In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster (30 page)

Reaching the other side of the bushes, she crouched in their lee, and, heart thudding, waited. The moments stretched to a minute. She couldn’t see Jeremy from where she was, but that also meant Scrope couldn’t see her.

She shifted, anxiety rising. She told herself Jeremy was too clever to get caught.

Restless, straining her ears, she waited …

She heard a soft thud. A second later, Jeremy pushed through the bushes and crouched beside her.

“Did Scrope see you?” She mouthed the words rather than said them.

He made a show of listening, but no yells or shouts, and thankfully no shots, reached them. He leaned close, whispered in her ear, “He’s there, not far back along the bank, but I don’t think he saw me.” After a moment, he added, “We’ll have to stay here until we’re sure he’s gone.” He tipped his head backward, at the rising bank beyond them. “There’s no way we can get up that without him seeing us.”

She swung her back to the bushes, slid down until she sat, and studied the bank in question. It was less steeply cut than the one they’d jumped down. Beyond the next silt island, a smaller, narrower one covered in coarse grasses and otherwise bare, the bank rose in a series of narrow terraces; climbing it would be easy enough, but while doing so they would be totally exposed. “Do you know what’s up there, on this side of the river?”

He shook his head. After a moment, he grimaced. “I checked the connecting roads, and the surroundings of all the roads we were going to take. I didn’t check the land over there. We’ll have to go up, then find someplace to stop and look at our map. Too noisy, too risky, to try it down here.”

She glanced back toward the bank down which they’d come but could see nothing lower than the trees’ canopies; the bushes hid them well. Leaning close, she whispered, “Once he’s gone, we could find a way back up that side and continue into St. Boswells.”

Again he shook his head; this time his expression was grim. “Scrope will have left his horse somewhere near. Once he leaves the river, he’ll fetch it — and then he could come upon us fast, on horseback, while we’re on foot. We’re lucky we’ve been able to avoid him this time. We don’t want to meet him again.”

The sight of the pistol in Scrope’s hand had changed Jeremy’s view of her erstwhile kidnapper from dangerous to insanely dangerous. What manner of man came waving a pistol as he chased an unarmed lady and an almost certainly unarmed gentleman?

More to the point, what did Scrope envision doing with said pistol?

They’d been speaking in tones low enough to be inaudible over the
whoosh
of the river. Two seconds later, Jeremy heard the heavy tramp of boots on the upper bank across from them.

He glanced at Eliza, met her wide eyes. They remained utterly still, protected from Scrope’s sight by the thick bushes behind which they crouched.

A minute passed, then Scrope moved on, moved away. The sound of his heavy footsteps faded.

They both let out the breaths they’d been holding.

Another minute passed in silence, then Eliza tensed to rise.

Jeremy clamped a hand on her arm and shook his head at her. Leaning closer, he whispered, “If I were him, I’d draw back and watch, and wait to see if we emerge from hiding. We need to wait for a while before we can risk climbing up and going on.”

Eliza searched his eyes, then nodded.

Side by side, they settled on the rocky, sandy ground, to wait out Scrope.

In an ornamental folly perched high above the southern bank of the Tweed just at the point where the river cut a wide loop and headed east, the laird stood, a spyglass to his eye, and roundly cursed Scrope.

“What the damned hell does he think he’s doing? Especially with that pistol?”

After a moment, the laird muttered, distinctly savagely, “Why couldn’t he have taken the hint when I lost him at Gorebridge?”

He’d been in position since nine o’clock that morning; he was a natural-born hunter — he could always summon patience enough when tracking game. From the vantage point of the folly, located in the gardens of a manor house owned by a family he knew to be in Edinburgh for the Season, he’d been waiting for his fleeing pair to come driving past. Instead, he’d witnessed the entire Scrope-provoked performance.

Initially, he hadn’t been able to see Scrope, waiting in hiding on the other side of thick trees on the opposite side of the highway from the folly; if he had, he would have been tempted to do something about the man — removing him to the nearest magistrate’s cell, for instance.

Instead, waiting in the perfect position to watch the pair come driving past, so he could then fall in behind them, he’d had to stand and watch Scrope force them off their course.

