Head rising, the laird stared unseeing across the stable for a moment, then refocused on the stableman and smiled. “Thank you.” Fishing a coin out of his waistcoat pocket, he flipped it to the man, who eagerly snatched it out of the air.
“Thank you, m’lord.” The stableman saluted. “Sure you don’t want that horse?”
The laird laughed. “I thank you, but no. My own mount would be jealous.” So saying, he strode out of the stables and up to the Grassmarket.
Climbing swiftly back to High Street, he strode for his home, his stables, and Hercules. His quarry might have nearly six hours’ head start, but he had no doubt that, mounted on Hercules, he would easily run the pair down.
“There.” Scrope dropped two pouches on the kitchen table. “We’re square.”
Seated at the table, Genevieve and Taylor took one pouch each. Scrope waited while both opened the pouches, upended them, and counted the coins. “Your full payment as agreed.”
About them, the terrace house was silent and still, the curtains drawn, all trace of their recent sojourn removed. All three had packed; each had their traveling bag on the floor beside them. This would be their last meeting before they went their separate ways. Although Scrope had worked with the other two as a team before, they were individual practitioners, hiring out their services job by job.
He waited impatiently, eager to leave.
Sliding the coins back into his pouch, Taylor looked up. “But we lost the girl.”
Scrope forced himself to shrug. “McKinsey terminated our services. He made it very clear he didn’t want us to pursue the matter — or the young lady — further.”
Taylor looked his surprise. “He paid the full reward?”
Scrope expended considerable effort not to grind his teeth. “No. He didn’t. But he paid us enough for our services to this point. We can’t complain.”
Taylor’s expression had shifted from surprise to incredulity. “So you’re just letting her — and the money — go?”
Not a chance.
Scrope drew a steadying breath. “As McKinsey pointed out, he was our client, and providing services to our client is the nature of our business. Doing everything the client wants is the overriding standard we have to meet, and, in case it escaped your notice, McKinsey, or whoever he is, is not the sort of gentleman any sane man would cross. Not this side of the border, anyway.”
“Nor even on the other side.” Genevieve tugged the strings of her pouch tight. “You’re right. McKinsey’s in charge. If he says leave her, we leave her.” With a shrug, Genevieve stood. “I’m off.” She looked at Taylor. “You coming?”
After staring at Scrope for an instant more, Taylor nodded and lumbered to his feet. “May as well.”
Scrope inwardly railed at the note of derision he detected in Taylor’s tone. His reputation was already being questioned, and not just by Taylor. Genevieve’s agreement had come far too quickly, too pat. Both would wonder; eventually, both would talk. Word would get out —
But he would put a stop to that.
Bags in hand, the three of them left the house. Scrope locked the door, turned to the others. “I’ll take the key back to the agent.”
Genevieve nodded. “Until next time.” She turned away and started down the street.
Taylor saluted Scrope, then followed her.
Scrope turned and climbed up the street, turned right onto High Street, then lengthened his stride.
The agent’s office was along his way; leaving the key there took less than a minute.
Five minutes later, he was sitting in a small coffeehouse staring out of its dingy window at one of the major stables on the north side of Auld Town.
He’d never managed to follow McKinsey back to his house, but by sheer luck, he had, a week ago, discovered where the man stabled his horse.
McKinsey would hunt for the girl; of that Scrope entertained not the slightest doubt, and, realistically, such a man had advantages over a nonnative like Scrope when it came to extracting information from the townsfolk of Edinburgh.
McKinsey would turn every stone to find the Cynster chit’s trail. Why bother searching himself when McKinsey insisted on doing the legwork for him?
When McKinsey discovered the girl’s direction, he would return to the stables across the road for his horse.
And when he rode away, Scrope would follow.
And then, when the time was right, Scrope would step in, do what he did best, and reclaim the troublesome chit from the hands of her rescuer.
He could all but taste the triumph he would feel when he presented the woman to McKinsey and claimed his reward, and, in so doing, reaffirmed and underscored his reputation.
His reputation was all — it was who he was.
Without it, he’d be nothing. A no one.
McKinsey hadn’t understood that; he hadn’t appreciated the fact that Scrope, having been hired to capture Eliza Cynster, had the right to accomplish the deed and, in quiet triumph, hand her over to his client.
That was simply the way the world, Scrope’s world, operated.
Those fleeting moments of ultimate triumph were the moments in life he most savored. In those moments, he was king.
In the end, McKinsey wouldn’t care; to him, all that mattered was getting his hands on the girl.
Scrope would make sure he did, and that it was Scrope who presented her to him.
It was midafternoon when the laird, mounted on his massive chestnut, Hercules, rode into the yard of the second of the two inns in Kingsknowe.
A young ostler came running, eyes widening as the boy took in Hercules’s might.
About to dismount, the laird paused, then leaned forward, stroking Hercules’s neck as the big chestnut allowed the boy to hold his bridle.
When the lad managed to drag his gaze from Hercules to his rider, the laird smiled.
The young ostler smiled back. “Yes, m’lord?”
