In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster
Read In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster Online
Authors: Stephanie Laurens
Tags: #Romance, #General, #Historical, #Fiction
In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster
“I can’t.” Drawing back, still gripping the sill, Eliza raised her eyes to his. “Believe me, I’d like nothing more than to go with you, but I …” She reached out and grasped his forearm.
Looking at her hand, he saw it shake as she tightened her grip, just a fraction, but no more.
She released him on a sigh. Met his gaze as he lifted his eyes questioningly to hers. “That’s the best I can do — the hardest I can grip anything at the moment. They gave me laudanum for the past three days and it still hasn’t worn off. My legs are still shaky, and I can’t hold onto anything. If I slip …”
A chill coursed down Jeremy’s spine. If she slipped … he might not be able to catch and hold her and stop her from pitching over the roof’s edge. She was tallish, admittedly slender, yet there was enough of her to make him question whether he would be strong enough to hold and save her. “All right.” He nodded, keeping both gesture and tone calm and even. “It won’t help our cause if either of us falls and breaks a limb, so we’ll think of another way.”
She blinked as if taken aback, but then nodded. “Yes. Good.” She paused, then asked, “Do you have any suggestions?”
April, 1829
The Green Man Tavern
Auld Town, Edinburgh
s previously discussed, Mr. Scrope, my request is straightforward. I require you to kidnap Miss Eliza Cynster from London and deliver her to me here, in Edinburgh.” McKinsey — he was still calling himself that; it was a perfectly good alias, after all — lounged in a booth at the rear of the dimly lit tavern, his gaze leveled on the man seated opposite. “You have had your two weeks to reconnoiter and consider. The only question remaining is whether you can deliver Eliza Cynster to me, unharmed and in good health, or not.”
Scrope, dark-haired and dark-eyed, his face long, his features haughty, held his gaze. “After due consideration, I believe we can do business, sir.”
“Indeed?” McKinsey lowered his gaze to where his fingers caressed the sides of an ale glass. What was he doing? He didn’t trust Scrope as far as he could throw him, and yet here he was, dealing with the man.
His equivocation was genuine, although Scrope would doubtless see it as a ploy — that McKinsey assumed disbelief to keep his price down. In reality, McKinsey thought Scrope would succeed; that was why he was there, hiring a gentleman — Scrope actually was one — known among the wealthy, especially the aristocracy, as the man who could, for a fee, make inconvenient relatives disappear.
In blunt terms, Scrope was a kidnap and disposal specialist. The word about the clubs was that he never failed, which in part explained his exceedingly high price. A price McKinsey, for all his hesitancy, was prepared to pay — doubly over — to have Eliza Cynster delivered into his hands.
Raising his glass, he sipped, then looked at Scrope. “How do you propose to accomplish Miss Cynster’s abduction?”
Scrope leaned forward, forearms on the table; folding his hands, he lowered his voice even though there was no one else near enough to hear. “As you predicted, in the wake of the recent failed attempt to kidnap Miss Heather Cynster, Eliza Cynster is being kept under strict and constant guard. Unhelpfully, that guard includes her brothers and cousins — over an entire week she did not once appear in public, even when traveling to and from private functions, without one or more of said gentlemen hovering close. The Cynster family is not relying on mere footmen to keep their young lady safe.” Scrope paused, his dark eyes trying to read McKinsey’s lighter ones. “To be candid, the only way to lay hands on Eliza Cynster will be to stage some form of ambush. Which, of course, will run the risk of injuring not only her guards. If force is our only option, I cannot guarantee Miss Cynster’s safety, not until she’s in my keeping.”
“No.” McKinsey’s flat tone made the prohibition absolute. “No violence of any kind. Not toward the young lady, nor even her guards.”
Scrope pulled a face and spread his hands. “If you forbid the use of force, then I can’t see how the task can be accomplished.”
McKinsey arched a brow. One nail slowly tapping the wooden table, he studied Scrope’s passably elegant face. No emotion of any kind showed; Scrope’s poker face was as good as McKinsey’s own.
But his eyes …
The man was cold; there was no other word for it. Emotionless, detached, the sort of man who would do murder as easily as dropping his hat.
