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The man with the dog inched forward, although this time to plead rather than threaten. ‘Please, sir. We’ll lose our jobs if we do that. We all have families. How are we to feed them if we’ve no work?’
‘It’s true,’ the third man cut in quickly, snatching off his cap to look more sincere. ‘I’ve five children at home and my wife’s due our sixth. I couldn’t let them go hungry, sir.’
‘Nor I, sir. My youngest is ill and my eldest soon to be married. She’s a good girl; I need to be able to settle something on her when she goes.’
Jacob surveyed the desperate faces with the growing realisation that he was caught in an impossible trap. The only person not watching him was Meg, but he knew she was listening all the same, waiting with bated breath for him to decide where his mercy would fall.
He wrestled with the instinct to swear far more loudly than he had when he’d been riding. How had this happened? One moment he’d been cantering along with only the night for company, and the next Meg Wheeler had come crashing back into his life, and now he was being forced into a terrible choice. He either had to let her be taken for a crime he couldn’t believe she’d committed or make apparently countless children starve, a stark dilemma he had no idea how to avoid.
I don’t think I can.
It was the unhappy truth. The men were right: Anthony would dismiss them immediately if he so much as suspected they’d let a poacher escape. Their families would suffer, and what would stop them from coming after Meg in search of vengeance? The only thing he could do was to let them do their job, although that would mean…
He cleared his throat, what he was about to say leaving a bitter taste. ‘I suppose there’s little choice but to allow you to take her temporarily, just until this mistake can be righted. But know this…’ He paused to look each man full in the face, not having to do the same to Meg to know she had stiffened. ‘You’ll show the lady every respect. If I hear of any ill-treatment, losing your jobs will be the least of your troubles. Is that understood?’
The men mumbled in unison. Jacob caught a swift trade of sullen scowls, but the gamekeepers edged away to give Meg room to breathe, the one holding her arm letting go with a trace of reluctance.
‘Will you step aboard please, miss?’
The man indicated to the cart he had previously been trying to bundle her into. There was hesitation, a short moment of tension in which Jacob thought all five of them, including Meg herself, wondered whether she might try to run, but then with a flick of mud-spattered skirts she climbed up.
She arranged herself on the small seat, folding her hands neatly in her lap. She no longer kept her gaze on the ground; her head was up and if he hadn’t been able to see how her lower lip trembled in the moonlight Jacob might have believed she wasn’t afraid at all.
The clearly relieved men set about readying the horse and, under cover of the burst of activity, Jacob stepped alongside the cart.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said shortly, attempting to concentrate on speaking but abruptly aware he was close enough to smell the scent of damp earth on her hair. The desire to smooth it back from her face was overwhelming, the soft curve of her cheek beneath the dark curtain so familiar it made his breath hitch, but he knew any right he’d once had to touch her had been revoked when she’d broken her promise and left him alone. ‘I’ll speak to Anthony at once. I’m certain there must be a way to resolve this.’
‘Are you certain?’
For the first time in their uncomfortable reunion, Meg smiled. It wasn’t the bright one he remembered, however. This one was bleak and almost pitying, as if she knew something he didn’t, and it sent a skewer of ice right through to his heart.
‘All that time spent away studying, and yet still you understand so little.’
To his horror, he thought he glimpsed something sparkling among her eyelashes, but then the driver climbed aboard and with a twitch of a whip she was borne away.
Her last words were thrown at him from over her shoulder.
‘Welcome home, Mr Fernley. I’m sure the Viscount will be glad to have you back.’
Chapter Two
‘Out of the question.’
Anthony, current Viscount Fernley and self-appointed master of all he surveyed, continued reading his book, barely bothering to look up as he sipped his glass of expensive wine. ‘I won’t pardon that woman. If I show mercy to one thief, the rest will think me weak. Is that what you want?’
Jacob’s gloved hands tightened on the back of the sofa he stood behind. He still wore the clothes he’d ridden in for miles and he knew he probably smelled of horse and sweat but he hadn’t stopped to change, instead striding inside Wellbourne House, tracking his brother to the library and bursting in unannounced.
Now he stared down at Anthony as he sat in a chair beside the fire, the Viscount so unmoved by what he’d just been told that Jacob longed to fling him out of the nearest window—open or closed. That wouldn’t help Meg, however. At that very moment she was alone and afraid, perhaps suffering rough handling as she was shoved into some dark, dirty cell, and the horror the image conjured in him forced him to guard his tongue.
‘Do I want you to appear weak? No. Merciful? Yes.’
Anthony peered up at him irritably. Entering the library uninvited probably hadn’t been the best way to make him see reason but there was no time for delays. The longer Meg languished in jail, the more distressed she’d become, although by the look on Anthony’s face it seemed he was in the mood for an argument.
‘Mercy and weakness are the same thing. She’s a threat to my property and for that she deserves the noose. It’s as simple as that. Why are you concerning yourself?’
Jacob’s heart skipped a nauseous beat, the thought of Meg’s elegant, velvet-skinned neck against coarse rope making him shudder.
Surely it couldn’t come to that?