Again.

“Scrope has become exceedingly tedious.” The clipped words did little to alleviate his temper.

He’d had the pair in sight from the moment they’d rushed, on foot, across the highway and dived into the cover of the trees. Thereafter, he’d tracked their progress more through Scrope’s blundering down the tree line than by any direct sighting.

But then the fleeing pair had walked out of the trees to the very edge of the bank, separated only by the length of a plowed field from his own position. A sudden fear had gripped him, that, after all his machinations, he might be forced to watch, helpless, as Scrope shot Eliza’s gentleman and reclaimed her.

Instead, to his very real relief, the gentleman in question had taken excellent evasive action, jumping down to the riverbed and inducing Eliza to jump down into his arms … that she had so readily spoke well for the trust she placed in him.

Which trust appeared to be well-founded. Under the gentleman’s guidance, the pair had successfully evaded Scrope.

The laird watched as, having lingered in the area, parading back and forth along the tree line as if expecting his quarry to fall from the branches into his hands, Scrope finally gave up; head hanging, he started trudging back to where he’d left his horse, near where the pair had crossed the highway and rushed into the trees.

Swinging the spyglass back to Eliza and her gentleman, patiently and very wisely remaining concealed on the island, the laird waited … another ten minutes passed before, finally, they slowly rose. Carefully, clearly wary, they left their hiding place, leapt across to the next island, then climbed the more graduated eastern bank.

They didn’t linger but went quickly on, into the grounds of Dryburgh Abbey. From his vantage point, he watched as they slid like shadows from one tree to the next, eventually reaching the ruined remnants of the old abbey. After a moment of watchful study, they slipped behind a ruined wall and went to ground.

Lowering the glass, the laird considered all he’d seen. Scrope might be a blessed nuisance, but through his interference he’d engineered precisely the sort of situation the laird had been waiting to observe. He’d been able to watch Eliza and her gentleman — watch how they reacted under the threat of real danger, always a revealing situation. And what he’d seen …

It was the little things that told the story. Like the way Eliza’s gentleman constantly watched over her, seeing to her safety before his own. The way his hand hovered at her back, if he wasn’t holding her hand instead, the way he constantly scanned their surroundings for danger. And Eliza trusted him, implicitly and without reserve; she didn’t question, didn’t argue. She did make suggestions.

The pair interacted with each other in ways the laird recognized; he’d seen exactly the same manner of physical and verbal communications, of togetherness and shared purpose, between his late cousin Mitchell and his wife. Theirs had been a match made in heaven; the laird saw nothing in the way Eliza and her gentleman behaved toward each other to suggest their relationship was any different.

On that score, he could rest easy.

The only complication that remained was Scrope.

The laird looked again in the direction in which Scrope had gone. Having unleashed the man on Eliza, McKinsey couldn’t very well turn his back and walk away, much as he might wish to. They might manage to escape Scrope on their own; thus far, the Englishman, whoever he was, had shown an aptitude for thinking on his feet and acting effectively. But if they didn’t escape …

If Scrope reclaimed Eliza, he’d presumably drag her to Edinburgh and offer her up to him, McKinsey, but at what cost? If Scrope harmed the Englishman, possibly even killed him … “What a damned melodramatic tragedy that would be.”

The very last thing he wanted was a bride who hated him — who had loved another and lost that other because of a scheme he’d set in motion.

Quite aside from honor, on its own a sharp enough goad, that prospect convinced him he could not yet leave the pair to their own devices, not until he was sure they’d escaped Scrope’s desperate and patently determined attacks.

If Scrope hadn’t flagrantly disregarded his orders, he’d have been able to head home to the highlands at this point, to start planning his abduction of the Cynster sister that allowing Eliza to escape with her gentleman rendered absolutely necessary. Lips tightening in frustration, the laird raised the spyglass to his eye once more.

The pair hadn’t emerged from the abbey ruins. Considering what, if he’d been in their shoes, he would do, he looked further east, searching for a place where they might be able to cross the river.

“Dryburgh Abbey.” Jeremy pointed to the spot on the map. “The ruins thereof. That’s where we are.”

