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What was that?

It had come from the direction in which Anthony had disappeared. A bend in the road prevented her from seeing anything but she could have sworn the yell was in his voice, and instinctively she found herself breaking into a run.

Without thinking, she emerged from the trees and followed the road round to the left, her skirts held out away from her flashing feet. Her heart had begun to leap faster and she felt it thudding beneath her bodice as she ran, both from exertion and apprehension as to what she might be about to see. He’d sounded as though he was in pain and, despite her loathing of him, she couldn’t ignore it, sparing him far more consideration than he would have done for her if the situation were reversed…

The moment she turned the corner she felt herself blanch.

Anthony’s gig was lying on its side, the axel snapped clean in two. His horse had somehow managed to right itself and stood between the twisted shafts, although its eyes were wide and frightened and it looked as though it might rear at the smallest provocation. It was a scene of the most appalling damage, with bits of wood and metal scattered about the road, but it was the figure stretched out a short distance from the still-turning wheels that made her choke on a gasp.

With mindless haste she ran to kneel at Anthony’s side. He lay on his back, one arm outstretched, and his fingers twitched as she seized his hand, his rapidly blinking eyes fixing on her without a word. A pool of blood slowly forming behind his head made the goriest of halos and he seemed to be struggling to breathe, a horrible rattle issuing from his trembling lips every time he snatched a breath.

Desperately Meg cast around. What should she do? He needed a doctor now but surely she couldn’t go herself? He watched her mutely, apparently unable to speak, and ice replaced the blood in her veins when she realised he was looking to her to save him, all suggestion of malice gone to be replaced by the starkest fear.

‘Don’t worry.’ Her hand shook as she loosened his cravat, helplessly trying to make him more comfortable. ‘Everything will be well. I’ll go to the house and fetch someone. You just lie here, and I’ll be back at once.’

She tried to stand. The hem of her skirts trailed through the blood seeping into the dry ground and she snatched them up, although she wasn’t given the chance to move away.

Anthony’s grip on her fingers was surprisingly strong. ‘Don’t leave me.’

Each rasped word seemed to cause him agony. His pleading was somehow worse than the sight of the vivid crimson spreading around his head, and Meg hesitated, queasiness taking hold of her as she gazed down into his pale face.

‘You need help. If I don’t go to fetch some, I’m afraid you may die.’

He didn’t reply. All his strength must have gone into that one fraught entreaty and now he merely stared back at her, his blue eyes—so like Jacob’s—never leaving hers. The light in them was dimming and she felt her head swim as she realised what was about to happen, the most awful nightmare unfolding even as a new day came to life around them.

Carefully she knelt down again. Anthony’s head jerked, perhaps in a nod of unexpected gratitude, and then he fell still, his chest rising and falling on increasingly shallow breaths but all other movement beyond him. He looked at her for a few seconds, perhaps half a minute at most—and then his eyes drifted skyward, and as all animation left them Meg knew he had gone.

‘Dead?’

Half-asleep and fully bewildered, Jacob stared at the footman who’d been acting as his valet. ‘How? When?’

‘This very hour, sir. Mrs Fernley says he met with an accident on the road to Hayworth village. She was with him when he died.’

‘What?’ He pushed himself up from his bedclothes to look more closely at the valet. Was the man drunk? There was no way what he was saying could be true, and yet his hushed tone didn’t suggest a lie. ‘This is— I don’t understand. Where is she? Where is my wife?’

‘Downstairs, sir.’ The servant respectfully bowed his head. ‘The Viscountess became somewhat hysterical and has shut herself in her rooms. Mrs Fernley, therefore, has taken over instructing the doctor and seeing that all of your late brother’s guests leave the house. I’m very sorry, sir. Please accept my most heartfelt sympathies.’

Jacob opened his mouth to ask another question, but nothing came out. His disbelief ran too deep for him to succeed in voicing it and instead he threw off the blankets without another word.

He didn’t wait for his valet to help him dress. Snatching up his dressing gown, he strode from the room, caring nothing for the stares and calls of guests out in the corridor as they and their luggage were shepherded towards the stairs. He brushed past them as though they weren’t there, finding Meg and learning what the hell was really going on the sole thought in his mind.

Anthony couldn’t be dead. It was frankly impossible. He’d been alive and well just the night before—but, if what the valet said was somehow true, why on earth had Meg, of all people, been there when he’d died?

A buzz of activity seemed to be emanating from the drawing room when he reached the hall and immediately he moved towards it. The door was partially blocked by a cluster of servants but they stepped aside at his approach, bobbing curtsies and offering condolences as he shouldered past them into the room.

‘Meg?’

She turned round at his voice. She was standing near the window, deep in conversation with the old Fernley family doctor, but the moment she saw him she lurched forward and pitched herself into his arms.

‘I’m so sorry, Jacob. There was nothing I could do…’

Dazedly he held her, feeling how tightly she clung to him. Usually having her so close would be a pleasure, but nothing seemed to register, even the doctor’s sympathetic murmur as he tactfully withdrew from the room falling on strangely deaf ears.

What he did realise was that they were now alone. Dr Pryce had closed the door behind him, shutting out the servants milling about in the hall, and for only the second time since he’d left his bed Jacob managed to speak.

‘What happened? Why didn’t you wake me at once?’

‘I couldn’t.’ Meg took a step back to better look up at him, her eyes huge and tragic and almost as overcome with incomprehension as he imagined his must be. ‘There was no time. Everything just… It was all so fast.’