In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster (22 page)

After several moments, she murmured, “I can’t see either of them. Not on this road, or the other. Have we lost them, or did they not realize it was us?”

Jeremy thought, then admitted, “The laird … I don’t know how he knows us, but I’m sure he recognized us in the town.”

“If they followed us as quickly as they could, they would have passed further down the road to Peebles before we stopped.”

“Either way — if they’re still in the town, or have already passed further south — they’ve missed us.”

She lowered the glass, faced him, and beamed. “We’ve lost them!”

He fell into her smile, into the warmth of her eyes.

She laughed, did a happy little jig, then flung her arms about his neck and kissed him.

Pressed her lips to his in sheer, overflowing, exuberant relief — then froze.

For a heartbeat.

So did he, too shocked, too lost, to do anything else.

Her lips firmed; slowly, deliberately, they firmed against his as she kissed him.

Intentionally.

He kissed her back.

Time stopped. Simply halted.

He couldn’t hear; he couldn’t think.

His entire awareness was trapped in the simple communion of her lips moving on his, on the intense thrill when he returned the pleasure and she accepted the caress, then returned it again.

She leaned closer, but wobbled and pulled back.

He let her, steadied her; knew his own reluctance, but sensed hers, too.

For a second, they looked into each other’s eyes. With her on the top step and him two lower, their faces were near level, their eyes inches apart.

He waited for the fluster, for the garbled apologies; once she started, he’d have to reciprocate, and it would all degenerate into awkwardness …

But she said nothing at all, only gave a quick, small, intensely feminine smile, then drew out of his hold and backed down the stile.

Surreptitiously, he blew out the breath he’d been holding.

Well, then …

She turned for the gig. He quickly climbed over the stile and followed.

She threw him a glance as she climbed up to the seat. “Shall we drive on, then find somewhere to stop and eat, and look at the map?”

Stepping up and sitting beside her, he briefly met her gaze, then nodded. “That sounds like a workable plan.”

A pleased little smile curled her lips. Facing forward, she waved. “Onward, then. But you might want to spare the horse.”

He grinned. Still faintly giddy from the lingering effects of an entirely unexpected pleasure and wondering if this was what a conqueror felt like, he flicked the reins and sent the gelding pacing on.

Nearly an hour after sighting his quarry driving out of the marketplace, the laird rode out of Penicuik, satisfied enough with his morning’s endeavors.

Given his intention was to observe rather than capture, he hadn’t raced to catch the fleeing pair. Instead, he’d left Hercules enjoying the amenities of The Crown’s stable and had walked down to have a word with the stableman at The Royal.

Deployment of a little easygoing charm had yielded similar information to what he’d gained at the Grassmarket stables. The man with the youthful charge was definitely English, definitely a gentleman, and by all accounts was a straightforward, polite, personable sort. The impression the laird received was that of a quiet, intelligent man, possessed of a degree of inner strength, of understated reserves.

After that, he’d wandered through the market, chatting with the stallholders, using his brogue and the tale of two English friends who might have passed through a short time before to good effect. He’d discovered that they’d bought victuals, and, interestingly, three knives — two for the man, and a smaller one for the lad.

While he took due note of that, he was more interested in what he’d gleaned of the pair’s characters.

Briskly trotting over the bridge south of the town, on reaching the open highway beyond, he let Hercules stretch into an easy, loping canter. Once the big gelding settled into his stride, the laird allowed his thoughts to return to the mental pictures he was assembling of the pair fleeing for the border ahead of him.

The descriptions he’d gained, and even more the asides, the unsolicited comments people offered of the pair, left him increasingly convinced that, should he find himself confronting Eliza Cynster and her gentleman-rescuer, his most appropriate response would be to shake the gentleman’s hand and wish him well.

The man had, after all, stepped in and taken the lady off his hands. She was no longer his responsibility but that of the as-yet-unidentified brave gentleman.

As for Miss Cynster herself, she sounded a handful, although in a different way from her older sister. Eliza appeared to be the sort of female he mentally dubbed “soft and spoiled,” perhaps not brattishly so, more in the nature of tonnish young ladies born of wealthy, aristocratic, Sassenach families, and she seemed a tad delicate to boot, neither of which would have suited him.

A lady who was gentle as well as gently bred, accustomed to every luxury and lacking in fortitude, would make a disastrous wife for him.

Which left him in two minds about the failure of this latest kidnapping attempt. On the one hand, his inability to take Eliza Cynster north and parade her before his mother as “ruined” meant he’d yet to satisfy his mother’s requirements to secure the goblet he needed to save his estate and his people. And on that score, time was running short.

Against that, however, he’d avoided having to marry a lady who wouldn’t have liked him, and who would have had a dismal time as his wife. A lifetime of misery for himself was a price he’d accepted he might well have to pay, but having to stand by and all but force a lifetime of misery on some innocent lady … that would have sat very ill with him and deepened his own misery to a truly dreadful degree.

So him not having to marry Eliza Cynster was a matter for celebration, on both his and the lady’s parts.

Indeed, the only reason he was still following the pair was to, if possible, obtain a better look at the two of them together, the better to convince himself beyond all reasonable doubt that her gentleman-rescuer was a suitable consort, and that he was treating and would always treat her well.

He’d done the same with Heather Cynster and her gentleman-rescuer, and his eyes hadn’t deceived him there. She and Breckenridge had announced their engagement shortly after their trek through Scotland, and all he’d since gleaned from his contacts in London had assured him the affianced couple were truly happy, somewhat to many observers’ surprise. By and large, the ton hadn’t seen that match coming.

