In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster (43 page)

Somewhat warily, he nodded.

She smiled and pressed her shoulder to his. “That’s all the rage these days, you know.”

“It is?” He looked at her cynically. “You’re making that up.”

She laughed and shook her head. “No, truly. It was in all the lady’s journals these months past — the latest trend.”

“Ah.” He nodded. His face cleared. “Well, then, it appears we’re ahead of the times. I must remember to tell Humphrey.”

“He sounds like he would appreciate the cachet.”

“Indeed, he will.”

The light banter continued, yet beneath the airy comments there was a thread, a direction, she hadn’t missed. He was, in his own way, telling her about his life, his home, the sort of life he led — and asking after hers.

Showing her, revealing to her, the information they hadn’t had time to share before ending up engaged-by-default, courtesy of Scrope and the laird.

He didn’t have to do it, to extend himself in this way, to let her see the little things, the minutiae of his life that were important to him, that meant something to him.

And he didn’t have to be interested in her. Yet he was; there was nothing the least fabricated in his attention, his interest. Indeed, being the focal point of his undivided attention gave her a definite thrill; as a scholar, his concentration was truly impressive and having that concentration trained on her was in itself riveting.

Knowing him for the scholar he was, largely divorced from the social scene, she hadn’t expected him to court her like this. That he had, that he was, made her lose her heart again.

They’d rounded the lake and turned toward the castle. Looking up at the turreted keep, he sighed. “I have to confess I know nothing about betrothals, about what we need to do, publicly or privately.” He slanted a glance at her. “I’m assuming you do?”

She held his gaze for a moment, then nodded. The segue had been so seamless, so smooth, but he’d shifted from the theoretical to the practical, to the issues with which they now had to deal. “First comes a notice in the
Gazette
. There’s a fairly standard wording.”

“And then?”

She drew in a breath, her lungs suddenly tight, let it out with, “That depends very much on us. On what we decide. On our … direction.”

When he frowned, clearly not comprehending, she explained, “What we do after the notice of our betrothal is posted will signal to the ton, to society at large, what the … for want of a better term, basis of our marriage is to be.” She fought and succeeded in keeping her tone direct and matter-of-fact. “In circumstances such as ours, there’s an expectation that, following the notice in the
Gazette
, matters will be organized quietly, and our wedding will be a subdued, family and close connections only, affair.”

“Ah.” Raising his head, he looked toward the battlements.

She couldn’t see his features, his eyes, couldn’t get any real sense of what he was thinking. But she needed to know. This was the crux, the point to which his earlier tack that they not think about society’s expectations but simply let what might be between them evolve had brought them to.

Were they to marry for love — were they to grasp the chance for the ultimate happiness she felt sure was within their grasp? Or were they to step back to the safety of a conventional, socially dictated union, one which left them both, at least theoretically, free to step back from love.

Free to remain uncommitted to love.

“We have to make a decision, you see — a choice, one way or the other.” She tried to catch his eye, but he didn’t look her way.

“Yes. I see.”

From what she could glimpse of his face he appeared to be frowning in a rather scholarly way, as if the question of what lay between them was a matter for analysis.

A matter yet in question.

She was tempted to press, yet … it was possible he hadn’t thought through his feelings yet. Hadn’t yet decided on his direction. Men, as her brothers’ and cousins’ wives frequently pointed out, were often reluctant to engage in such emotional decision making, and while Jeremy might be a scholar, he was also undeniably a man.

Perhaps she should give him time to think, to reach his own conclusion before she advanced hers.

Angelica’s words rang in her mind, but she pushed them away. She wasn’t backsliding. She knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t turning aside from her goal in the least, but she couldn’t have what she wanted, couldn’t attain her ultimate goal, if he didn’t want it, too.

They’d reached the house.

Jeremy held the side door for her, then followed her into the corridor. “Tell me — what’s the most unusual, unconventional wording you’ve ever come across for a betrothal notice?”