“I’m looking for an Englishman and his charge, a younger man. They’re traveling down from Edinburgh to Carnwath and beyond. They’ve been looking for a gig to drive on in — I wondered if they’d stopped to ask here.”
He’d tracked his quarry to Slateford but had been met with puzzling news there. For some reason, the pair had left the horses they’d hired for return to the Grassmarket stables and, after finding no carriage available for hire, had gone on in a farm cart.
The young ostler’s face lit. “Aye, m’lord. They were here. Came in just afore lunchtime wanting to hire a gig, but ours was already out.”
“Where did they go?”
“They stopped for a bite in the tap, then went on with old farmer Mitchell. Last I saw they were sitting in the back of his dray rolling off down the road.” The boy tipped his head toward Carnwath.
Straightening in his saddle, the laird fished for a coin in his waistcoat pocket, then tossed it to the lad.
Releasing Hercules’s bridle to snatch the silver shilling from the air, the boy saluted. “Thank you, m’lord.”
About to wheel Hercules, the laird paused. “How long ago did they leave?”
“An hour, maybe two.”
With a nod, the laird swung Hercules around, trotted out of the inn yard, then set out down the road.
On the heels of his quarry, who, for some incomprehensible reason, weren’t riding.
They were fleeing; on horseback would have been the obvious best choice. Even a carriage would be a poor second best, restricted to the roads and easier to trace. But a farm cart? Whoever heard of a pair fleeing by farm cart?
“The young one was that stiff in the saddle. No horseman, that one.” The words of the stableman from the Grassmarket. The laird wondered if therein lay the truth.
He’d assumed Eliza Cynster — a Cynster born and bred — would be able to ride and ride well.
If she couldn’t … catching up with them would be so much the easier, but it was another consideration that flooded his mind. If she hadn’t been rescued, and instead his pla
n had come to fruition, he would have ended up with a wife who couldn’t ride.
The thought … was enough to make him shudder.
Perhaps fate hadn’t, as he’d thought, been playing games with him so much as giving him a solid nudge to get him off a path that would have led to disaster.
Despite his focus on catching up with the fleeing pair and, beyond that, regaining the goblet he needed to save his estate and his people, beneath his preoccupation with those tasks, the deep-seated fatalism he’d inherited from his highland ancestors was solidly at work.
It hadn’t escaped him that, once again, he’d been forced to assume the mantle of protector to a Cynster girl. As had happened with Heather, he now felt honor bound to ensure that whatever arose out of his kidnapping of her, Eliza suffered no true harm. That she came out of the experience hale, whole, and respectably married, if not to him as per his original plan, then to her rescuer. The choice was hers, and he was willing to abide by her decision.
If, as he now suspected, she couldn’t ride, he would be perfectly happy to let her go, even in the face of what that meant.
The more he dwelled on all that had, once again, gone awry, the more certain he was that fate was telling him, very clearly, that Eliza Cynster wasn’t for him, and he wasn’t for her.
Beyond that, however, fate’s clear message seemed to be that he wouldn’t be allowed to reclaim the goblet without sacrificing the one thing he’d tried so hard to cling to, to avoid having to lay on the altar in meeting his mother’s demands. His honor was an intrinsic part of him. Directly kidnapping a Cynster chit himself was the one line he’d drawn and had tried to hold to.
Fate, apparently, wasn’t prepared to let him get away with that, with standing aloof, above the dirty work. He was going to have to do the deed himself, accept the ignominy, the stain on his soul, instead of stepping in at the last, almost as a rescuer.
The role of rescuer came easily to him — he’d been playing it for most of his life; in hindsight, he should have realized fate would never let him off so easily, merely doing what came naturally.
No. If he wanted the goblet back, he was going to have to balance the scales by doing something he didn’t want to do, by sacrificing something that was precious to him.
Which meant …
He shifted in the saddle and thrust the consequent thoughts away. Later. He didn’t need to deal with the “what next’s” now.
Refocusing on the road ahead, he wondered where his quarry would next halt to inquire after a gig, and whether they would find one. Even if they did, with Hercules beneath him, he’d come up with them before nightfall.
And then he would see.
He would observe the pair and decide if Eliza’s rescuer was a worthy protector, and, if they had a deeper understanding, whether their feet were already treading the path to the altar, or shortly would be. If that was so, he would step back and let them go, perhaps watch over them from a distance long enough to see them to some safe place.
Once he caught up with them, he’d soon know how matters stood.
And what fate, fickle fate, intended for him.
Jeremy and Eliza farewelled the farmer and his dray in the tiny village of Currie. Eliza kept her head down and mumbled her few words as deeply as she could; the farmer patently suspected nothing, tipping his hat and addressing her as “young sir.”
“Come on.” As the farmer rumbled off down a smaller lane, Jeremy nodded at the single tiny inn the village boasted. “I don’t hold much hope, but we can at least ask if they have a gig for hire.”
They crossed the road, the main highway to Carnwath, Lanark, Cumnock, and Ayr beyond, and entered the inn yard.
Eliza hovered in Jeremy’s shadow, literally and metaphorically, while he spoke with the stableman. As they’d feared, there was no conveyance of any kind to be had.
