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Warmth climbed the back of Meg’s neck. When he stood so close to her, his eyes locked on hers, it roused something in her she had long thought dead. It took her back to the days when they had twined together in long grass beneath spreading trees and wanted nothing more than to breathe each other in, hands roaming and kisses trailing over heated skin. She’d wanted them to last for ever, but the clock couldn’t be turned back, and the lessons she’d learned since then couldn’t be forgotten.

Folding his arms over the front of his shirt once more, he looked down at her. He was taller than she remembered, definitely a man now rather than a boy, but that wasn’t the only thing that had changed.

Meg laced her fingers together, deliberately avoiding his searching gaze. She had two very different options to consider and it was difficult to think while he watched her, an imposing figure she had never thought to be in the presence of again.

He had spoken of duty and obligation, and she should be under no illusion his offer to her was anything but. It was a way for him to assuage his guilt and nothing more, a cruelly ironic distortion of what she had once dreamed of. There was no love involved on his part, just as she was determined was the case on hers, but couldn’t some good still come from such a match—hollow and empty, yes, but a lifeline if she chose to allow herself to be saved?

It would have some undeniable benefits. As a rich man’s wife, she’d be ideally placed to help the villagers, perhaps able to influence change for the better, and wouldn’t that be worth any discomfort on her side? Peter wouldn’t have to grow up without her, and nor would Pa have to sit and look at her empty chair, broken inside by the loss of another daughter taken too young. She could spare them the heartache of having to visit another grave alongside those of her mother and the siblings born sleeping, and that alone was enough to help her decide her fate.

‘Very well. I suppose, if this is the only avenue left open to me… I accept.’

Chapter Three

The head warden’s rooms were almost as dingy as the rest of the prison despite his hasty assurances that they were the finest available, although it struck Meg that he would have said just about anything to get his hands on the guinea Jacob had offered in exchange for their use. The warden now sat at a table near the door beside a bored-looking woman who was probably his wife, both of them waiting for the shabbily dressed minister who had been borrowed from the debtors’ quarters to finish his work.

Things had moved so fast that Meg’s head spun as she stammered her vows.

There had been no time to lose. The magistrate could have summoned her at any moment, driven by the malice Anthony would have dripped in his ear, and so now, hardly more than an hour after Jacob had arrived at the prison, he was sliding a ring onto her finger, procured from some poor unfortunate only too happy to swap it for yet another of his coins. Promises had been made and the witnesses were prepared to stand by what they had seen, and in the span of a few unbelievable minutes Meg somehow found herself a newly married woman.

Staring down at the unfamiliar flash of gold on her left hand, she asked the obvious question. ‘This is binding? Even without the banns and licence, is the marriage legal?’

‘Completely, ma’am.’ The spendthrift minister nodded, clearly more interested in the heavy purse he had just been presented with than easing the bride’s fears. ‘Clandestine, certainly, but valid nonetheless.’

‘I can scarcely believe it.’ Meg moved her finger back and forth, watching with amazement as the ring caught the light. ‘What will my father say? And the rest of the village?’

‘I would suggest you don’t tell them.’

She glanced up at Jacob. He was very close, his head bowed slightly due to the room’s low ceiling, and her already raised pulse skipped quicker. He’d barely touched her as he’d slipped her wedding ring into place but even the lightest brush of his fingertip had made her heart hammer, and still it raced, the fact he was now her lawfully wedded husband making her feel so lightheaded that she feared she might faint.

The husband in question didn’t look entirely at ease either. Whether the magnitude of what he’d done had just dawned on him, or he was perhaps regretting his good deed, she didn’t know, although his voice was no less steady than before.

‘We need to try to keep the gossips at bay for now. Let your father in on our secret, if you wish, but no one else. The more people that know your identity, the greater the chance Anthony’s friends will hear some whisper of it, and as your safety depends on us holding his reputation to ransom we can’t risk our winning card.’

His answer made sense but she couldn’t seem to find the right words to agree. The only ones she could think of were those he had just delivered so quietly that no one else could have heard them, and they repeated themselves endlessly as she turned them over inside her head.

We need…

Our secret…

She wanted to sit down, her legs so weak she had to lean against the faded wall. Everything he had just said suggested a partnership, a sense of belonging that was dangerously appealing, and she had to act quickly to remind herself of the truth.

There’s no substance to this marriage. He suggested it out of guilt and duty, and I only agreed to save my neck.

The vague dizziness she was holding back grew suddenly more insistent. Was she really safe from the noose, as Jacob had promised? Or had she just made a catastrophic mistake, destined to go to her death in a cloud of confusion and stirred up memories that would steal her last moment of peace?

Jacob’s keen eyes missed nothing. ‘You’ve gone pale. Here. Sit beside the fire.’

Before she could fend him off, he took her arm, steering her towards a shabby chair by the hearth. Something in her thrilled at the minute contact of his fingers on her sleeve but it was over almost before she could blink, her legs folding under her the second he let go.

He knelt in front of her. ‘Do you need me to send for something? A drink or something to eat?’

‘No, no.’ Meg waved him away, acutely conscious that while she sat and he crouched their faces were almost perfectly level. She could have looked directly into his eyes if she’d wanted to, and the temptation was fierce, beaten only by the worrying desire to let her attention slip down to his mouth. ‘I’m fine. This just… This isn’t how I’d expected this morning to develop.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Jacob sat back on his heels, his hands hanging between his knees. ‘So far, I felt everything was going according to plan.’

‘What plan?’

He didn’t answer. The only sign he gave that he had heard her was a wry half-smile that caught her beneath her breastbone, the uptick of his lips more resigned than amused.