In Pursuit Of Eliza Cynster

by Stephanie Laurens

  Holding Jasper to their steady pace, he bowled along in the coach’s wake.

  As she couldn’t avoid keeping Scrope and Genevieve company in the coach, Eliza decided to make the minutes count.

  She ransacked her memory for every last fact gleaned from Heather’s kidnapping and rescue, and picked the one she hoped would have the best chance of unsettling Scrope. As usual, he was sitting opposite her — close enough to seize her. She fixed her gaze on his face, waited until he cast her a glance to ask, “Is the Scotsman who hired you still using the name McKinsey?”

  Scrope blinked. His hesitation suggested her supposition was correct. Eventually, he replied, “Why do you ask?”

  “I was just wondering what name I should use to address him.”

  Scrope’s lips curved slightly and he relaxed against the seat.

  Eliza arched her brows, faintly patronizing. “I do know that’s not his real name.” Satisfied by the frown that flitted over Scrope’s face, she asked, “What did he tell you about me and my family?”

  Scrope considered, then replied, “He didn’t have to tell me much about your family. The Cynsters are rather well known. As to you …” He shrugged. “All he told me was that he wanted you seized and brought to him in Edinburgh, and that you’d be ripe for the picking at your sister’s engagement ball.”

  Eliza suppressed a frown; she didn’t want Scrope to know how important her next question was. She kept her tone airy, as if vaguely flattered. “He asked specifically for me?”

  Scrope’s dark gaze grew more intent. A moment passed before he nodded. “Yes — you. Why?”

  She saw no reason not to reply. “When my sister, Heather, was seized, he’d asked for one of us — a ‘Cynster sister’— which could have meant Heather, me, Angelica, Henrietta, or Mary. It was just luck that Heather was the one taken.”

  Scrope’s brows rose; his gaze shifted, grew distant as he leaned back into the shadows of the opposite corner. Softly, he said, “Well, this time, he wanted you — just you.” After a moment, his gaze flicked back to Eliza; she could read nothing in his eyes as he said, “He specifically stipulated you.”

  His tone did nothing for her peace of mind. She racked her brain for pertinent questions, but before she could even formulate the first, Scrope, his gaze on her face, spoke again.

  “Don’t bother. I run a far tighter ship than your elder sister’s captors. If you want answers to your questions, you’ll have to wait and address them to”— his lips curved, faintly malicious —“McKinsey.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, then turned her gaze to the window and kept her lips shut.

  While her mind turned over the one new, and frankly unexpected, fact she’d learned. This time, McKinsey had wanted only her.

  Whatever his reasons, she doubted that boded well.

  And with every mile, with every rattling turn of the coach’s wheels, Edinburgh and McKinsey drew inexorably closer.

  She definitely needed to be out of Scrope’s hands before McKinsey came for her.

  They approached Edinburgh in the late morning, with a blue-gray sky overhead and a brisk breeze blowing. Carefully tooling his curricle along, Jeremy was a hundred yards back down the highway when the kidnappers’ coach slowed, then turned in under the arch of a large coaching inn close by where South Bridge Street started its ascent into Edinburgh Auld Town.

  He’d stayed far enough back over the journey to ensure that Taylor, the coachman, was unlikely to spot him if he glanced back; he’d kept other vehicles between his curricle and the coach for as much of the journey as he could.

  But … what now? What was Scrope’s plan?

  There were two carts and another carriage, all rolling slowly along, between his curricle and the entrance to the coaching inn’s yard. Raising his head, Jeremy searched both sides of the road ahead; as he’d thought, while there were many inns along this stretch of road, there were no major inns beyond the one the kidnappers’ coach had stopped at.

  The observation answered his questions. Scrope had halted at the coaching inn closest to the town proper, either because he intended to put up at the inn, holding Eliza there until the laird came to fetch her, or, and more likely in Jeremy’s estimation, Scrope intended to take Eliza into the town, to some house or lodging in the narrow, twisting cobbled closes where carriages didn’t go.

