In Pursuit Of Eliza Cynster

by Stephanie Laurens

  There was, quite a picturesque one built of rosy bricks and gray stone, with twin arches spanning the wide river. They rattled across, then turned right along the southern bank. At an intersection a little way along, a signpost directed them straight on to Melrose.

  The sun was sliding down the sky behind them, throwing their shadows ahead of the gig.

  “Melrose should be no more than a mile further on.” Jeremy glanced at Eliza. “Do you have any suggestions for what we should do — where we should seek accommodation?”

  She thought, then said, “It’s unlikely that the laird or Scrope will be waiting for us in the town, is it?”

  “I wouldn’t expect them to have come this way. They’re either waiting for us further on or have lost our trail entirely, given up, and gone home.”

  “I hope it’s the latter,” she returned with feeling. “However, as they won’t be in Melrose, there’s nothing to stop us driving around the town. Once we see what’s available, we can make our choice.”

  Jeremy nodded. “Sound thinking.” After a moment, he added, “I’ve heard that the ruins attract quite a lot of interest. There might be smaller places we can stay — lodgings rather than putting up at an inn. If Scrope or the laird do happen this way, they’re less likely to look for us in such places.”

  “Ruins?” Eliza looked at him. “What ruins?”

  In the end, nothing would do but for them to put up at a small lodging house directly opposite the ruins of the old abbey. After the landlady had shown them to their room and departed, Eliza stood at the window and stared out. “Those are quite the most romantic ruins I’ve ever seen.”

  “Scotland has quite a few romantic ruins.”

  She whirled to face him, her eyes alight. “Can we go and explore? We can, can’t we? It’s not nearly dark yet, and Mrs. Quiggs said dinner would be another hour and more.”

  There was no hope for him, he decided, looking into her animated face. “All right.” He waved her to the door, then fell in on her heels.

  They spent more than an hour clambering about the ruins. He knew more than enough of monastic life to satisfy her curiosity over this and that, over what the monks had used each area for, enough to explain the details of the architectural embellishments over which she oohed and aahed.

  He followed her as she wandered about, drank in her often rapturous expression, and was sincerely grateful there were no other visitors about to see and wonder at a youth who behaved so oddly.

  When at the last, with the light fading and the smells wafting from the kitchen of the lodging house luring them back, they crossed the lane from the abbey’s ancient graveyard, he caught Eliza’s eye.

  She arched her brows in innocent query.

  “Don’t forget — you’re a youth, not a romantically inclined damsel.”

  She smiled another of her beaming smiles, then composed her features into a suitably bored mien. Facing forward, she slowed her steps, losing the exuberant bounce in her stride. Nearing Mrs. Quiggs’s door, she sighed, patted away a bogus yawn, then gruffly opined, “Well, that was unutterably boring. I hope the dinner’s better.”

  Suppressing an appreciative grin, he followed her into the house.

  At much the same hour, in a comfortable inn in St. Boswells at which he was well known, the laird sat down to a succulent dinner of fresh salmon, venison, partridge, baked ham, and leeks. There was an excellent burgundy to complement the food.

  All in all, he had nothing to complain about. Once he’d reached Gorebridge, losing Scrope hadn’t been hard. The man had very little sense of direction; McKinsey had led him straight through Gorebridge and continued eastward, along a lane that, if Scrope continued following it, would eventually see him back on the Great North Road. With any luck, Scrope would imagine McKinsey was still ahead of him and continue on that tack, believing their mutual quarry had cut across to take the usually preferred route to London.

  Well and good. Now all he had to do was keep watch tomorrow to see the fleeing pair come driving past, then fall in behind them and observe.

  In truth, given Eliza’s gentleman-rescuer’s behavior to date, he harbored little doubt of the caliber of the man. He’d acted decisively, intelligently, honorably, and effectively. From his single sighting of the fellow, he’d appeared well set up, handsome enough, and protective.

  He’d acted protectively, too. Just that one look across the cobbles of Penicuik’s high street had been enough to communicate the man’s view of Eliza. As far as her gentleman-rescuer was concerned, she was his.

