In Pursuit Of Eliza Cynster

by Stephanie Laurens

  To let that sensual wanton infuse her, transform her, conquer her — and willfully conquer him, too.

  He couldn’t hold against her pull, against the thundering demand to join with her in the madness, the fury, the escalating mind-numbing pleasure of their flat-out, desperate race to completion — because that demand came from within him, not from her.

  She was the lure, the potent invitation, but the acceptance came from somewhere deep inside. She connected to him, to some deeply buried essence of him, and effortlessly called it forth.

  And he could do nothing but surrender. Linking his fingers with hers, slanting his lips over hers, letting his tongue tangle wildly with hers, whole and complete in a way that rocked him to his soul he danced with her, joined with her as the swirling currents of crystalline passion and searing desire swept them up and on.

  Then shattered them. Pierced them, racked them, and broke them, then tossed them into a sea of oblivion where bliss rolled in, enfolded, and soothed them.

  Filled them with glowing golden delight, then gently laid them down on some distant shore, satiated, satisfied, beyond replete.

  Wrapped in each other’s arms.

  Far from the crisp, clean sheets he’d been looking forward to stretching out between, the laird found himself settling for the night on a pile of straw.

  Scrope, blast the man, hadn’t halted in Jedburgh. Or rather he’d stopped for a pint but hadn’t stayed. Instead, he’d driven on in the gig he’d confiscated, his horse pacing behind, and stopped for the night in a tiny tavern in the equally tiny hamlet of Camptown.

  Roughly midway between Jedburgh and the border, Camptown boasted no other place a traveler might lay his head, and the tavern was far too tiny for there to be any chance of the laird putting up there while avoiding Scrope’s notice.

  Up until that point he’d been considering simply overhauling Scrope, reading him the riot act and sending him on his way, dallying long enough to see his fleeing pair go safely past in whatever conveyance they managed to arrange. Then he could head directly north for the highlands.

  That plan had grown increasingly attractive.

  Until Scrope had stopped in Camptown.

  Why Camptown?

  That was a question McKinsey couldn’t answer — to which he couldn’t remotely imagine an answer. There were far more comfortable places Scrope could have stopped. Why there? What was the man planning?

  Settling deeper into the straw in the hayloft of the barn in the field opposite the tavern, his arms crossed behind his head, his gaze fixed on the dusty rafters above, the laird reexamined the current situation.

  His plan of chasing Scrope off had one serious flaw; he’d already done it once, in Edinburgh, and it hadn’t worked.

  Scrope, it seemed, was fixated on completing his mission despite having been dismissed. To have followed the pair this far — to have followed him, his recent employer who had in no uncertain terms dismissed him, in order to pick up the pair’s trail — bore witness to Scrope’s unbending, unswerving drive to seize his target, regardless of any alteration in circumstance.

  If he again attempted to send Scrope packing … what was to stop the man from circling around, waiting until Eliza and her gentleman passed by somewhere near the border crossing — as they would at some point have to do — and then following the pair on into England?

  He himself couldn’t afford the time to follow the fleeing couple and play nursemaid all the way to London.

  But once the pair came trotting past … if he then delayed Scrope and kept him from following them in reasonable time, Scrope would lose their trail.

  That was what he needed to do — delay Scrope enough to allow Eliza and her rescuer to race far enough ahead. Far enough to reach some place of safety; he’d seen enough of Eliza’s gentleman to be reasonably confident that he would have some place in mind, and make a beeline for it, getting the pair of them off the main roads in the process.

  So he would wait until the pair appeared, then collar Scrope and hold him back. An hour or two should see Eliza and her gentleman safely away.

  And with any luck, tomorrow would see the job done. Wherever the pair was, St. Boswells, Jedburgh, or anywhere in between, on horse or in a gig, they had a straight and rapid run to the border.

  Tomorrow it should be.

  And then he would ride north, home, to his castle.

  Decision made, his mind shifted to the increasingly urgent arrangements he would need to make as soon as he reached home.

  The prospect hung over him like a black cloud, but there was no help for it; he’d been too nice in arranging for others to effect the kidnap of the two elder Cynster girls, telling himself that if he himself hadn’t been their kidnapper, he would stand a better chance of persuading them to aid him in return for all and everything he would lavish on them once they married.

  The truth was he’d been deeply, fundamentally, rebelliously resistant over being forced by his mother to stoop so low as to kidnap any female. To dirty his hands in such a way. To sully his honor.

  Honor above all. The family motto. He hadn’t wanted to be the one to bring his name into disrepute.

  All very well, but honor wouldn’t keep his people safe, and courtesy of the failed attempts to seize Heather and now Eliza, he was left with a stark and unavoidable, last and final chance.

  The one option he’d wanted to avoid.

  He, personally, would have to kidnap Angelica Cynster.

  From the first, he’d set his sights on dealing — treating — with either Heather or Eliza. At twenty-five and twenty-four years old, they were nearer in age to his own thirty-one, were more or less on the shelf marriage-wise, and should therefore, he’d reasoned, have been more amenable to rational discussion and an amicable arrangement.