The question took her by surprise. “Unusual?” She racked her brain, then shook her head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything but the norm.”

“No ‘Lord and Lady Higginbotham are hugely relieved to announce the betrothal of their fifth daughter Priscilla to Mr. Courtney’? ‘Mr. and Mrs. Foxglove are ecstatic in declaring their eldest daughter Millicent is to be wed to Viscount Snaring’?”

She laughed. “No mention of relief, no matter how real, much less ecstasy.”

He humphed. “I think we should make an effort to be original — at least to assess our every option.”

She was struck by the reminder of the way his mind worked. “Like we did during our flight?”

They’d reached the large front hall. Halting, lifting her hand from his sleeve, he turned to face her; his fingers lightly clasping hers, he met her eyes. “Yes. Just like that.”

Her heart skipped a beat; she searched his eyes. Did he mean —

The gong for lunch cut across their senses, fracturing the moment.

Multiple female voices approached the top of the stairs; the rumble of male voices came from the direction of the library.

Their gazes returned to each other, met, held.

Jeremy’s lips twisted. He offered his arm. “Shall we?”

Stifling a sigh, telling herself they would have plenty of time later to pursue their discussion, Eliza set her hand on his sleeve and walked beside him to the dining room.

If Jeremy had harbored any doubt as to what Leonora and Tristan, Royce and Minerva, and Eliza’s parents imagined the “basis” of his and Eliza’s union would be, the fact that not one word on the subject, not even an allusion to it, was uttered throughout the meal would have set him straight.

The delicate avoidance, the implied awkwardness in even alluding to it, was smotheringly pervasive. No one wanted to raise the issue of the social compulsion to which they all — patently — believed he’d bowed.

He had surrendered to a compulsion, but not that one.

What their attitude implied about Eliza set his teeth on edge.

Admittedly, neither he nor she had made any statement, any declaration, yet he couldn’t comprehend how Leonora, and even Tristan and Royce, who had both known him for over a decade, could be so blind to the truth.

A truth he felt in every sinew, that had sunk to his very bones.

He was different; he’d changed. And it wasn’t simply their flight from danger that had brought about the transformation.

“We’ve had a good year thus far in Somerset,” Lord Martin replied to Royce’s query. “The planting went well and, barring disaster, the yields should be excellent.”

The male conversations revolved about cattle, sheep, and crops. How the ladies managed to restrain themselves Jeremy didn’t know, but not once was society in any of its many guises so much as mentioned.

On his right, seated opposite Celia, Leonora said, “I’ll have to exert myself and find a new governess. Or perhaps an extra governess — our girls have been protesting that they want to learn Latin, and more arithmetic and geography, if you can imagine.”

“Oh, I can,” Minerva replied. “Ours, sadly, are tomboys, and, of course, Royce is no help in reining them in, but they seem much more inclined to … shall we say more
esoteric
pursuits than embroidery, music, or painting.”

Their nearest and dearest were tiptoeing around them, and even more around the subject of their marriage.

Halfway through the meal, he exchanged a glance with Eliza. From the set of her lips, she, too, was finding said tiptoeing trying.

He toyed with putting his question about interesting ways to couch a betrothal notice to the table at large, but as he and Eliza hadn’t yet discussed and agreed on anything, he refrained.

That last thought kept him quiet through the rest of the meal. He often was silent at the table, but this time it wasn’t Mesopotamian hieroglyphics with which he was wrestling.

Eliza hadn’t actually
said
anything about what type of marriage she wanted. Had she? He wasn’t the most observant sort, not when it came to people, females in particular, but although she’d come to his bed for the past two nights, although she’d responded quite gratifyingly to his attempt to woo her, she hadn’t actually stated what she wanted.

He thought he knew; he hoped he was right, but … she hadn’t actually
uttered
any words on which he could pin his future.