  Which was something of a relief. As the outcome of the botched attempt to kidnap Heather Cynster had proved, the only effective means of shielding a kidnapped Cynster chit’s reputation was through marriage. In Eliza’s case, as it had been with Heather, the choice was between marriage to her rescuer, or marriage to him.

  While courtesy of that brief moment in Penicuik he had a fairly clear notion of where Eliza’s rescuer stood on that question, honor demanded he confirm Eliza’s view. Was she as happy with the prospect of marrying her rescuer as her rescuer was with the prospect of marrying her?

  With luck, his observations on the morrow would answer that question in the affirmative. Then … while he could pull back and head home to the highlands, honor appeased, he rather thought he’d see them safely over the border first.

  Assuming they’d be driving, once they were past him, the border wasn’t that far on. If everything fell out as he hoped, he’d be on his way north tomorrow afternoon.

  The meal concluded, the laird called for a whisky. When it came, he sat back, raised the glass in a silent toast to Eliza and her gentleman, wherever they were, then sipped and slowly savored, content for the night.

  Chapter Eleven

  t’s so wonderfully atmospheric.”

  Jeremy shut the door and turned to look at Eliza. She was standing by the window, its curtains parted, looking out — presumably at the abbey ruins. She’d set aside her coat and let down her hair; the honey-gold tresses swirled about her shoulders, clinging to the ivory silk of her shirtsleeves.

  On quitting their landlady’s dinner table, he’d elected to stretch his legs in a short stroll down the street, giving Eliza the privacy to wash and refresh herself in their room.

  “The moonlight gives it such a mysteriously melancholy air. I wonder if there are ghosts.” She glanced at him. “Perhaps the wind will moan through the ruined cloisters in the night.”

  “Don’t start hares — you’ll give yourself nightmares.”

  She grinned. After one last look at the view, she drew the curtains shut.

  He glanced at the bed, then looked away. It was a decent-sized bed with a thick mattress, wide enough to be deemed adequate to sleep both a tutor and his charge. Of course, given his and her disparate weights, he was very sure that if they stretched out on the mattress, she would end in his arms.

  Walking to the chest of drawers on which he’d left the saddlebags, he accepted his lack of resistance to the notion. He’d intended leaving the knives he’d carried since Penicuik with the bags, but he thought better of it and instead set both on the small table by the bed.

  Eliza had left two candles burning, one on each bedside table.

  He glanced across as, with a sigh, she sat on the mattress, her back to him, and leaned down to ease off her boots.

  His eyes on the fall of her hair, gleaming a deeper gold in the candlelight, he hesitated, then diffidently said, “If you’d rather, I can sleep on the floor.”

  She swung around so abruptly that her hair fanned out around her. She narrowed her eyes on his face. “I thought we’d settled such nonsense at the woodcutter’s hut.”

  He read her certainty in her face, in the belligerence in her gaze, lightly shrugged. “I just thought I should offer.”

  Lips firming, she nodded. “Duly noted, and thank you, but no.” Turning away, she added, “I’d rather you slept in the bed. With me.”

  He studied the back of her bent
head for a moment, then shook his and turned away. Shrugging out of his greatcoat, he set it over a nearby chair, eased out of his coat and waistcoat and set them aside, too, then unwound his cravat. He sat on the bed to pull off his boots, just as her second boot hit the floor.

  She blew out her candle, then rolled onto her back and stretched out full length behind him. He heard and felt her rustle about; setting one of his boots down, he glanced briefly over his shoulder. She’d settled on top of the quilt, her hands folded over her waist, her head sunk in the soft pillow, her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  She looked like she was thinking … perhaps planning.

  Bending to pull off his other boot, he tried to predict what.

  What she was thinking, what she was planning.

  What might come next.

  He was all but certain as to their eventual destination — the altar seemed difficult to avoid. What he wasn’t so certain of was the route by which they’d get there. They seemed to have embarked on an adventure running parallel to the physical one, that went with it hand in hand. An adventure into the unknown, for him even more, he suspected, than her.

