloom. She might have been able to flee through the midnight trees if she’d been alone, but two running figures were too great a target, the gamekeepers’ guns certain to roar after them if she and Peter broke cover. The only thing to do was stay in a painful crouch in the shadow of a fallen log and pray the lamplight would pass them by, her hand gripping her brother’s sleeve and her heart pounding as heavy boots tramped nearer.

‘We know you’re there. Come out, poaching filth.’

Peter flinched at the rough voice echoing in the darkness. Meg knew without looking his face would be blanched with terror, her eyes fixed on the glimmer bobbing towards them. Her own fear was so strong she could taste it, a sour metallic tang at the back of her throat, but she couldn’t afford to lose her nerve.

‘Keep still,’ she breathed, her mouth almost touching her younger brother’s cold ear. ‘Don’t move a muscle.’

She felt him tremble. The arm beneath her clenched fingers was still that of a boy, despite the manly airs he had tried to adopt since their father’s accident, and a flush of fierce protectiveness washed over her to rival her dread. He’d thought it his job to provide for his family now Pa could not, and she might have praised his sense of duty if it hadn’t led him into such danger, her repeated warnings falling on deaf ears.

‘I’m sorry, Meg. I didn’t mean—’

‘Quiet.’

The black shape of a dog broke through the scrub mere yards away, its huge head lifting to sniff the night air. All the gamekeepers on the newly enclosed Wellbourne estate favoured mastiffs as their enforcers, the dogs’ powerful jaws capable of crushing a man’s skull like an egg. What effect those terrible teeth would have on a boy’s fragile bones she shuddered to think, fresh fear climbing her gullet as the man on the other end of the straining lead shouted again.

‘Come out now or we’ll let the dog loose.’

Meg shrank back. They were well and truly trapped. A brace of pheasants wasn’t worth dying for, yet that was precisely the position Peter’s recklessness had thrust them into. When the old Lord Fernley had been alive, a couple of stolen birds would have earned nothing more than a stern look and a rap on the knuckles, especially if the offender had been a scrawny boy of barely thirteen, but the new Viscount was cut from a very different cloth than his father. Since Ralph, Lord Fernley had died and his son had taken over the estate, everything had changed and not for the better, the villagers who for generations had depended on the land to survive now facing a future bleaker than any before.

Everyone knew there was no hope of any mere strict talking to from Anthony Fernley if they crossed him. Only a month ago a group of angry, starving village men had resorted to stealing some of his pheasants the night before a shoot, and his fury when he’d realised had apparently been a sight to behold. Nobody could be prevailed upon to name the perpetrators, the evicted tenant farmers closing ranks to protect their own, and in his desire for vengeance the Viscount was itching to make an example of any scapegoat he could find. He cared nothing for the local people’s hunger, now they had been thrown off the land his father had promised they would always have a claim to, and he would have no qualms whatsoever about watching Peter swing from a gallows if it would cause other boys who might consider stealing from him to think twice.

Cold sweat rose on her palms as she watched the mastiff take another deep sniff. The thought of her brother with his neck in a noose made her stomach roil, but how could it be escaped? By the time she’d found him in the woods, he’d already had a pheasant in each hand, his defiant moonlit grin turning to an open-mouthed sag of horror when the first gamekeeper had come crashing through the trees. In fright he’d dropped the birds—but of course by then it had been too late.

A low growl issued from the dog’s leather-collared throat. Its heavy head swung from side to side as it searched among the trees, enormous paws planted in the fallen leaves. The salivating beast might catch wind of them at any moment and then all hope would be lost, savage justice coming for them either in the shape of a knotted rope or two rows of sharp teeth.

Meg exhaled shakily. She knew what had to be done. In the space between one frenzied heartbeat and the next, she made up her mind, and no amount of fear of the consequences could persuade her to change it.

‘I’m going to stand up,’ she murmured, her mouth so dry she was hardly able to frame the words. ‘When I start walking towards them, you’re going to run the other way, keeping as low as you can. Don’t stop and don’t look back, do you hear me? You start running and you keep running until you get back home.’

Peter recoiled as far as her vice-like grip on his arm would allow. ‘What? No! I can’t leave you!’

‘You will. You have to.’

She heard him gasp. He was going to argue—just as he always did, she thought with a flare of bleak affection—and she clamped her hand even tighter on his sleeve. ‘You have to go. If they take us both, there’ll be no one to help Pa. Do you want him to be left all alone?’

‘No, but—’

‘But nothing. I promised Ma I’d always take care of you. I don’t intend to go back on my word.’

She didn’t allow herself to glimpse his face. Seeing how it must have crumpled would make it impossible to walk away from him, any mention of the mother he could hardly remember always cutting deeply. There was no time for sentiment, however; the dog’s agitation was growing, its hackles now raised and in spite of everything that made her want to pull her brother closer, she instead let his arm slip from her grasp.

‘No. Meg, no!’

He tried to cling on as she began to crawl forward, his fingers tangling in her shawl. ‘Don’t go. This is all my fault. If I hadn’t come here—’

She shook him off, hating that the final moment between them had to be a rejection. ‘We’ve no time for that. Just do as I tell you.’

Her limbs didn’t want to work. She commanded them to carry her away from the tree but they wouldn’t obey, fear paralysing her as she watched the dog turn in her direction. It wouldn’t notice Peter as long as she posed a diversion, and with every last ounce of her strength she pushed herself to her feet.

‘Look! Over there!’

The gamekeeper’s voice was loud in the stillness of the night. Behind her Meg heard a crunch of leaves, as if Peter had stopped abruptly in his attempt to follow her, and in the brief pause while the man reined in his lunging dog she hissed over her shoulder.

‘Go now. Go on—run!’