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He hadn’t touched that warm nape for half a decade but that hadn’t stopped him from thinking about it almost every day since he’d left. There had been plenty of other women while he’d toured the Continent after finishing his education, but none of them had made him forget the one he’d truly wanted, although he’d certainly made it his business to try.

As a Viscount’s son he could have given Meg a life of enviable privilege, so for her to jilt him so completely meant the fault must have lain solely within him. There had to have been something wrong with him that had caused her to turn away, despite everything he had to offer, and that knowledge had sliced him down to the bone. The feeling of inadequacy had followed him to university, dogging him until he’d decided enough was enough: if he was deficient, he would simply become someone else, someone less blindly optimistic and certainly more guarded.

His efforts to transform himself had not been in vain. Seeing the harsh conditions of peasant settlements up close in France had broadened his formerly narrow horizons, just as speaking with farmers in Switzerland had given him a better understanding of how land was worked. Taking painting lessons in Italy had helped develop his artistic eye, while learning to charm the blushing models had been an education of a different kind…

Winning the women so fascinated by his newly developed worldliness had felt like hollow victories, however. No matter how many smiles he’d exchanged, or lingering touches he’d bestowed, it was always Meg to whom his thoughts had inevitably turned, the girl his father had tried to warn him off as a boy still at the forefront of his mind as a man.

Good old Father. He thought I ought to stay away from her because of the difference in our stations, and that it would be discourteous for me to lead her on where there was no hope we could wed, when the real reason should have been that she’d end up stamping on my heart.

Looking down at the new Viscount, Jacob supressed a grimace of contempt. It was a good thing Anthony had no idea of what had happened in the past. He would be disgusted a local girl had ever dared set her cap at a member of the nobility—that alone deserving of punishment in his eyes—while the opportunity to hurt his younger half-brother would be too great a temptation to resist. Ordering the hanging or transportation of his rival’s first love would be a colossal coup in Anthony’s one-sided war, so Jacob said nothing to assist such a thing, hoping with every unspoken word to shield Meg from malice she didn’t deserve.

‘I’m concerning myself,’ he answered curtly, ‘because her crime, and the sentence that follows it, would be due to your actions—you, who now represents our family, which unfortunately includes me. It was your decision to enclose the land that made people desperate and hungry enough to steal. What did you expect would happen?’

At last Anthony set aside his book, laying it down on the arm of his chair with an angry slap. ‘I expected them to respect me and my property, just as they did Father. The land is mine to do with whatever I wish. Why is that so hard for you to grasp?’

‘Respect is earned, not demanded,’ Jacob countered. ‘The locals thought highly of Father because he treated them fairly. You can’t throw people off the land they’ve farmed for generations and then be offended when they don’t kiss your boots as you pass.’

His brother’s lips drew into a disparaging smirk. ‘What would you know of that? You can’t possibly understand. While you were at university and then galivanting around Europe I was learning how to run an estate and do justice to the title that would be mine. It’ll all pass to my son one day—when Isabella finally obliges in presenting one—and he will be wealthier for my changes. A few unhoused peasants are a small price to pay for greatness, as you would see if you weren’t always so confoundedly soft-hearted.’

Jacob tried, and failed, to keep derision from his voice. ‘Is that what you wish to leave as your legacy? More money in the coffers but at the expense of humanity?’

‘Humanity?’ Somehow Anthony managed to make a single word hold a world of scorn. ‘Grow up, Jacob. I’ve said my piece. I won’t repeat it.’

He snatched up his book again and disappeared behind it. It seemed pointless to try to continue the conversation and yet Jacob had to give one final try, Meg’s life hanging by a thread he couldn’t allow to snap.

He itched to shake Anthony by the throat until he agreed to do what was right. Like most cowardly men, his brother relished any bit of power, and he loved to use his rank to try to gain the upper hand. If all the layers of Anthony’s psyche were peeled back, Jacob suspected a core of fear and envy as deep as the sea would be revealed, and even as he was halfway through his sentence he knew appealing to the Viscount’s better nature was as futile as trying to hold back the tide.

‘A woman may die because of you. Will you really let her blood fall on your hands?’

The book gave an ill-tempered twitch. ‘She spilled her own blood the moment she decided to steal from me. Perhaps her fate will save others from making the same mistake.’

Jacob backed away from his brother’s chair. If he had remained any closer, he wouldn’t have been able to prevent himself from seizing his brother by the collar and throwing him to the ground, but for that humiliation Meg’s fate would have been irreversibly sealed.

‘I see your decision is made. As you won’t oblige me in freeing her, I shall have to do so myself.’

‘You can try.’ Anthony sounded so smug that Jacob had to clasp his hands behind his back to restrain himself from leaping forward once again. ‘Don’t forget I am the Viscount, brother. My word is law. I think you’ll soon see there’s nothing you can do to get around it, no matter how much you might wish to champion people you barely know.’

Jacob didn’t trust himself to reply. If he let himself speak he might say more that he should, perhaps asserting that rather than being some stranger Meg was in fact the person he’d once cared for most in the world; but that would place her in even more peril than she was already, and so instead he turned away, striding from the room and closing the door behind him before he lost his head completely and punched Anthony square in the mouth.

Out on the landing, he rubbed his aching eyes.

What in hell am I supposed to do now?

Sickening hopelessness swirled inside him and he angrily batted it away. He had to think clearly and he couldn’t do that if he allowed emotion to cloud his mind, but it was near impossible to stop himself from sliding towards dismay.

He didn’t love her any longer. He did not. Any desire to save her was based in common decency and nothing more, and he wouldn’t have been persuaded to say anything different even if he’d been forced to walk through fire. He would never be idiotic enough to care for her in that way again after she’d tossed his devotion aside without a word of explanation as to why, but even so he couldn’t just abandon her to the wretched fate Anthony had in store.

I could easily beat him to a pulp in a fist fight, but it’s true that as Viscount he has the final say as to what happens to poachers caught on his land.

He passed a hand over his face, feeling grit thrown up from the road during his long ride still speckling his cheeks. Letting the gamekeepers take her had been a mistake. He had allowed that to happen, so it followed it was now up to him to right the wrong. Any other man would have done the same—except, of course, for his brother—and it didn’t at all mean he was still at Meg’s mercy. She had no power over him now and nothing he did would mean anything different; which was just as well, considering the lone idea that had sprung, unbidden, into his mind.

He realised he was pacing alone on the empty landing, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to stop.

There was only one possible route of escape he could think of and the likelihood of her accepting it was surely close to nil, he thought grimly. It would mean her putting aside whatever reservations she’d had that had made her reject him five years before, and of course his own sense of self-preservation told him loudly it was a disastrous plan.

Quite frankly the notion currently taking shape in his head was a terrible scheme all round—but it was the only one he had, and he found he couldn’t disregard it, that fragile, faltering spark of an idea making him begrudgingly slow the speed of his pacing until at last he came to a resigned halt.

Huddled in a darkened corner, Meg pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. The straw she sat on was filthy and a rank smell hung in the air, the cloying musk of stale sweat and tobacco smoke making her want to retch. There were far too many people crammed into the already cramped cell and the din of babies crying and raised voices was almost unbearable, the racket punctuated by hacking coughs and frequent arguments breaking out among the other prisoners.