Unfortunately, fate had left McKinsey few options; he needed someone who could get the job done. Retreat wasn’t an option, not now, not for him. But if he was going to unleash the man and send him after Eliza Cynster … slowly he straightened, then leaned his elbows on the table so his gaze was level with Scrope’s. “I comprehend that this task — stealing Eliza Cynster away from under her powerful family’s very noses, even more when said noses are already on guard — will, if completed successfully, elevate your reputation in your chosen field to something akin to a god. If the Cynsters can’t protect against you, then who can?”
He’d done his own reconnoitering while Scrope had been in London assessing his chances of kidnapping Eliza Cynster. Scrope was considered to be at the top of his league, but more than one of the previous employers Scrope had cited as references had, when McKinsey, as his true self, had inquired, mentioned Scrope’s overweening drive to excel. To succeed beyond question with assignments more cautious hirelings declined. Scrope, it seemed, had become addicted to the glory of pulling off the improbable. His former employers had viewed that as a positive; while agreeing in regard to getting a difficult job done, McKinsey could also see how Scrope’s addiction could be used to further his own ends.
Scrope hadn’t reacted to McKinsey’s statement, but that he was trying so hard to keep his face impassive told its own story.
McKinsey let his lips curve understandingly. “Indeed. With this mission successfully completed, you’ll be able to command even higher — quite astronomical — fees.”
“My fees —”
McKinsey held up a hand. “I am not about to haggle over your already agreed fee. However”— still holding Scrope’s gaze, he let his face harden, let his voice harden, too —“in return for telling you of the one way in which Eliza Cynster can be kidnapped, even in the teeth of her male relatives’ protectiveness, without the use of force, I will require one thing.”
Scrope hesitated. A full minute ticked by before quietly he asked, “What?”
McKinsey was wise enough not to smile in triumph. “That
we
will plan the action together, from the moment you move to kidnap Miss Cynster to the moment you hand her over to me.”
Again Scrope spent a long moment in thought, but Mc Kinsey wasn’t at all surprised when eventually Scrope said, “Just to be perfectly clear, you want to dictate how I do this job.”
“No. I want to be assured that you will do this job in a way that satisfies my requirements fully. I suggest that once I tell you how the abduction can be accomplished, you suggest how you wish to proceed through each stage. If I agree, you go ahead. If I don’t, we discuss alternatives and settle on one that will satisfy us both.” He was wagering that Scrope wouldn’t be able to walk away from the prospect of being the man who successfully kidnapped a Cynster chit.
Scrope looked away, shifted, then met McKinsey’s eyes again. “Very well. I agree.” After an instant’s pause — if Scrope had been a different man McKinsey would have shaken his hand to seal the deal, but, instead, he sat woodenly waiting — Scrope smoothly went on, “So where and how do I seize Eliza Cynster?”
McKinsey told him. Drawing a folded copy of the London
Gazette
from his coat pocket, he showed Scrope the relevant entry. Scrope hadn’t known of the event and was unlikely to have appreciated the potential on his own. It wasn’t hard, after that, to work out the details, first of the seizing, then of the journey back to Edinburgh.
Both agreed that the journey should be accomplished with all speed.
“As I will not be disposing of her but rather handing her on, I would prefer to place her into your hands as soon as possible.”
“Agreed.” McKinsey met Scrope’s dark eyes. “No sense in courting danger for longer than you need to.”
Scrope’s lips pinched, but he said nothing.
“I will,” McKinsey went on, “remain in town so as to be on hand to relieve you of Miss Cynster when you return.”
Scrope nodded. “I’ll send word to the same place through which we arranged this meeting.”
McKinsey trapped and held Scrope’s gaze. “One point bears repeating — under no circumstance whatever is any harm, of any description, to befall Eliza Cynster while she’s in your care. I will accept that it might be necessary to sedate her to effect her silent removal from the house, but thereafter I’m sure it will not prove beyond your abilities, and that of your colleagues, to keep her calm and quiet throughout the journey without recourse to further drugs or unnecessary restraints. The story of fetching her home under her guardian’s orders proved effective in controling Heather Cynster. It will work equally well with her sister.”
“Very well — we’ll use that.” Scrope made a show of thinking back over their plan, then met McKinsey’s eyes. “I believe, sir, that we have an agreement. By my calculation, we’ll be back in Edinburgh with Miss Cynster and ready to hand her over by the fifth morning after seizing her.”
“Indeed. By taking the route we discussed, you’ll very likely avoid all opposition.”
For the first time, Scrope smiled. “As you say.”
McKinsey got to his feet.