Sitting beside him on the ground in the lee of one of the few sections of walls still standing, Eliza studied the map he’d spread across his knees. “So where should we go from here?” She waved toward the river, now lying to their south. “St. Boswells is just there, on the other side of the river, but how do we cross over?”

“That’s a pertinent question.” Jeremy leaned over the map. “Another is whether we change our route and instead of going through St. Boswells and then south via Jedburgh, we head east from here, through Kelso to Coldstream, and cross the border there.”

She considered the route he traced. “That’s much further, and by that route, once we get over the border, we’d have even further to go to reach Wolverstone.”

Jeremy humphed. He took another gulp from his water bottle, then stoppered it and stowed it back in the saddlebag. They’d already demolished the cheese and bread Mrs. Quiggs had kindly pressed on them, saying she knew how young men needed to eat. Had she but known it, young ladies, too; at least Eliza’s appetite hadn’t dwindled with fear.

Resting his back and shoulders against the cool stone, he glanced at her. She’d seen the pistol Scrope had been waving, had recognized the danger, but other than a heightened tension visible in the way she every now and then checked their surroundings, she hadn’t panicked. For which he was truly grateful.

Pulling out his fob-watch, he consulted it. “Nearly one o’clock.” He tucked the watch away. Leaning his head back against the wall, he murmured, “It’s peaceful here.”

She glanced at him, then looked around, surveying the expanse of grass dotted with fallen stones and columns, the trees, many large, that shaded the ruins. “It’s hard to appreciate the tranquility while knowing Scrope is somewhere near.”

“Hmm.” He risked closing his eyes for a moment, eliminating the distraction of the sight of her in an effort to think more clearly. “I wish we knew how Scrope found us. Did the laird send him this way after catching sight of us in Penicuik, knowing that other than the Great North Road, this was the way we’d most likely come? And if Scrope is here, where is the laird? Did we lose him at Penicuik, as we’d thought? Even if we did, has he come to this area, too, to join Scrope? While avoiding Scrope, do we have to keep an eye out to ensure that we avoid the laird, too?”

When she didn’t reply, he opened his eyes and found her regarding him.

“That’s a lot of questions to which we don’t know the answers.” She tilted her head. “The only reasonable way forward is to decide on the best route, then forge ahead — and deal with whoever, if, and wherever they rise up in our path.”

Lips curving, he inclined his head. “Well put.” Lifting the map again, he studied it. “We can’t go back and find the gig. I suspect the horse would have stopped before he reached Newtown St. Boswells, but Scrope is almost certainly in that area. We can’t risk tangling with him again.”

“No. I could happily live my life without setting eyes on him again.”

“Amen. So for my money our best route is still via the crossing at Carter Bar. If we can get ahead of both Scrope and the laird, we can barrel along to Wolverstone, and there’ll be little chance of them catching us up — the road is more or less straight, and even after we turn for Wolverstone, relatively direct, with no real chance of them taking another route and coming at us from the side. However, the trick will be getting clear of Scrope, and the laird if he’s lurking nearby.”

“Right, then.” She rose, dusting down her breeches, then reached for the other saddlebag. “Let’s go into St. Boswells, hire another gig, and get on the road before Scrope, or the laird if he’s near, sees us.”

Nodding, he folded the map, then got to his feet. While he stowed the map back in his bag, she looked around.

“So, how do we get to St. Boswells?”

Reaching out, he took her hand, then remembered that she was still masquerading as a youth and that someone might see. Squeezing her fingers, he turned her south, toward the river, then released her. “The abbey grounds are contained within the loop of the river, and the town’s directly on the other side of the lower, southern, end of the loop. There doesn’t seem to have ever been a bridge, but there must have been a crossing of some sort, even if only a ford, to connect the monastic and secular communities. We know it wasn’t on the western arm of the loop — the stretch we crossed in fleeing Scrope. So the crossing must be to our south or east. With luck, Scrope assumed we didn’t cross the river and is now off searching the fields and roads to the west. There are no roads along this section of the river on either side, so we should be safe skirting the bank and searching for a way across.”