“You’d best rethink your position, my lord,” Maitland hissed. “Because you might not give a damn about Anne Shelley, but if you force my hand I will have to find a pressure point that will matter to you. You can bet your life on that.”

He pivoted and stormed out of the bar. Reynolds shot Jasper a look and hurried after their foe as Jasper righted Maitland’s abandoned seat and sank back into his own chair with a long sigh. That had gone badly and now he had more questions than ever. And more fears when it came to Anne.

He sat for half an hour watching the door, waiting for Reynolds. When his man of affairs returned to the bar, Jasper almost sagged in relief. Reynolds took the seat Maitland had left and met his eyes. He shook his head slightly.

“Gone, eh?” Jasper said. “You couldn’t track him?”

“Just for a bit,” Reynolds said softly, apology in his stare. “I think he knew I was tailing him. He disappeared into a crowd and then he was smoke on the wind.”

Jasper scrubbed a hand over his face. “He won’t be found again unless he wishes to be, I’d wager. My brother involved himself with a much more dangerous set than I gave him credit for.”

“I think that might be true. Did Maitland give you any clues about Anne’s whereabouts?”

Jasper’s heart sank. “No. I tried to persuade him that she meant nothing to me and couldn’t be used as a bargaining chip. Hopefully he’ll abandon his plot for her and allow her to escape. My stomach turns at the idea that he could…he could hurt her.”

Reynolds nodded slowly. “It is a possibility. But we know she’s not with him right now—she got sent off in a boat with someone else. Let me do some research here, send some resources to Scotland and track them if I can.”

Jasper swallowed. “Yes. Do that. I must do everything I can to find her. She’s only endangered because of me. And Thomasina is…” He trailed off as he thought of the fear in his new fiancée’s eyes every time she considered her sister’s fate.

Reynolds gave him a strange look but said, “I will do everything in my power to discover her and return her if I can, my lord.”

“Then I will go home,” Jasper said as he got up and tossed some blunt on the table for the barmaid. “And marry the woman whose fortune will pay for it all. Like the fucking bastard that I am.”

Reynolds’ forehead wrinkled at that statement and he cocked his head. “You weren’t the bastard in this, Harcourt,” he said softly. “You’re just trying to clean up his mess.”

Jasper bent his head because for a moment an image of his brother popped into his mind. Not as a thirty-year-old wastrel Jasper had come to resent, but as an eight-year-old with a crooked smile and a fishing pole. The older half-brother who had taught Jasper to climb a tree and do a cartwheel.