Scrope did, too. He wasn’t a small man, but McKinsey towered over him. Regardless, Scrope’s features lit as he confidently stated, “Rest assured, you may rely on me and my colleagues — I am, indeed, as eager as you to see this job brought to a successful conclusion.” Scrope’s lips lifted as he joined McKinsey in turning toward the tavern door. “It will, as you so rightly noted, make my name.”
“It will, as you so rightly noted, make my name.”
Hands in his trouser pockets, his greatcoat open and hanging from his shoulders, the wind blowing in his face, the nobleman masquerading as McKinsey stood on a rocky outcrop not far from the walls of Holyrood Palace. Gazing northward toward his home, he replayed yet again Scrope’s parting words. It wasn’t the words themselves that concerned him — they’d been his own, after all — but Scrope’s tone had resonated with an almost fanatical enthusiasm, a disturbingly deep relish.
The man was a damned sight too invested in vaingloriously furthering his reputation than McKinsey liked.
He would have preferred not to deal with a man of Scrope’s ilk, but desperate situations made for desperate measures. If he didn’t kidnap a Cynster sister and take her north to parade before his mother as “ruined,” his mother wouldn’t hand over the ceremonial goblet she’d filched and successfully hidden. If he couldn’t produce said goblet on the first of July, he would lose his castle and his lands, and be forced to stand helplessly by while his people — his clan — were dispossessed and driven from their centuries-old holdings.
He would lose his heritage, and so would they.
He would lose everything — except for the two boys he’d promised to raise as his own. But they, and he, would lose their rightful place, the one place on earth they truly belonged.
Fate had left him no choice but to satisfy his mother’s demands, insane though they might be.
Unfortunately, his first attempt had gone awry. Wanting to remain distanced from the kidnapping and simultaneously seeking to use no more force than necessary, he’d employed a pair of lesser but routinely successful villains known as Fletcher and Cobbins. The pair had kidnapped Heather Cynster and brought her north, but she’d escaped through the intervention of an English nobleman, one Timothy Danvers, Viscount Breckenridge. Breckenridge was now Heather Cynster’s fiancé.
That failure had left McKinsey no choice but to engage Scrope to kidnap Eliza Cynster.
No matter how logically he justified that action, he still didn’t like it; he remained restless, unsettled — highly uncomfortable with the deal he’d just struck. His prickling instincts were a constant, abrading irritation, as if he were wearing a hair shirt.
He’d felt no such qualms over hiring Fletcher and Cobbins; while capable of violence, the pair hadn’t been the sort to contemplate murder, not readily. In contrast, Scrope’s business normally involved murder. While in this instance murder wasn’t on the agenda, that the man had a proven propensity for the act was anything but reassuring.
But McKinsey needed Eliza Cynster delivered into his hands in short order. With Fletcher and Cobbins, he’d stipulated any of the Cynster sisters — Heather, Eliza, or Angelica — yet by the time they’d seized Heather, he’d learned enough to realize his mistake. He’d been hugely relieved that it had been Heather they’d abducted; at twenty-five years old, on the shelf marriage-wise, she’d been all but tailor-made for the proposition he’d intended to lay before her.
Yet that hadn’t come to be. Fate had intervened and Heather had escaped with Breckenridge. McKinsey hadn’t been overly perturbed, knowing he had an alternative in Eliza; at twenty-four, she was almost as well-suited to his purpose as Heather. But if he didn’t succeed in securing Eliza …
Angelica was the third and youngest of the sisters on the critical branch of the Cynster family tree. Theoretically, she could serve to fulfill his purpose, but she was only twenty-one. He had no wish to deal with a young lady of her age.
He could be patient when a situation required it, but he wasn’t an inherently patient man. Inveigling a giddy, twenty-one-year-old haut ton princess to fall in with his wishes would require greater tact than he possessed.
And the alternative of forcing her to his will would require the exercise of a greater degree of coldhearted pressure than he suspected he could bring to bear. Not and live with himself thereafter.
So … Eliza Cynster it had to be, and for that he needed Scrope’s talents and the man’s drive to succeed.
He’d done all he could to ensure Eliza’s safety and comfort, done all he could to ensure nothing went wrong. Yet …
Staring at the purple haze on the horizon, the mountains many miles beyond which his home — glen, loch, and castle — lay, he tried to tell himself he’d done all he could, that he could now, as he’d planned, return home — to his people, to the castle, to the boys — and return later, in time to be waiting when Scrope returned with Eliza Cynster.