  If the latter was the case, he needed to act now. He couldn’t afford to let them take Eliza into Auld Town without being close on their heels.

  Casting around, he saw another, smaller inn a bare twenty yards from the larger house, and on the same side of the road. Praying Taylor or Scrope didn’t think to come out of the coaching inn’s yard to check for pursuing gentlemen, he drove up to the smaller inn and turned into its yard.

  Five minutes later, he slouched against the iron railings of South Bridge, one among the horde of people who used the bridge to go into and out of the town, and surreptitiously watched the coaching inn. He’d only just settled into position when Scrope, Taylor, and the nurse, closely escorting a slighter figure enveloped in a drab cloak, emerged and headed his way. The nurse had her fingers locked around Eliza’s elbow, and Scrope walked close by her side, a fraction ahead of her. Taylor brought up the rear, with a porter toiling in his wake, lugging three large traveling bags.

  Jeremy did nothing to attract their attention, but none of the three kidnappers looked to right or left. They walked with purpose onto and up the bridge, wordlessly declaring that they knew where they were going and were intent on reaching their destination as soon as possible.

  Eliza kept her head down; with the cloak’s hood up, Jeremy couldn’t so much as glimpse her face. After watching her from the corner of his eye for several moments, he realized she was having to watch her feet, holding the overlong skirts of the cloak so she wouldn’t trip, and placing her ballroom-slipper-shod feet carefully on the worn paving.

  She didn’t see him as they passed.

  Pushing away from the railings, giving every indication of idly strolling, he followed some twenty yards to their rear. Given his height, he had no difficulty allowing others to fill the gap between. Ambling along, he kept the group in sight as they steadily climbed toward the Royal Mile.

  Eliza had visited Edinburgh twice before, on both occasions with her parents to attend ton events. As she’d never imagined she would ever need to know, she’d paid little attention to the layout of the streets. While she recognized the wide sweep of the elevated thoroughfare they’d trudged up and the big church at the corner where that street finally met level ground — she thought the intersecting street was the High Street but wasn’t truly sure — she was lost from there on.

  The bustle in the High Street, if it was that, was considerable. Caught up in the melee, by the time her captors turned her down a narrow, descending street she’d lost sight of the mouth of the elevated street — the one that led south and eventually back to the Great North Road and England.

  Glancing back at the last moment, she caught a glimpse of the spire of the big church and calmed herself with the thought that she could use that as a landmark if she needed to find her way later; the elevated street, South Bridge she thought it was called, ran down one side of that church.

  Facing forward, she discovered, to her surprise, that the cobbled street they were leading her down was lined with new houses. The stone facing was crisp, the window glass gleaming, the paintwork glossy. The entire right side of the street was occupied by a newly built terrace, rising three stories above the cobbles.

  She was so surprised she forgot Scrope’s injunction on leaving the coach, forbidding her to speak. “I thought all of Edinburgh was ancient.”

  Scrope cast her a sharp glance. “Except for the parts that burned to the ground not so long ago.”

  “Ah. I remember now.” The town had been devastated by a massive fire in … “Five years or so ago, wasn’t it?”

  Scrope, ever the conversationalist, nodded.

  Two pac
es on, he halted before one of the new houses, before the steps leading up to its narrow porch and glossy green front door. Pulling a keychain from his coat pocket, he mounted the steps. An instant later, he had the door open. As he walked inside, Genevieve urged Eliza to follow.

  Climbing to the porch, instinctive reluctance mounting, she swallowed. Lecturing herself that she had nothing to fear, that Jeremy would have followed, and that any of the rooms in such a new house that they might lock her in would surely have a window through which she could escape, she clung to her veneer of obedience and stepped over the threshold. Not that she had any real choice with Genevieve and Taylor at her back.

  Scrope had halted in a small front hall, in the doorway of what Eliza guessed would be the drawing room. With a gesture, he waved Eliza and Genevieve to the left. Genevieve guided Eliza forward, past Scrope and down a short corridor. A glance back showed Taylor blocking the front doorway and her view of the street as he paid off the porter.