  Lust was something he’d felt before, but it had previously been a minor distraction, sometimes inconvenient, sometimes less so, yet always an itch he’d been able to ignore if he wished. But the desire he felt for her, and the way it was escalating, hour by hour, incident by incident — that was something new.

  Something compulsive, a near-obsession that had a disturbing power to fix his mind on her. On having her.

  And while that left him uncomfortable, in more ways than one, it also sparked his curiosity.

  Curiosity killed the cat.

  Perhaps, but a scholar without that basic trait wouldn’t get far.

  Of course, there was very little about his present curiosity that could be labeled academic.

  His second boot removed, seeing no viable alternative he blew out the second candle, swung around and lay down, his head on the second pillow, his legs stretched out alongside hers but with a foot of clear space between. Then he let his body relax.

  As much as he was able, which wasn’t all that much.

  The bed dipped, as he’d predicted, but she’d been prepared and didn’t immediately roll into him.

  With both candles snuffed, the room was dim but not dark. Two small square windows set high in the wall above the bed let moonlight seep in, bathing the room in a faint but strengthening silver-pearl wash.

  “How far is it to Wolverstone?”

  He replied in the same matter-of-fact tone she’d employed. “Somewhere between fifty and sixty miles. If we leave first thing in the morning, we should reach there in the early afternoon.”

  “Hmm. So by tomorrow evening, we’ll be back in the bosom of society, so to speak.” One hand clamped to the edge of the bed to stop herself sliding into him, Eliza raised one leg, studied the length of her breeches-and-stocking-clad limb. “I’ll be back in skirts and petticoats, and playing the lady again.” Lowering her leg, she glanced sidelong at Jeremy. “And you’ll be the gentleman-scholar again.”

  He hesitated, then raised his arms and locked his hands behind his head. “Perhaps, but I rather think I won’t be quite the same gentleman-scholar I was when I left Wolverstone. I can barely believe that was only four days ago.”

  “Rather a lot has happened in those days.” Her gaze once more on the ceiling, she added, “I know I’m not the same young lady who attended Heather and Breckenridge’s engagement ball.”

  She felt his gaze touch her face and linger.

  “How have you changed?” He’d lowered his voice; the question sounded almost intimate.

  She turned her head and briefly met his eyes, lightly smiled. “For a start, I know I can walk up hill and down dale for hours upon hours — I honestly wouldn’t have imagined I could. And, despite not having any staff supplying my meals and meeting all my needs, I’ve still managed well enough.”

  His brows rose. “I never imagined you wouldn’t.”

  “Didn’t you?” She thought for a moment, then said, “Whether it was simply a matter of assuming I couldn’t, and never having put it to the test, it was still a … pleasant surprise to discover I wasn’t as helpless as I’d thought.”

  He snorted and looked at the ceiling. “You’re no more helpless than your sisters — you just have different areas of interest. A bit like me and Leonora. We both have an eye for detail, for organization, and a great deal of stubbornness and determination, but we apply those talents in different arenas, namely those in which our interests are strongest — mine in books and manuscripts, hers in family.” Glancing at her, he waited until she looked his way to add, “You have more in common with your sisters than you think.”

  She stared into his caramel eyes, searched, saw, and weighed his conviction. Murmured, “You may be right.” She was certainly thinking along very Heather-or Angelica-like lines. Very much bolder lines than she’d imagined herself ever considering. She wasn’t, after all, the venturesome sort. Yet …

  Looking upward once more, she wondered … then, taking his assessment to heart, she cleared her throat and dived in. “I’ve been thinking …”

  Having begun, she didn’t know how to go on.

  “So have I.” A quiet but steady admission.

  She grasped the opening. “About what?” Glancing at him, she met his gaze.

  His lips firmed a touch. “Ladies first.”