Indeed, the more he thought of it, the more he analyzed, as was his wont, the more he grew unsettlingly aware that his assumptions about them and their future, about what she wanted their marriage to be, were, thus far, based solely on his interpretations of her actions, necessarily viewed through the prism of his own hopes and fears. His needs, his wants.

The reality of hers could conceivably be quite different.

He could, very easily, be wrong.

And all those sitting around him could equally easily be right.

What if they were?

He glanced across the table. Like him, she was silently eating, and paying scant attention to the conversations around her. He tried to view her — her behavior, her expressions, the words they’d exchanged — objectively, dispassionately. Asked himself if what he’d seen might fit equally well if not better with the notion that, having returned to her customary world, she was now happy to slide into the niche that her parents, his family, and their friends had waiting for her — and him — a niche based on preconceptions and on what they believed was preordained.

Sliding into that niche would certainly be easier.

On them both.

Easier to simply surrender the reins, sit back, and follow the prescribed pattern — starting with a conventionally worded notice in the
Gazette
.

All he had to do was ask her to marry him and then let matters take their course.

He wouldn’t have to wrestle with what he felt, what she felt, wouldn’t have to make any real adjustments to how he lived his life. Not if he settled for a socially dictated marriage based on obligation and mere affection.

If that was what he wanted, it would be easy to make happen.

But was that what he wanted?

By the time the meal ended and they all rose from the table, he was no longer sure — not of him, not of her, not of what they both wanted, let alone might have, for their future.

Jeremy took himself off for a longer walk. This time alone. He needed to think things through, to get clear in his mind what he wanted — and then devise some clever way to learn what Eliza wanted before he made a fool of himself by making a bid for an option she didn’t want.

It might have been easier if he’d been able to speak with her in private, without any of the expectations that — as he’d feared — now all but literally pressed down upon them, but as they’d left the dining room her mother had claimed her attention; engrossed in conversation, Eliza had started up the stairs with the other ladies, presumably heading to Minerva’s sitting room, the duchess’s favored retreat.

He’d glanced at Eliza’s back, then, conscious of the three men following at his heels, he’d walked on down the corridor, not to the library but past it, to a side door that gave access to the gardens.

Stepping out of the house, he closed the door and set out along the gravel path, and felt an oppressive weight ease from his shoulders. From his mind.

This was what he needed, space and silence in which to think.

Sliding his hands into his trouser pockets, he fixed his gaze on the path and walked. He would have preferred to have ridden, or driven, but his wound still rendered either activity unwise.

His mind worked on logical lines; logic was the natural perspective from which he approached any subject he needed to understand.

He needed to understand this.

Comparing himself in this situation with what he knew of other men seemed a sensible place to start. He had always, to himself and all others, been a scholar, not a warrior. Yet most of the men he knew outside of academe were unquestionably warriors — Tristan, all the other members of the Bastion Club, Royce, all the Cynsters; he was well acquainted with the characteristics of the breed.

He might always have been a scholar, but having to rescue Eliza from Scrope and the laird had brought another, underlying, perhaps latent side of him to the fore — a side instantly recognizable as a warrior persona — and as the freely acknowledged approval and approbation of Gabriel, Devil, Royce, and all the others had proved, they, too, had seen his actions and reactions as those not of a scholar but of a warrior like them.

So … he was a mixture. A scholar-warrior, or a warrior-scholar, it didn’t matter which. What mattered was that, underneath all, he was subject to the same impulses and compulsions as all the other warriors he knew, but in his case those impulses and compulsions were influenced and tempered by his scholarly side.

He wasn’t sure if that made him more cold-blooded than them, or simply more clearheaded.

Regardless, the pertinent issues surrounding marriage were ones he’d seen all those others face; he knew how they’d responded. Had any of them been in his shoes … he snorted, muttered, “They would seize the chance of getting what I want — Eliza as my wife — without having to speak of love, without having to expose my heart, or acknowledge any of the concomitant vulnerabilities.”