In Pursuit Of Eliza Cynster

by Stephanie Laurens

  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.”

  Side by side they walked through the abbey church, pausing without a word to take in the single soaring arch rising high behind where the altar would have been, then they continued on, through a gap in the side wall and down a long, slight slope. The going was easy. The sun shone fitfully, warm when it struck through the branches of the huge, old trees. Eventually they reached a line of denser trees and bushes beyond which the river flowed swiftly on.

  Thick shrubs edged the top of the bank, giving them excellent cover as they tramped along above the southern section of the river’s loop, traveling west to east. All along that stretch, the banks were high and steep, almost vertical, and from what they could see, the river ran deep.

  There was nowhere to cross along that stretch.

  Pulling back, they angled through increasingly dense woodland, striking out for the eastern arm of the loop. Even before they came within sight of the bank, the ground started to slope downward and the vegetation thinned. “This should be it.” Jeremy lengthened his stride. “Our crossing.”

  Sure enough, when they reached the river, they found a shallow ford. Designed for carts or horses, the surface lay beneath six inches of swiftly running water, but a line of flat-topped stones — looking suspiciously like stones from the abbey ruins — had been laid in the riverbed along one edge of the ford. They were some distance apart, but large enough for Eliza to jump from one to the next.

  They both reached the other side without getting their feet wet, and shared a grin.

  Resettling the saddlebag over his shoulder, Jeremy looked up, around, then nudged Eliza’s arm. “That way.”

  There were a few farmhouses dotting the fields before them, but the roofs of St. Boswells now lay some way to their right.

  As they walked along the country lane, more a cart track than a road, he said, “Scrope will be concentrating on the highway end of town — the highway sweeps past on the western side. We’re walking in from the opposite direction, so all of St. Boswells lies between us and the highway and, we hope, Scrope. With any luck, we’ll be able to find an inn and hire a gig, then slip out and start our race south before he has any idea we’re near.”

  “Hmm.” Eliza walked on, constantly scanning the way ahead. She was more concerned with avoiding Scrope than she was with reaching Wolverstone. Her priorities had changed the instant she’d seen the pistol Scrope had been waving. While she would be happy to reach safety tonight, it was more important that she and Jeremy reached safety together. She had no fear that Scrope would shoot her. It was Jeremy, her rescuer, Scrope would have in his sights.

  The realization had shaken her more than she’d expected, but, as Jeremy was — quite clearly, to her mind — her intended hero, then she supposed she’d have to get used to being subject to such fearful concerns regarding him.

  She certainly wasn’t about to let Scrope harm him, take him from her, or to in any way interfere with their future.

  A species of belligerent determination had her firmly in its grip as they reached a larger road and turned toward the town.

  They trudged on through the early afternoon. Cottages became more frequent, increasingly bordering the road, but the town wasn’t large. Reaching a wide curve and starting around it, they saw the usual shops and businesses of a small country town lining the road ahead.

  They slowed, both increasingly cautious. Increasingly wary.

  Ten paces ahead of them, a shop door opened. The tinkle of its bell halted them in their tracks.

  A man stepped out, his back to them as he pulled the shop door closed behind him.

  Giving them an excellent view of him from the rear.

  Black-haired. Tall. Very tall. Massive shoulders. Long, strong legs.

  A topcoat that, in reserved tones, declared its owner’s station in life was teamed with buckskin breeches and well-made riding boots.

  Without glancing their way, the laird walked, with an easy, long-legged stride that screamed of unassailable confidence, further on, angling across the road.

  Not daring to so much as breathe, Eliza dragged her panicked gaze from him and realized she and Jeremy stood beside a narrow alley running between two shops. Sinking her fingers into Jeremy’s sleeve, she gripped, tugged, and stepped carefully sideways into the alley.

  After a fractional hesitation, Jeremy slid silently into the alley alongside her. Once safely concealed, he peered out.

  Eliza leaned back against the alley wall and silently gave thanks. If they’d been half a minute faster, the laird would have stepped out of the shop on top of them.

  Jeremy drew back again. Like her, he slumped against the wall. “He’s gone into the hotel just along the street.”

 
; She swallowed. “Well, we can’t go that way, then — on down the street.”