  Genevieve steered her into the room at the end of the corridor; it proved to be the kitchen. But instead of halting before the table that filled the center of the room, the nurse, using her grip on Eliza’s arm, turned Eliza to face a door in the wall.

  Scrope had followed them; he reached past and opened the door, revealing a set of narrow wooden stairs leading down.

  Lifting a lantern from a hook alongside the door, Scrope lit it, adjusted the flame, then went quickly down the steps. “Come along.”

  Eliza’s feet turned to lead. If they put her in the basement —

  “Get moving.” Genevieve emphasized her order with a sharp jab to Eliza’s back. “Console your pampered self with the reflection that it is a new basement, and our orders are to keep you in comfort, if not style.”

  Eliza heard Taylor’s heavy tread as the coachman-cum-guard joined them. She had no choice but to do as they said.

  Slowly, step by step, she descended, eventually stepping onto a solid stone floor. Scrope had halted a few yards away, the lantern held high enough to shed a wide circle of light.

  That light illuminated a short corridor and another door. This door looked even thicker than the one through which they’d just passed, and possessed a heavy iron lock fitted with a massive key.

  Turning the key, Scrope pulled the door open. He half bowed and waved her in. “Your quarters, Miss Cynster. Not what you’re accustomed to, I fear, but at least you’ll have to spend only one night in such spartan surrounds.”

  Scrope raised the lantern, letting the beam wash through the doorway into the small room beyond. Roughly thirty feet square, the sparsely furnished room contained a narrow bed and a rickety washstand, with a tiny mirror on the wall above. A threadbare runner ran beneath the bed and across the stone floor. In one corner, a small screen stood angled, presumably hiding a chamber pot.

  The best that could be said of the room was that it was clean.

  Forced to the threshold by Genevieve, Eliza glanced at Scrope. She refused to quiver or show her reaction; the truth was that reaction was more anger than fear. Catching his eye, she asked with quiet dignity, “May I at least have a candle?”

  Scrope’s dark eyes held hers for an instant — no doubt while he tried to imagine how a single candle might help her escape — then he looked toward the steps; Taylor had remained at their top, in the kitchen. “Light a candlestick and bring it down.”

  Turning back to her, Scrope nodded toward the room.

  Inclining her head haughtily, she moved into the small space. Walking the few paces to the side of the bed, she unlaced the rough cloak they’d given her and swung it off her shoulders.

  Taylor appeared in the doorway and offered a candlestick bearing a single lighted candle.

  She took it. “Thank you.”

  As Taylor stepped back, she looked Scrope in the eye. “You may go.”

  Scrope’s lips pinched; the thinly veiled insult had hit its mark.

  He closed the door with a barely restrained thud.

  The key grated loudly in the lock.

  Eliza listened to the footsteps recede, then set the candlestick on a corner of the washstand, sat on the bed, clasped her hands in her lap, and stared at the door.

  At the solid timber panel that stood between her and freedom. That was the only way out of her basement room, the modern dungeon they’d locked her in.

  She couldn’t think of any easy way for Jeremy to get her out of there, but he’d already surprised her with his ingenuity, his willingness to attempt things she hadn’t thought it likely he would try; she wouldn’t, she lectured herself, give up hope yet.

  But she couldn’t quash the sliver of doubt that whispered through her mind. Did he even know where she was?

  She didn’t know, she couldn’t tell, and that was the worst of it. The situation required her to have blind faith, not something she would readily accord anyone.

  The weight of the pendant between her breasts impinged on her awareness. She reached for it, clasped the crystal through the fine silk of her bodice, and tried to tell herself she wasn’t totally alone.

  Tried to believe it.

  She was grateful for the illusory warmth of the steady candlelight.

  Her fingers around the pendant, her gaze fixed on the door, she waited.

