In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster (4 page)

If it was market day, or even if it wasn’t, rolling slowly through Newcastle-Upon-Tyne would be her best chance to attract the attention of someone she knew, in a town where that someone could readily command the support of the authorities.

Adventure might not be her forte, but she could do this. She could manage this.

Relaxing against the squabs, she gazed out at the road and waited for the roofs of Newcastle to appear.

The sun broke through the clouds and beamed down; the warmth made her sleepy, but she fought off the temptation. She wriggled, straightened, stretched, then settled back. The glare off the next section of road, wet after a passing spring shower, hurt her eyes.

She closed them, had to, just for a moment. Just until the stinging eased.

Eliza woke with a jolt. For a second she didn’t remember … then she did. She recalled what she’d been waiting for, glanced at the window, and realized that more than an hour had to have passed.

They were crossing a reasonable-sized bridge; the different sound of the wheels on the wooden planks had woken her.

Heart pounding, she sat up and looked out to see houses lining the road. Relief poured through her. They must be heading into Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. She hadn’t missed her moment.

Wriggling on the seat, she eased her shoulders and back, then, spine now straight, settled to once again stare out of the window.

Willing someone she knew to be there, walking the pavements of the town. Perhaps Minerva, Duchess of Wolverstone, might be there shopping.

Preferably with her husband.

Eliza couldn’t think of anyone more able to effect her rescue than Royce, Duke of Wolverstone.

She felt Scrope’s watchful gaze on her face but paid him no heed. She had to keep her eyes peeled. Once she saw someone, she would act, and it would be too late for Scrope to stop her.

Only … the further they went, the houses thinned, then finally ceased altogether.

She’d woken only as they’d left the town, not, as she’d thought, as they’d rolled into it.

She’d missed her chance.

Her best, and very likely last, chance to attract the attention of someone who knew her.

For the first time in her life, she actually felt her heart sink.

All the way to the pit of her stomach.

She swallowed; slowly, she eased back against the seat.

Her mind in turmoil, she didn’t look at Scrope, but sensed when he looked away, when he relaxed his vigilance.

He knew there was little likelihood she could do anything to upset his plans now.

“That,” Scrope said, ostensibly speaking to Genevieve, “was the last large town before the border. It’s mostly open country between here and Jedburgh — Taylor should have us there well before dusk.”

Genevieve made a humming sound in acknowledgment.

Eliza wondered if Scrope could read her mind. If his purpose was to deflate and deject her, he’d succeeded.

She continued looking out of the window, staring out even though she’d lost all hope. This was definitely not the Great North Road; she’d traveled the stretch from Newcastle to Aln wick several times. She’d never traveled this way before, but fields already bordered the ditches. What roofs she spied belonged to cottages and farmhouses.

The coach bowled steadily on, carrying her further north, its wheels rumbling in a constant, unrelenting rhythm. Now and again, another conveyance rolled by, mostly farm carts.

Gradually, the road narrowed. Every time the coach encountered another vehicle going the opposite way, both had to slow and ease past.

Eliza blinked. She didn’t straighten, instead counseling herself to remain relaxed — dejected. To give no sign that might trigger Scrope’s watchfulness.

If by any chance at all someone useful might happen along, in a carriage, gig, or cart driving south to New castle … she was sitting on the right side of the coach to attract that person’s attention.

Her situation was desperate. Even if she saw a country squire — any gentry at all — she had to be prepared to seize the moment and scream for help. As matters stood, her family wouldn’t know where she was being taken. Even if the person she alerted did nothing more than write to someone in London, that would be enough. Someone would tell her parents.

She had to believe that.

She had to alert someone, and this stretch before the border was her very last chance.

If an opportunity presented, any opportunity at all, she had to seize it.

Gaze fixed, apparently unseeing, on the road ahead, she vowed she would. She might not possess Heather’s stubborn determination, she might not have Angelica’s reckless lack of fear, but she’d be damned if she’d allow herself to be handed over to some Scottish laird without making even one bid for freedom.

She might be the quiet one; that didn’t mean she was meek.

Jeremy Carling tooled his curricle around a sharp bend, then settled to a steady pace heading south on the first leg of his long journey back to London.

He’d left Wolverstone Castle at midday, but instead of heading east via Rothbury and Pauperhaugh to join the road to Morpeth and Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, the route he had, as usual, used to reach the castle, he’d elected to take the westerly route along the northern edges of the Harwood Forest, joining the lesser road to Newcastle just south of Otterburn.

He enjoyed seeing fresh fields, as it were, and although the less-traveled way over the hills had slowed him, the views had more than compensated.

With a better surfaced road beneath his curricle’s wheels, he let his latest acquisition, a high-bred black he’d named Jasper, stretch his legs. About him the afternoon was waning, but he would still reach Newcastle and the inn he usually patronized well before dark. Freed from the need to think about anything practical, his mind drifted, as it usually did, to the contemplation of ancient hieroglyphics, the study of hieroglyphics being the cornerstone of his life.

He’d first become fascinated with the esoteric word-pictures when, on the death of their parents, he and his sister Leonora had gone to live with their widower uncle, Sir Humphrey Carling. Jeremy had been twelve at the time and insatiably curious, a trait that hadn’t waned. Humphrey had, even then, been widely recognized as the foremost authority on ancient languages, especially Mesopotamian and Sumerian scripts; his house had been littered with scrolls and musty tomes, with papyrus bundles and inscribed cylinders.

Easing Jasper around a bend, Jeremy thought back to those long-ago days and smiled.