As he rode on through the late morning, the faint wind of his passing ruffling his hair, he grinned at the thought that if Eliza Cynster, too — at the beginning of this adventure twenty-four and still unwed — had through his kidnapping found her fated husband-to-be, then instead of “ruining” the two Cynster sisters he’d been forced by his mother’s scheme to kidnap, he’d instead played cupid for them in a convolutedly bizarre way.

That
was an irony that truly was sweet.

He savored it for a full minute, before reality intruded and reminded him of what, given the failure of this second kidnapping, now lay before him.

In his philosophy of life he’d always accepted that fate existed as a true, formative force. If he’d ever needed evidence that fate was female, he had it now; only a woman would put a man through this.

He was brooding over what his immediate future would be once he saw Eliza and her gentleman-rescuer safely over the border when Hercules’s long strides took them over a damp patch where a burn had flooded across the road.

Four strides on, he registered what he’d seen — or rather what he hadn’t. “Damn!”

Slowing Hercules, then wheeling him, he rode back to the damp patch. Leaning from the saddle, he examined the imprints left in the dirt that had spilled across the road. Finally sitting up, he cast his mind back to that moment in Penicuik when he’d seen the pair driving away, focused his memory on the gig’s wheels … the usual style of wooden wheel with a beaten metal rim.

He glanced down at the tracks in the road. “Not again. They didn’t come this way.”

With a sigh, he shook Hercules’s reins. “Come on, old son. Back we go. At least we didn’t ride halfway to the border before realizing they’d slipped sideways.”

He let Hercules enjoy a good gallop. It wasn’t that long before the roofs of Penicuik appeared ahead of them, perched on the higher, north bank of the North Esk.

Slowing Hercules as they approached the bridge over the river, the laird was consulting his memories of the roads in the area when a fleeting movement — a quick, startled, furtive movement on the other side of the bridge — caught his eye.

Scrope.

His erstwhile employee had seen him coming and had dived for cover.

“As well he might.” Inwardly grim — he did not appreciate having direct orders flagrantly flouted, yet he wasn’t totally surprised — the laird drew rein on the south side of the bridge. Leaning on his saddle bow, he sat as if pondering, apparently studying the roofs of the town. From the corner of his eye, he could see the thick bushes where Scrope, mounted on a decent gray nag, was concealed.

He’d already noticed the wheel tracks he’d been searching for turning down the road to his right. That road led southeast. He could imagine that, knowing he was on their trail — and for all he knew the fleeing pair might have known Scrope was chasing them, too — and pressed for alternatives, the pair had taken the southeast road. It seemed to head in the direction they needed. Unfortunately, if they continued following it, they would find themselves running out of road once they reached the shallow foothills along the western flank of the Moorfoot Hills. And there were no roads through the Moorfoots. They would have to turn either north or south; either route would take them out of their way, but on the other hand, taking the southeast road had succeeded in keeping them clear of both him and Scrope, and ultimately they would be able to find their way around to the road he was increasingly sure they were making for, the road through Jedburgh.

If anything, he should be pleased; there was now no chance the pair could reach the border that day. They would have to spend another night, and at least another day, making their way south; he would have all the time he needed to observe and satisfy his picky sense of honor that Eliza Cynster’s gentleman-rescuer was an appropriate protector for a Cynster miss. A satisfactory husband-to-be in lieu of him.

That was now his only concern — getting absolute confirmation of the gentleman’s caliber and the couple’s potential relationship — but what was he to do about Scrope?

He couldn’t sit there all day staring into space. How had Scrope found the pair, in Penicuik of all places?

The irritating thought that Scrope might well have been following him firmed to a certainty the more he dwelled on it, compounding the man’s sins.

But he really didn’t care all that much about Scrope.

Unfortunately, however, he was a complication.

“Blast the man.”

If he led Scrope astray at this point, he’d almost certainly lose his fleeing pair. Once they found themselves having to turn north or south, he might not be able to track them easily, depending on where exactly on the road they realized they had to turn. And they could go either way.

Time was steadily slipping past. He had to decide.

Straightening in his saddle, he nudged Hercules into motion and turned the big gelding down the dip into the southeast road.

He could deliberate while he rode.

At present, he was between Scrope and their quarry; as long as Scrope remained at his back, Eliza and her gentleman weren’t in any danger.

Nudging Hercules into a canter, mind ranging ahead, he thought, and planned.

Ideally, he decided, he would find the pair, hang back long enough to see all he wished, then he would let the pair go on while he turned back and captured Scrope, and, in his quietest, coldest, most intimidating voice, inquired what the devil the man thought he was about.

Lips curving in anticipation of that last, the laird rode steadily on.

Keen to get as far as they could from the laird and Scrope before they stopped to eat and consult the map, Jeremy had driven for nearly an hour, following the road, little more than a lane but decently surfaced, that had been leading so helpfully southeast.

They’d crossed over two other, somewhat larger, roads, but both had been signposted as leading directly back to the southerly road to Peebles. With no wish to run into the laird and Scrope, they’d happily continued southeast.

The kiss they’d shared played over and again in Jeremy’s mind. He told himself not to make too much of it; it had just been one of those moments that had simply happened. They’d both been swept up by triumph over losing the laird and Scrope … well, she had, at least. He …

Determinedly hauling his mind from its obsession, he focused his attention on the lane ahead and saw that a little way on, it turned sharply northeast.