  Jeremy leaned against the area railings of a house across Niddery Street and three doors down from the one Eliza and her captors had entered. He lounged as if waiting for a friend, and pondered the newness of the terrace opposite and what that almost certainly meant.

  He’d heard about the great fire from Cobby and Hugo, and also much about the subsequent rebuilding. Matching that information with what he saw before him raised an intriguing prospect, one, he decided, he should definitely pursue.

  Eliza and her three captors had entered the house more than twenty minutes ago. He was about to push away from the railings and head for Cobby’s house when the door of the kidnappers’ house opened.

  The man in charge — Scrope, Eliza had named him — stepped out onto the porch, closed the door, then descended the steps and strode back toward High Street.

  His gaze on the house, Jeremy hesitated, evaluating the risks … reluctantly concluded that the coachman-guard and the nurse were still inside, one too many for him to have any reasonable chance of overcoming.

  Should he follow Scrope?

  He glanced after the man and discovered he’d already lost his chance there. Scrope had quickened his purposeful stride and had already merged with the thronging masses in the main thoroughfare. Although readily recognizable when on his own, there was nothing about Scrope that would make him stand out in a crowd.

  Had Scrope gone to summon the laird? Eliza had said they planned to hand her over the next day — not today — so presumably Scrope had gone to send word that they had her there, in Edinburgh, in their keeping.

  Eliza needed to be out of the house and away before tomorrow morning.

  Looking back at the house, Jeremy raised his gaze and studied every window on the upper floors, but saw no face peering out. He wondered if Eliza had seen him, if she knew he was there and so would know help was coming.

  He didn’t like to think of her imagining she was alone.

  Pushing away from the railings, he walked back up the street. He knew Eliza’s location; it was time to start arranging her rescue.

  Reaching High Street, he turned right along the Royal Mile, toward Cannongate and Cobby’s house in Reids Close.

  Chapter Four

  everal hours later, Jeremy — garbed in a dun surveyor’s coat that reached to his knees, his dark brown hair parted in the center, brushed back and slicked down, a pair of spectacles and two pencils showing in the coat’s top pocket — followed his friend Cobby down the steps of the house next door to the one Eliza was being held in.

  It had taken more than three hours to get everything organized and underway. His first action had been to stop at a courier office and send a letter to Wolverstone posthaste. Not knowing
Eliza’s parents’ direction, he’d left it to Royce and Minerva to spread the word, confident they would convey his information to Eliza’s family with all speed.

  They had to be desperate for news of her.

  He’d written explaining how he’d stumbled upon her, related what he’d learned of the kidnappers, and concluded with an assurance that he was presently arranging her rescue without allowing her identity or her time spent with her captors to become public knowledge. He’d closed with the information that he and Eliza would seek refuge at Wolverstone Castle, that being the nearest place of assured safety, as soon as they possibly could.

  With the missive dispatched, he’d gone on to Reids Close and had been lucky enough to find not just Cobden Harris — scholarly scion of the Harris clan, known to all as Cobby — with his feet up before his hearth but also the Honorable Hugo Weaver keeping him company. Jeremy, Cobby, and Hugo had become firm friends during the five months Jeremy had spent in Edinburgh working for the Scottish Assembly, cataloguing various old works in their collections, some of which had been acquired by Alexander I and not looked at since. While Cobby was a scholar of ancient Scottish writings, Hugo was a scholar of ancient legal works, of laws, parliaments, and governance. The Assembly had invited the three of them to form a team; the result had been an association that had overflowed from the professional to the personal, and continued long after Jeremy had returned to London.

  Naturally, the instant he’d told them — Cobby, Hugo, and Cobby’s wife, Margaret, more commonly known as Meggin — his news, they’d been eager to throw themselves into the project: “The Rescue,” as Hugo had dramatically dubbed it.

  “That should do it.” Consulting the ledger he held in his hands, Cobby — a few inches shorter than Jeremy and slightly more rotund, and presently dressed similarly — paused on the pavement and made a show of comparing the ledger entries with the notes on the papers attached to the board Jeremy was carrying.