  “No.” Reaching into the saddlebag, Jeremy drew out the map. “Not only that”— he could hear the grimness infusing his voice —“we won’t be able to hire a gig here, either. If he’s been doing the rounds of the hotels and inns …” Glancing up, he met Eliza’s eyes. “He saw us in Penicuik. If he’s given people a good enough description of us, then as soon as we walk in and ask for a gig, they’ll keep us there and send someone to fetch him.”

  She sighed. “I was going to suggest we might see if we could get a better look at him, but it’s too dangerous, isn’t it?”

  “Much.” He unfolded the map. “Aside from him being half my weight again, if all the signs read true and he is a damned Scottish nobleman, then falling into his hands would be the worst thing we could do.”

  “He might claim I was his runaway ward and cart me off to his highland castle while leaving you in some magistrate’s cell?”

  “And that’s the best outcome we could hope for.” Jeremy held the map so she could see it. “Here’s where we are.” He pointed to the spot. “Here’s where we want to go.” He pointed to the road south of the border, just beyond Carter Bar. “The highway runs directly from here to there, but with both the laird and Scrope patrolling it, I can’t see how we can risk staying on it. If the laird is here, keeping watch, chances are Scrope has already gone south.”

  Eliza grasped the map, brought it closer so she could make out the finer lines, the lanes and tracks. “We know there’s no sense going east — by that route Wolverstone’s simply too far. But …” Angling her head, she traced a route with her eyes. “Could we, do you think, head west? Down this lane”— she pointed —“to Selkirk, and then hire another gig there.” She glanced up and met Jeremy’s eyes. “Neither Scrope nor the laird will expect us to go that way.”

  Jeremy frowned. “But —” He broke off and bent closer, studying the map more acutely. “Ah — I see.”

  “Precisely.” Eliza felt faintly triumphant. “From Selkirk, we can drive to Hawick — if they do happen to pick up our trail and think we’re making for Carlisle so much the better. But at Hawick we can turn off the main road, and take the lane to Bonchester Bridge, and on.”

  “All the way to Carter Bar.” Jeremy raised the map, angling it to the light that shafted into the alley. After a moment, he nodded. “You’re right. That, indeed, is the only reasonable way forward. I hadn’t even noticed that tiny lane, but it’ll keep us off the Jedburgh Road until a bare few yards of the border.” He met Eliza’s eyes. “I can’t imagine either the laird or Scrope will be hanging about the border itself. They’ll want to stop us ahead of it, out of sight of any soldiers who might be quartered there. That close to the border, even if we haven’t actually crossed into England, we could still summon Wolverstone. His name carries weight enough for us to be safe.”

  She smiled. “Excellent. So”— she tipped her head down the alley, away from the main street they’d walked in along —“let’s work our way around to the lane to Selkirk.”

  It took them another hour of being extremely careful, of hiding behind hedges, searching all around before they crossed any roads, exercising extreme caution when they finally raced — thick bushes to thick bushes — across the highway itself, but their luck held. Neither the laird nor Scrope spotted them; no one came thundering after them.

  The sun hung in the sky before them when, having finally gained the lane to Selkirk, they set out at a brisk pace. They soon found their way lined with hawthorn hedges; dense and in full leaf, with the lane gently wending this way, then that, the hedges quickly hid them from anyone following.

  Half a mile or more on, Jeremy halted. “The hedges hide us, but they also keep us from spotting anyone following us.” He nodded to a small grassy knoll crowned with less dense scrub. “I’d rather play safe. Let’s take a short break and watch the road.”

  They did. They watched for half an hour, but no horseman or carriage came by.

  “We’re safe.” Eliza stood and dusted off her breeches. She looked down at Jeremy and smiled. “Come on — it’s Selkirk for us.” He rose with an answering grin. As together they strode down the knoll, back toward the road, she added, a smile flirting about her lips, “And once there, who knows what we’ll find?”

  In midafternoon, the laird left the hotel at which he’d stayed in St. Boswells. Mounted on Hercules, he rode east, out along the country road, then turned left into the lane the helpful barman who’d recently come on duty had described.

  The lane led directly north, ending within sight of the Tweed’s banks. Dismounting and leading Hercules forward and to the left, the laird discovered the old ford easily enough — along with the tracks of two people, one boot large and heavier, the other much smaller and lighter, heading toward the town.

  The river water had long since dried out of the boot prints.