The ancient texts, the languages, the hieroglyphics, had captured him from the instant he’d first set eyes on them. Translating them, unlocking their secrets, had rapidly become a passion. While other gentlemen’s sons went to Eton and Harrow, he, established from an early age as an able and impatient scholar, had had private tutors and Humphrey, a remarkable scholar himself, as his mentors. Where other gentlemen his age had old school friends, he had old colleagues.

And that life had suited him to the ground; he’d taken to it like the proverbial fish to water.

As both Humphrey and he were independently wealthy, in his case via a sizeable inheritance from his parents, he and his uncle had happily immersed themselves, elbow to elbow, in their ancient tomes, largely to the exclusion of polite society and, indeed, most company other than that of like-minded scholars.

Had matters allowed, they would probably have continued in comfortable seclusion for the rest of both their lives, but Jeremy’s assumption several years ago of the mantle Humphrey had for decades carried had coincided with an explosion of public interest in all things ancient. That in turn had led to frequent requests for consultations from private institutions and wealthy families attempting to verify the authenticity and standing of tomes discovered in their collections. Although Humphrey still consulted occasionally, he’d grown frail with the years, so running the increasingly businesslike enterprise of consulting on matters ancient for society at large fell mostly on Jeremy’s shoulders.

His reputation was now such that owners of ancient manuscripts frequently offered outrageous sums to secure his opinion. In certain circles it had become all the rage to be able to state that one’s ancient Mesopotamian scroll had been verified by none other than the highly respected Jeremy Carling.

Jeremy’s lips twitched at the thought. And the one that followed; the wives of the men who sought his opinion were every bit as keen to have him visit, to be able to claim the cachet of having entertained the famous, yet so-reclusive, scholar.

In social terms, his eschewing of society had rebounded on him. Given he was well born, well connected, well respected, reassuringly wealthy, and tantalizingly elusive, to many hostesses his very reclusiveness made him a major prize; the machinations to which some had gone to attempt to socially ensnare him and keep him a permanent captive had amazed even him.

None had succeeded, and none would; he liked his quiet life.

Although consulting for wider society was lucrative and often satisfying, by choice he spent most of his time buried in his library translating, studying, and publishing on works that either found their way into his hands or were brought to him, as a renowned scholar and collector, by the various august public institutions presently engaged in the serious research of ancient civilizations.

Such academic studies and contributions would form the bulk, the meat, of his scholar’s legacy; that sphere would always remain his principal interest.

In that, he and Humphrey were two peas in a pod, both perfectly content to sit in the massive twin libraries — one each — in the home they shared in Montrose Place in London and pore over one or another ancient tome. The only lure guaranteed to tease either of them out of their scholarly seclusion was the prospect of discovering some unknown treasure.

Scholars such as they lived for such moments. The thrill of identifying some ancient, long-lost text was a drug like no other, one to which they were, as a species, addicted beyond recall.

It was just such a lure that had drawn him all the way into the far reaches of Northumberland to Wolverstone Castle, the home of Royce Varisey, Duke of Wolverstone, and his duchess, Minerva. Royce and Minerva were close friends of Leonora and her husband, Tristan Wemyss, Viscount Trentham; over the years, Jeremy had come to know the ducal couple quite well. Consequently, when Royce had been cataloguing his late father’s massive library and had discovered an ancient book of hieroglyphics, it had been to Jeremy he’d turned for an opinion.

Grinning to himself, Jeremy flicked the reins and sent Jasper the Black pacing on. His luck had been in; Royce’s book had been a fantastic find, a long-thought-to-be-lost Sumerian text. Jeremy couldn’t wait to tell Humphrey about it, and he was equally keen to get started on compiling a lecture for The Royal Society from the copious notes he’d made. His conclusions would cause quite a stir.

Expectant pleasure a warmth in his veins, his thoughts focused ahead, throwing up a mental picture of his library, of his home.

The peace of it, the comfort and quiet of it.

The emptiness.

Sobering, he was tempted to push the thought aside, to bury it as he usually did, but … he was in the middle of nowhere with nothing else vying for his mind. Perhaps it was time he dealt with the problem.

He wasn’t sure when or why the restless undercurrent of dissatisfaction had started. It had nothing to do with his work — the outlook there was positively glowing. He still felt riveted by his chosen profession, still as absorbed as ever by his longtime interest, his chosen field.

The restlessness had nothing to do with hieroglyphics.

The unwanted uneasiness came from inside him, a burgeoning, welling, unsettling feeling that he’d missed something vital, that he’d somehow failed.

Not in work, but in life.

Over the two weeks he’d spent at Wolverstone, the feeling had only intensified; indeed, in one way, it had come to a head.

Unexpectedly, it had been Minerva, Wolverstone’s ever-gracious wife, who had forced him to see the truth of it. Who, with her parting words, had forced him to face what he had, for quite some time, been avoiding focusing on.

Family. Children. His future.

While at Wolverstone, he’d seen and observed what could be along those lines, had been surrounded by the reality.

Growing up without his parents, with only Humphrey — already a reclusive widower — and Leonora around him through his formative years, he’d never been exposed to a large, boisterous brood, to the warmth, the charm, and that other level of comfort. To the fundamental difference that made a house a home.

The house he shared with Humphrey was just that, a house.

It lacked the essential elements to transform it into a home.

He hadn’t thought it mattered, not to him or to Humphrey.

In that he’d been wrong, at least with respect to himself. That error, and his consequent lack and refusal to pay attention and do something about it, was what lay beneath his restlessness, what drove it and, increasingly, gave it teeth.