  He’d seen both Heather and Eliza years ago, during the years he’d spent in London before his father’s last illness had called him back to the highlands. He could vaguely recall attending balls at which they’d been present, but he’d never sought any closer acquaintance, had never ventured to ask them for a dance; in those days, he’d been looking not for a wife but rather for a good time, and as bright-eyed young ladies, the Cynster princesses had held little interest for him.

  Not then. Now … he would have infinitely preferred to have been able to deal with Heather, the eldest, or if not her, Eliza.

  Angelica, the youngest sister, was an entirely different kettle of female.

  He’d never met her — she hadn’t been out when he’d been on the town — but he’d learned enough in a very short time to have fixed on her elder sisters as his better options. For a start, Angelica was a bare twenty-one years old; he had little doubt that she would still possess the starry-eyed expectations of a young and very tonnish young lady, especially when it came to the subject of marriage.

  Rescripting her expectations … would certainly prove a harder task, a higher hurdle, than would have been the case with either of her sisters. But more than that, at twenty-one Angelica was far from her last prayers; asking her to do what was needed to save his people would feel much less fair than it would have with her sisters.

  But he no longer had the luxury of indulging in such nice sentiments — not now he’d stepped back from interfering between Heather and her savior, Breckenridge, and Eliza and her gentleman, whoever he was. He knew why he had; he couldn’t — simply could not — stomach the notion of forcing any woman who already loved another to make do with him, to take his hand rather than that of her true knight, her true beloved.

  That wasn’t romantic but sensible; he needed a woman who would stand by his side and work with him, not a well-born lady who would hate and resent him for the rest of their days.

  So Angelica it would now have to be, even if, by all accounts, she was … fiery. As fiery as the red and copper glints in her hair. Which, given his own temperament, did not auger well for a calm and well-ordered future — not for him or her.

  Of the three sisters, s
he was the one he hadn’t wanted to go near.

  Had, from the very inception of his plan, all but crossed off his list.

  Fate, it appeared, had had other plans.

  The way matters now stood, he had no choice. It was kidnap Angelica Cynster, or lose his home, his lands, and see his people dispossessed and turned out into the world with not much more than the clothes on their backs.

  The highland clearances had wreaked havoc with the clans. His own clan, the one he now headed, had largely escaped the turmoil, thanks to the inaccessibility of the glen and his grandfather’s political canniness in playing all sides off, each one against the others.

  The old man had been an expert juggler; it was his legacy the laird was now so focused on protecting. His father had done little, either way, other than to make the deal that now hung over his head.

  That deal itself wasn’t the problem; he had been a witness to it, had considered it a fair and sensible arrangement at the time, and still did.

  It was his mother’s hijacking of the ancient goblet that stood at the heart of that deal that was the earthquake rocking the ground beneath his feet.

  He stared up through the waning moonlight, not truly seeing the roof above his head.

  With every step he’d taken, every move he’d made in his plan to reclaim the goblet, he’d questioned his direction, yet each questioning had left him more committed, not less.

  Now … he didn’t even mentally hesitate over the notion of traveling to London, into the lions’ den, and kidnapping Angelica.

  Because there was no other way.

  He would have to do it himself; he couldn’t risk anything going awry, not with only her available to place in his mother’s scales, to weigh against the goblet.

  She, Angelica, was his last chance.

  And if he was damned for seizing her, so be it; he would be even more damned if he didn’t.

  As had been the system since time immemorial, his clan depended on him personally, on the clan lands he held, and the clan business he administered.

  If he failed, if he didn’t have the goblet to complete the arrangement set in place by his father six months before the old man’s death, then there would be no more clan.

  He wouldn’t lose just the castle, the glen, and the loch; he would lose for everyone the very thing that made them who they were.

  Clan had stood at the heart of highland life for centuries untold; it was a spider’s web of connections and support that linked everyone who shared his name or blood and held them within its protections.

  Clan was the very essence of their life, the beat in their blood, the song in their souls.

  Without it, they would die.

  He, his countless dependents. The two young boys he now called his own.

  Clan was what he stood for, what he represented, and just like his forebears, he would unhesitatingly, without thought or reservation, give his life to protect it, to ensure it lived on.

  If not directly through him, then through his heir, the older of those two little boys.

  Better he lived; he had no intention of dying. All in all, he did not doubt that his underlying determination would carry him through whatever was to come.

  For his clan to survive, he could not fail.

  That was all there was to it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  eremy and Eliza drove out of Selkirk the following morning, the very picture of a young couple off to visit family. After providing them with a fortifying breakfast, Mrs. Wallace had seen them off from her door, and the ostlers at the inn had had the gig ready and waiting, a neat roan between the shafts. Beside Jeremy, Eliza sat savoring the sunshine as he set the horse trotting along the high street. They passed the church as the town’s bell pealed nine o’clock.

  The road to Hawick was well surfaced and the scenery pleasant enough. Eliza lifted her face to the light breeze, marveling at the sense of simple happiness that suffused her. She couldn’t recall ever experiencing such a sense of inner peace. Of inner calmness and order.

  She slanted a glance at Jeremy, managing the ribbons with a ready competency at odds with her scholarly view of him. Her earlier scholarly view of him — that was another aspect that had changed. Dramatically.

