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‘Alfred, my lady,’ he gulped anxiously. ‘Alfred Tanner.’

‘Mr Tanner.’ Meg nodded kindly, trying to make him look at her rather than the intimidating figure behind her. ‘I have no ill will towards you. I simply want the chance to clear my name.’

Alfred peered at her worriedly. She felt a flit of guilt at having brought him outside the tavern only to be ambushed by Jacob, but there was nothing else she could have done. After what he had admitted, she couldn’t have let him go, the nervous man the only way for them to find out the truth.

‘I understand you’re frightened. I know what it’s like to be at the mercy of a powerful man, but my husband is powerful too. He can protect you from whatever malice your master might intend.’ She glanced backwards. ‘You would be willing to take Mr Tanner into your employ, wouldn’t you, Jacob, if he had to leave his current post?’

‘Yes.’ Jacob’s face was still grave but some of the ire had ebbed, his heart too soft to maintain undeserved anger for long. ‘Your loyalty is misplaced at present but admirable all the same. It’s a quality I welcome in my household.’

Turning back to Alfred, Meg nodded again, this time even more encouragingly. ‘Do you see? You have nothing to fear by telling the truth. Your conscience would be clear and you would be able to save enough money to marry your sweetheart—Agnes, was it?—as planned.’

Alfred’s lowered head rose a fraction. Clearly the prospect of wedding Agnes was of the greatest importance. Dropping his beloved’s name was apparently the key to unlocking whatever secrets he was keeping, as for the first time since he’d come stumbling into the tavern Meg saw a spark of hope in his eye.

‘Would I have your word about that, sir?’ he asked cautiously. ‘If I were to speak, could I trust all would be as you say?’

‘Yes.’ Jacob regarded him solemnly. ‘You have my vow.’

Tension flooded Meg as she watched Alfred consider his next move. They couldn’t make him talk. If he decided to keep silent, there would be little they could do about it, aside perhaps from dragging him before Sir Edward, and that would surely lead to trouble of its own. The magistrate might pursue a murder charge and then poor Alfred would find himself facing the noose, and she refused to send the wretched man to his death when it was someone else who had forced his hand.

‘Well, if that was the case, I suppose… I suppose it’s my duty make things right…’

Fiddling uneasily with his cuffs, Alfred’s eyes darted to the darkened treeline and back again, checking nobody was around to overhear. His next survey was of the Duck and Drake’s closed door, but again there was nothing to see, only lamplight streaming from the windows occasionally punctuated by the passing shadows of those still inside. Beneath the moon there was nobody but Jacob, Meg and him, and she had to remind herself to breathe as he lowered his voice and released the truth into the waiting night.

‘My master is Sir Henry Bambrough, my lord. It was he who ordered me to take a saw to the axle of the late Viscount’s gig.’

Jacob fell back as though he’d been bitten. ‘Bambrough? Henry Bambrough is the man?’

The name meant nothing to Meg, but his reaction sent her reaching quickly for his hand. He looked as though he needed an anchor, his disbelief segueing immediately into visible confusion that seemed to shake him to the core.

‘But—but why? What possible reason did he have to wish my brother dead?’

Alfred resumed his fretful fiddling with the buttons on his sleeves. ‘I believe I may know the answer to that, my lord. Only…please don’t be angry with me if I tell you.’

Meg shot Jacob an urgent look. He was staring at Alfred, apparently too stunned to make any such promise, and she hastily spoke in his stead. ‘He won’t. You can be assured of it.’

The other man didn’t seem completely happy with her pledge, but he summoned enough courage to take a chance on it.

‘I work in the stables as one of Sir Henry’s grooms,’ he said uncertainly, still eyeing Jacob nervously. ‘About six months ago Lady Bambrough came to me and requested that I begin readying a horse for her each afternoon while Sir Henry took his after-luncheon nap. I’m sure you know she’s a good deal younger than him, my lord, and so I assumed she wanted to go riding to entertain herself as he slept. It never occurred to me she might be meeting someone on these outings…until one day, when Sir Henry ordered me to follow her without being seen.’

Alfred looked pained. ‘I didn’t want to act as his spy, but of course I had little choice. I tailed Lady Bambrough into the woods not far from here, and I’m afraid I saw something not meant for my eyes.’ He peered swiftly at Meg, a different kind of awkwardness now emanating from him. ‘She was meeting someone. I won’t say what I witnessed in the woods, out of respect for the lady now present, only that it wasn’t something a married woman ought to have been doing with a man not her husband.’

‘And the man?’ Jacob spoke from between gritted teeth. ‘Was it…?’

‘Yes, my lord. I’m afraid it was your brother.’ Alfred’s tone held a mountain of regret. ‘I recognised him at once. He’d called at the house once or twice and I’d admired the horse he rode. I would have known it even if I hadn’t remembered him.’

Meg could never have been as shocked as Jacob by what she’d heard, but all the same she couldn’t quite absorb what she was being told. ‘Anthony was having an affair with this Sir Henry’s wife? That’s why…?’

‘I can believe it,’ Jacob replied ominously. ‘Anthony always had a taste for attractive women, especially if they were already spoken for. It was his vice—just as Sir Henry’s is jealousy.’

Still holding Meg’s hand, she felt his fingers tighten. ‘He’s known for watching his wife like a hawk. Lady Bambrough is a handsome lady at least twenty years his junior. It’s no secret she married him for his fortune, and he her for her good looks, and he guards her as though he fears someone might try to steal her at any moment. I can well believe he’d be capable of wanting any rival permanently removed.’

His face was so hard it might have been carved from stone. There was no suggestion yet of any relief at finally having learned the truth, his countenance so forbidding Meg had to wonder if she’d misunderstood.

‘So now we know what happened,’ she ventured tentatively. ‘Sir Henry made Mr Tanner tamper with the gig. Surely we just have to tell that to Sir Edward, and he’ll make sure justice is done?’

‘If only it was so simple.’

Releasing her hand to clasp both of his frustratedly behind his head, Jacob gave a bitter laugh. ‘Sir Henry is one of the wealthiest men in the county. He has friends in and connections to every influential family from here to Scotland, including my own. The chances of any court convicting him, or of Sir Edward even considering pursuing a charge, are lower than me being crowned queen.’