“We’ve horses aplenty,” the stableman said.
Jeremy glanced at her, but he seemed to sense the trepidation that surged through her. Turning back to the stableman, Jeremy shook his head. “We’ll have to rethink our plans.”
Nudging Eliza with his shoulder, he started them back to the road.
Eliza glanced up at him, took in the firm set of his lips, his chin. “What now?”
He glanced at her, considered her for a moment. “We need to stop and think.” He looked around. “Let’s find somewhere out of the way, off the road.”
She swung slowly around, looking, too, then halted, her back to the road. “How about that church?”
Jeremy followed her gaze and saw the square tower rising behind the houses bordering the road. “Perfect.”
About to take her elbow, he stopped just in time, lowered his arm. “Let’s go.”
Each carrying a saddlebag over one shoulder, they walked back along the road, then down a narrow lane. The church stood surrounded by its graveyard, a wide swath of green dotted with monuments and stone-clad graves, many a testament to the congregation’s age. A solid stone edifice with a heavy oak door, the church appeared quietly prosperous and well tended.
Reaching the arched doorway, he grasped the latch, grateful when it lifted freely. Pushing open the door, he led the way inside.
At that time of day there was no one about, but when Eliza moved to pass him and go into the nave, he touched her arm. “One moment.”
She obligingly halted, watching as he crossed to the base of the tower, to a small door set into the wall.
It, too, was unlocked; opening it, he found, as he’d hoped, stairs leading upward. Looking back at Eliza, he tipped his head. “Let’s take a look at our surroundings first, before we try to come up with a new plan.”
Head rising, she strode across quite eagerly. A shaft of sunshine beamed down through a clerestory window, turning the hair that showed beneath her hat to a rich, bright, beaten gold. He could only give thanks that she’d kept to the shadows and kept her head down when they’d been near others. No man getting a clear view of her face would ever imagine her a male.
Instinct gripped; he stepped back and let her go before him.
Climbing the narrow spiral stair in her wake, he lectured himself over the telltale error. If she’d been the male she was supposed to be, he would have led the way.
If he had, he wouldn’t have been tortured by the sight of her hips swaying before his eyes in a distinctly unmale way with every steep stone step. Even though her figure was screened by Hugo’s cloak, he still knew what he was seeing.
But as they stepped out onto the tower’s roof, instinct of a different sort surged to the fore, swamping all inclination to lascivious thought. He hadn’t truly appreciated that he had such instincts, such warrior impulses, before this adventure; he was still learning how to deal with them, with how to define whether to yield to their prompting or suppress them.
With each successive setback that morning, his newfound instincts had risen and grown. Now, with him and Eliza at midafternoon no further than Currie, those new instincts were screaming.
The sensation wasn’t simply a ruffling of the hairs at his nape but an actual prickling, as if someone or something was literally behind him, sword drawn, about to strike.
He had to, simply had to, look behind him.
And the tower roof was perfect for that need. Walking to the chest-high battlemented wall, he looked out over the countryside, spread model-like below them, saw the road leading back to Edinburgh laid like a ribbon across the fields. The nearer stretches were in clear view; from their vantage point, coaches, carts, and horsemen looked like children’s toys.
Eliza raised a hand to her eyes and looked south and west, toward Carnwath.
Pulling the saddlebag from his shoulder, Jeremy hunted through it, eventually locating the spyglass Cobby had lent him. Drawing it out and setting the saddlebag at his feet, Jeremy opened the glass to its full extent, put it to his eye, and focused on the road they’d recently rattled along.
The spyglass was an old one, not especially good, yet …
Jeremy looked, looked again, then bit his tongue to hold back a curse. Spyglass still trained, he asked, “That mysterious laird of yours — did Heather or Breckenridge say what he looked like?”
To his relief, his tone made the question sound like a scholarly query; none of his welling agitation showed.
“Tall, large … very large. Black hair — real black, not dark brown. Pale eyes. ‘Face like hewn granite and eyes like ice’— that was the description from one of the men who’d spoken with him.” Eliza glanced at him. “Why?”
Adjusting the spyglass, he ignored the question, asked instead, “His horse — I vaguely recall some mention about a horse.”
Eliza drew nearer. “A huge chestnut. Massive chest.” An instant passed, then she asked, “Is he near?”
Not, he noted, is he following us?; she’d already realized that. “A man fitting his description, on a horse of the right type, is riding this way at a good clip. He’s less than a mile away.”
“If he stops in the village and asks, he’ll realize we’re close. He’ll search.”
“Did the stableman notice which way we went? I didn’t see.”
She paused. “I don’t think so. But he might have.”
“We need to get out of here.”
“We can’t go back to the road — he’ll see us.”
Lowering the spyglass, Jeremy swung around, then strode to the opposite side of the tower. Looking out at the countryside in that direction, a significantly different landscape, he grimaced. Shutting the spyglass, he stuffed it back in his saddlebag; pulling out the map, he unfolded it.
Beside him, Eliza grabbed one edge and helped hold the map open. One glance at her face told him that she was frightened, fearful, but still thinking, still rational, not panicking.