  Lips lifting, she looked ahead. He might still be a scholar in some ways, but as she’d discovered and had last night confirmed, he was everything she wanted in a man. Some part of her tonnish female self was still faintly astonished by that, but there was no longer any doubt in her mind; regardless of whatever else her strange kidnapping brought about, through it she had found her hero.

  She could almost find it in her to thank Scrope and the mysterious laird.

  The gig’s wheels and the horse’s hooves played a repetitive tune as they bowled along. Spring had finally laid its hand on Scotland, setting hedgerows blooming and countless wayside plants springing up along the verges. Thrushes trilled and larks swooped. Shading her eyes, she saw a hawk hovering over a field, searching for prey.

  Jeremy didn’t speak, but neither did she; their silence wasn’t awkward but comfortable. Companionable. Neither were given to pointless conversation, and while with another gentleman she might have felt compelled to fill the silence simply to be polite, with Jeremy she felt no such pressing need.

  Another boon allowing her to relax, and, as they’d agreed, simply be.

  Be herself. For the first time in her life, she felt she was starting to get a firm sense of who she truly was. Of the woman she could be.

  The journey to Hawick was unremarkable, but a little way before the town they were slowed to a walk by a string of farm carts traveling in convoy. By the time they got free of the congestion and trotted into Hawick itself, it was heading toward noon.

  Jeremy glanced at Eliza, for an instant watched her face, her serene expression as she looked about the town. She was fleeing a determined kidnapper and an unknown nobleman, yet she appeared … content.

  He felt the same.

  Looking forward, he tooled the gig through the light traffic. Inwardly amazed, yet at the same time very certain. Of what he felt, if not why — why being a word for which scholars had an ineradicable fondness.

  Currently, the “why” of his own feelings was beyond him. He’d given up trying to analyze and dissect. He’d wanted to hold back, to confirm his control and observe their interplay from an intellectual perspective last night, and had signally failed.

  Yet he didn’t feel like a failure; he felt … settled. Satiated, admittedly, but the effect went much further, reached much deeper than the mere physical. He felt … anchored, assured, far more than he’d ever felt before, as if he’d been a ship on a questing keel and had finally come into port.

  Poetic allusion wasn’t his strong suit. Inwardly shaking his head, he refocused his mind on the present. On their predicament. On its solution.

  He nodded at a good-sized coaching inn coming up on the road just ahead. “It’s early, but we may as well halt there for lunch. I don’t think there’s anything but small villages between here and Wolverstone.”

  Eliza nodded. “We can eat, check our route, and then”— she met his eyes —“set out on our race for the border.”

  Slowing the gig for the turn under the inn’s arch, he murmured, “With any luck at all, we’ve lost both the laird and Scrope. There’s no reason they might think we would come this way.”

  “If they’re keeping an eye on the Jedburgh Road, they can’t be watching here as well.”

  “True.” He still glanced around, was still very much on guard, his instincts alert, but they weren’t pricking.

  Ostlers came running as he drew the horse to a halt in the inn yard.

  Five minutes later, he and Eliza were sitting at a table in the inn’s small dining room, their saddlebags at their feet.

  “Venison pie, please,” Eliza told the serving girl. “And a mug of watered ale.”

  Jeremy smiled at that, then gave the girl his order. When she bustled away, he re
ached down and drew the map from his bag. “Let’s take a look at the smaller lanes — make sure we’ve covered not just our options but Scrope’s and the laird’s as well.”

  Eliza helped him spread the map. “Do you think the laird’s actively following us or simply waiting for Scrope to catch us?”

  “We know the laird was on our trail earlier, so we have to assume he’s still out there somewhere.” The table they’d chosen was in a corner, the bench they were sitting on built out from the wall. A window high above their heads shed adequate light on the map. “Here’s Hawick.” He put his finger on the mark for the town.

  Reaching out with one finger, she traced the route she’d earlier picked out, following the minor lanes from Hawick to Bonchester Bridge, then on via an even smaller lane to hamlets called Cleuch Head, Chesters, and Southdean, to eventually join the highway just before the border at Carter Bar. “That’s our route.” She glanced sideways at him. “Unless Scrope or the laird picks up our trail and follows us down the lanes, I can’t see how they could come up with us — not short of the border.”

  “I was thinking more in terms of whether there might be anywhere along our route where the lane we’ll be on might be visible from the highway, or from some position close by the highway where Scrope or the laird might be waiting, watching, like Scrope was when he ambushed us near St. Boswells … but you’re right.” Satisifed, he sat back. “That lane doesn’t run close enough to the highway, not until it angles in to join with it, for us to have to fear our pursuers inadvertently spotting us and mounting an attack.”

  Meeting her eyes, he grinned. “It looks like we’ve a clear run to the border, and after that, Wolverstone’s not far.”

  She settled on her elbows. “How far?”

  “About thirty miles. Less than three hours. Allowing two hours to get from here to the border, we should reach the castle in time for dinner.”

  Eliza smiled at the thought of being back within society, within her customary safe circle, then gently shook her head and looked down.