  She couldn’t look away. For an instant, she hovered, teetered, vacillated, then she girded her loins and took a bold step forward. “I’ve been thinking … about what we talked about last night. The point you raised about people like us, in situations like this, limiting themselves by assuming they know what will come to be … and therefore, perhaps, ignoring what is, or what else could be.” She paused for a second, but his gaze didn’t waver. “It occurred to me that if tonight is the last night we’ll be spending alone, then”— if she’d been standing, the movement she made would have tipped up her chin —“this will most likely be the last chance we’ll have for examining, exploring if you will, what that ‘else’ might be. Tomorrow, once we’re back in society, back to being the people others expect us to be, we’ll no longer be free — we won’t have the opportunity. We’ll be caught up in”— she gestured —“the expected outcome.”

  He waited, but when she held his gaze and didn’t go on, he tipped his head in acquiescence. “I wouldn’t argue with that assessment.”

  So tell me what our next step should be. When he said nothing more but again seemed to be waiting — her turn again, she supposed — she drew breath and, deciding she might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, suggested, “Perhaps, in the interests of not making the mistake inherent in thinking too much and in the wrong way about our situation — indeed, in our own best interests, if your theory is sound — we should make some attempt to assess that ‘else’… the alternative outcome, as it were.”

  His eyes locked with hers, Jeremy kept his fingers clenched tight behind his head to keep himself from reacting, from acting without some clearly stated invitation. He thought he understood her, thought they were thinking along the same lines, but she was a female, and he’d long ago learned caution in dealing with the species. When she again fell silent, and waited, he bludgeoned his brain, sadly distracted and overwhelmed with thinking of what he hoped would be. Slavering over the prospect. “That —” He broke off to clear his throat; his voice had grown gravelly. “That would probably be wise.”

  She studied him for an instant, then frowned and spoke a great deal more crisply. “Actually, I think exploration is mandatory. It certainly is from my perspective.” She pushed up on one elbow, her frown still in place. “So I was thinking we should try this again.”

  She leaned over and kissed him.

  At last! The barely civilized warrior inside him cheered, then broke ranks.

  Drawing his hands free, with one he cupped the back of her head, with the other pushe
d aside the fall of her hair to frame her jaw. And hold her steady.

  To kiss her back.

  Lips to lips. A second later, she parted hers and it was mouth to mouth, tongue to tongue, and glory beckoned.

  For a brief moment they clashed, dueled, an elemental battle of wills and wants — his and hers, whose to take precedence — but in the next heartbeat they found their rhythm, an accommodation, a dance of sorts where she took a step, then ceded the lead to him.

  Back and forth, him, then her again, they whirled into the ever-deepening kiss, step by tiny step, caress by caress.

  The result was an absorbing, intriguing descent into passion.

  He couldn’t recall that kissing any other woman had ever been like this. The usual underlying tension was there, subtly escalating with each kiss, each increasingly heated breath. Yet there was no unseemly haste but instead a devotion to each moment, to exploring, as she’d said, paying each progressive exchange its due attention.

  Every exchange, every shifting pressure of their lips, every slow, heated caress of their tongues was beyond sweet; heady, intoxicating, riveting — the engagement snared his senses as nothing ever had, not even the rarest of Sumerian scrolls, not even a long-lost Mesopotamian tablet.

  She pressed closer; he let her lean more completely over him, his inner self greedy for the feel of her soft flesh and firm, feminine curves impressing themselves on his harder muscled body.

  Delight. This, he decided, was true delight. Why he’d never felt it with any other woman he had no idea, but in gratitude he willingly lay beneath her and allowed her to explore as she wished.

  She was leaning on his chest; her small hands had risen to cup his face. Now her fingers trailed over his cheeks, along his jaw, tracing, learning, even as her mouth supped from his, as her lips, already plump and swollen, teased and tempted.

  While she explored, his hands drifted from her head, to her shoulders, then he sent them skating lightly over the long planes of her back. He had to shackle a sharp urge to grip her hips and lift her fully atop him. Through the warm haze of burgeoning pleasure deliciously clouding his mind, he reminded himself that while this was familiar territory for him, it was her first excursion into this domain; for her, it was all new. All fascinating.