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An icy blade slid between Meg’s ribs. ‘But you’re a viscount. That must count for something?’
‘It does. It means Sir Henry will never be able to challenge me, just as I can’t challenge him,’ Jacob answered bleakly. ‘I’ll be able to keep Alfred safe, as I promised, but it would be pointless to hope to see Bambrough pay for what he’s done.’
‘Oh.’
A fragile seedling of hope had dared to sprout inside her, but it withered and died at the granite set of Jacob’s mouth. He didn’t look like a man who was satisfied by what he’d heard, and as she watched his face close in on itself the truth hit her like a kick to the stomach.
‘Then it’s all over,’ she said dully. ‘If we can’t name Anthony’s killer, we have no chance of clearing my name either. The annulment will have to go ahead.’
The punishing blow of reality almost made her double over. She shouldn’t have allowed any hope to creep in and she knew herself to have made a mistake as she felt it shatter, its broken shards driving painfully into her heart. She’d clung on by her fingertips, but now even that forlorn possibility was gone, and as the night-time chill reached its tendrils down the back of her neck she found herself wishing she had never followed Peter from the cottage in the first place.
Jacob didn’t reply. His expression was ambiguous in the moonlight, and if she hadn’t been so consumed by despair she might have been surprised that when he did speak it was to Alfred rather than her.
‘Thank you, Mr Tanner. You’ve done me a great service by being so honest. Feel free to go back to Sir Henry’s and collect your things. I’ll expect you at Wellbourne House’s stables in two days’ time.’
Alfred’s formerly apprehensive face lit up. ‘Yes, my lord. Thank you.’
He bowed hurriedly and then hastened away, scurrying off into the darkness as if he feared Jacob might change his mind. For a few seconds Meg could hear him rustling through the undergrowth but then silence fell again, only the whispering of leaves remaining to tell her she and Jacob were alone.
She pulled her cloak around her more closely, although it did nothing to ward off the cold wending its way through her bones. The crawl of icy hopelessness couldn’t be stopped by any earthly warmth; but then Jacob unexpectedly slid an arm around her.
‘It isn’t over.’
Gently he gathered her to him. She knew she ought to pull away but his familiar touch was too good to resist, being held again after a week apart making her feel as though she’d escaped from a dark cellar into bright sunlight. She wanted to cling to him for ever but knowing she had to give him up instead was an agonising wrench, one that grew even more painful when he bent his head to study her ashen face.
‘It is. Everything’s finished,’ she burst out, her eyes burning with unshed tears. ‘You know as well as I do that there’s nothing else to be done.’
Jacob didn’t loosen his hold on her. To her bewilderment, he didn’t look as devastated as she might have imagined he would at the realisation their marriage was in tatters, but she had no opportunity to wonder at it before he gave her the most surprising of weary smiles.
‘That’s not true. I may not be able to get the justice for Anthony that I wish for, but I do still have an idea of how we can clear your name.’
‘What?’ Meg stared at him, tears still glittering on her lashes. ‘How? What do you mean?’
He didn’t answer her question. Instead, with breathtaking tenderness he set a finger under her chin, tilting her head up so their noses were hardly a few centimetres apart.
‘Don’t go back to Lark Cottage. Come with me instead.’
Confused by his surely misplaced confidence, and flustered by his touch, she could barely think of anything but how close Jacob’s lips were to hers. ‘I—I can’t,’ she stammered. ‘Pa will be worried if I’m not there in the morning.’
‘I’ll help you explain to him. Hopefully by the time he realises you’re missing my plan will have borne fruit.’
‘What plan?’
He silenced her with another smile she didn’t understand. He ought to have been as wounded by disappointment as she was, but somehow the light hadn’t vanished from his eyes—and the final thing she heard before he kissed her were seven words from a man who wasn’t yet ready to admit defeat.
‘I’ll tell you on the way home.’
The next morning dawned cold and clear, and as he entered the dining room for breakfast Jacob was ready for battle.
Meg didn’t seem quite so convinced, but he had enough self-assurance for both of them. The night they had just shared, reunited at last in the heated privacy of their bed, had made him more determined than ever before not to be parted from her again, and now nothing—and no one—could stand in his way.
This has to work. There’s simply no alternative.
Isabella glanced up as the door opened. With Celia cradled against her shoulder with one hand and a heaped forkful of scrambled egg in the other, she looked supremely content, although her face fell the second she spied Meg coming into the room behind him.
‘What is she doing here?’
Jacob braced himself against a surge of wrath. Exploiting Meg’s absence from Wellbourne House and his own distractedness Isabella had begun trying to behave as though she were its mistress once more, and he felt a rush of satisfaction at the prospect of putting her right.