  “They’ve been quick enough.” He’d made an educated guess that despite Scrope’s actions, the pair would attempt to get back on the highway to Jedburgh. They weren’t that far from the border, and the alternative route via Kelso and Coldstream was significantly out of what seemed to be their chosen way.

  While he was pleased to have his reasoning borne out, he was less happy that he was, it seemed, already hours behind them.

  Remounting Hercules, he followed the tracks back toward the town. Increasingly slowly; with the ground hardening and the verges thick, the closer he got to the town, the harder it was to be sure the tracks he was following were the ones he wanted.

  He thought he’d lost them in the main street, but by sheer luck he glanced down a narrow ginnel and saw clear evidence, imprinted in the softer, damper earth, that his fugitive pair had stood there for some time.

  The proximity of the ginnel to the coffeehouse where he’d first inquired as to a possible river crossing, and had subsequently been directed to the hotel across the street, told its own tale.

  “Damn!” Stalking back to Hercules, he swung up to the gelding’s back. They’d seen him. And, of course, not knowing that all he now wished was to see them safe back over the border and free from Scrope’s pursuit, they’d fled in the opposite direction.

  They’d walked away from the main street, down the ginnel and out the other side, but Hercules was too wide of girth to take the same path. Swallowing his curses, he turned the big gelding and rode back out along the road, to circle the block and pick up the errant pair’s trail.

  An hour and a half later, utterly disgusted by the latest turn of events, the laird sat atop Hercules at the junction of the highway with the main road through St. Boswells and debated his next move.

  He had no idea where his fleeing pair had gone.

  He might be an expert tracker, but he still needed some tracks — some hints at least — to follow, but the roads and lanes in this district had hardened with the sun and no longer held impressions sufficiently well for him to distinguish his quarry’s boot prints from the imprints left by the many other boot-wearers in and around the country town.

  The pair had left the ginnel and headed around, through the minor lanes running off and parallel to the main road in the general direction of the highway, but beyond that, he knew no more. He’d checked the obvious places, casting a wide net over and around the various possible minor routes they might have taken toward Jedburgh, even riding east as far as Maxton and the lane leading across Ancrum Moor, but he’d found nothing.

  On the off-chance they’d gone back for whatever transport they’d used to reach the highway earlier, he’d ridden north, back along the highway, to the lane from Newtown St. Bos wells. Just inside the lane, he’d found evidence, not of the vanished pair but of a horse following close behind a gig.

  Scrope, he surmised, had gone back and found a gig — presumably the one Eliza and her gentleman had used to get that far and had abandoned on spotting Scrope ahead of them. Searching further, he’d found sufficient signs to verify his
reading of what had occurred to send the pair rushing through the trees toward the river. On finding the gig, Scrope had tied his horse to its back and driven south.

  McKinsey had followed the gig and the telltale closely following hoofprints back to the junction at which he presently sat. Scrope’s trail led on. Scrope had removed the pair’s ability to travel south at speed, at least until they could find another gig, and had gone on to wait for them at Jedburgh.

  Nudging Hercules forward, the laird cantered a hundred yards south. Reining Hercules to a halt again, he looked west down the lane to Selkirk.

  If he’d been Eliza and her gentleman, he would have gone that way.

  Alternatively, they might have circled back into St. Bos wells and sought shelter for the night with some cottager there; if so, short of knocking on every door and asking, locating them would be difficult.

  He could head out along the lane to the west, and possibly somewhere along it he might find their tracks, and be able to follow them on.

  Possibly. Against that, he had Scrope’s tracks clearly before him.

  His purpose — the only purpose keeping him in the lowlands — was to appease the demands of his honor and his conscience by preserving Eliza and her gentleman from Scrope’s misguided, and potentially malicious, attentions. He could do that just as easily, possibly more so, by following Scrope and ensuring his erstwhile henchman did the pair no harm.

  Much simpler.

  Courtesy of Scrope’s actions that day, he’d already reached the point of feeling confident in otherwise leaving Eliza’s safety and care to her gentleman-protector — another Englishman, no less.

  Shaking his head at the irony in that, with a flick of the reins the laird sent Hercules cantering on, leaving St. Bos wells and the lane to Selkirk behind. He knew of a nice, comfortable inn in Jedburgh; with any luck, Scrope would stop in Jedburgh for the night.