In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster (10 page)

As for what she knew of the laird … it was possible that if he was a nobleman, as seemed increasingly likely, then he might well suffer from the same male assumptions, the same male blindness when it came to females as she was used to dealing with in her brothers and cousins.

That would give her a chance. A chance she might be able to convert into an opportunity to slip away.

Against that, however, was the strong likelihood that he would cart her off into the highlands, and that was one landscape in which she would be totally and impossibly out of her depth.

In the English countryside, she would have managed somehow; she might not enjoy hiking over hill and dale, but she knew she could do it. Hiking through glens, around lochs, and over possibly snowcapped peaks was another matter altogether.

People got lost in the highlands and weren’t found for years.

She sat on the bed and stared unseeing at the door, and thought and thought as the candlelight dimmed, then flickered. Before she lost the light, she used the cold water in the pitcher to splash her face. As the candles started to gutter, first one, then the other, she toed off her slippers and got into the bed.

Pulling the thin blanket over her shoulders, she curled on her side.

There was no way out. None at all. There was nothing whatever she could do.

Whichever way she looked at it, her future depended on a man.

Scrope. The laird. Or Jeremy Carling.

Her fingers locked about the rose quartz pendant her sister had passed to her with such hope and assurances of happiness to come, Eliza knew who she hoped fate would choose for her.

Even if he was an absentminded scholar, she would cope.

Jeremy, Cobby, Hugo, and Meggin sat gathered around the table in the dining room of Cobby and Meggin’s town house in Reids Close. The scene, Jeremy thought, looked like an artist’s impression of exactly what it was — a convivial dinner hosted by a young, well-to-do, and well-connected Scottish couple for two of the husband’s bachelor friends. Illuminated by the comfortably cozy glow of the chandelier suspended above the mahogany table, the room was well appointed, with dark wood paneling on the walls, and richly hued paintings of misty landscapes above the heavy sideboards. Silver candelabra and a matching multitiered fruit dish added their gleam, while the stag’s head mounted above the fireplace, flanked by two massive, mounted trout, screamed Scotland to anyone with eyes.

In the great carver at the head of the table, Cobby’s eyes danced and his smile was wide as he spoke with Hugo, seated on his left. With hair a similar color to Jeremy’s middling dark brown, with hazel eyes and regular features, and now garbed in his habitual townsman’s clothes, Cobby looked every inch the scion of a venerable Scottish clan.

Seated in the smaller carver opposite her husband, with tumbling black curls, twinkling blue eyes, and a dark blue silk gown, the very epitome of a sophisticated young matron, Meggin watched her husband with open affection.

The covers had been drawn, the dishes cleared away. It was time to get down to business.

Jeremy tapped the table. When the other three cast questioning glances his way, he stated, “We need to go over our plan.”

They’d assembled it in bits and pieces — one making a suggestion, another seeing how it could be altered to better fit — like a giant cerebral jigsaw, titled “The Rescue.”

He was rather pleased with the outcome.

Hugo, a chameleon of sorts with his Byronicly handsome features and artistically ruffled dark hair, his slender bones and slighter build often rendering his movements gracefully effeminate, was a good friend to have at one’s back; he was equally at home trading supercilious barbs in some lady’s drawing room as trading punches in a barroom brawl. Leaning back in his chair, Hugo waved at the clothes and wig he’d left on a straight-backed chair by the wall. “Now we have the last of our disguises, by all means let’s review our campaign.”

That was exactly what it felt like: a military campaign. One with a clear goal to attain.

“Just out of interest,” Cobby said, “where did you find those?” With his head he indicated the clothes on the chair.

“The little theaterette at the palace.” Hugo winked. “Don’t tell.”

Hugo’s family, root and all its various branches, were longtime legal counselors to the palace; Hugo therefore had the entree to areas few others did.

“Let’s start at the beginning.” Clasping her hands on the table, Meggin looked at Jeremy. “How do you plan to get Miss Cynster out of that basement?”

The practical one, Meggin forced them to go through their plan step by step, insisting they fill in the gaps, all the minor details that, in their scholarly fashion, they were apt to take for granted.

“Are you sure they won’t have drugged her again?”

Jeremy hesitated, thought. Eventually, he said, “I don’t think so. In both cases — Eliza’s and her sister Heather’s — the kidnappers were under strict orders to keep their prizes in good health. I suspect Scrope wasn’t supposed to keep Eliza drugged at all.”

“So if they’re to hand her over to the laird tomorrow, they won’t have drugged her tonight, so she should be able to walk out on her own.” Meggin nodded decisively. “All right. Go on.”

They did, rehearsing in their minds each act of their grand plan. After releasing Eliza from the basement room, the next stage was to whisk her out of the city.

“We’ll leave here just before first light,” Jeremy said, “and go down and hire horses. There’s no point trying to ride out before there’s light enough to see.” From Niddery Street, they planned to bring Eliza there, to Reids Close. “Once we’re away, we should be able to reach Wolverstone in a day — well, at least by evening.”

Meggin looked doubtful. “That’s hard riding by anyone’s standards.”

Jeremy grimaced. “Perhaps, but as long as we’re over the border before nightfall, I know the roads from there to the castle well enough to navigate in the dark.”

Meggin hesitated, but then nodded and let the matter slide.

Jeremy appreciated her tact. He’d realized, as she had, that in order to preserve Eliza’s reputation from the socially damning slur of spending a night entirely alone with a gentleman not related in any way, they would need to cover the distance from Edinburgh to Wolverstone Castle in a single, nonstop journey. Normally that would be easy enough, but in this instance they had to take a circling, roundabout route the better to avoid any effective pursuit.

Nevertheless, he thought through the various points again but still concluded, “There really isn’t any other way to accomplish our aim.”

With that stage settled, Cobby and Hugo took over the discussion, going over their subsequent roles in “The Rescue,” namely as decoys designed to lead Scrope and his team, and the laird, too, if he became actively involved, in the opposite direction from Jeremy and Eliza’s route.

Jeremy and Meggin shared a glance at the exuberance Cobby and Hugo seemed determined to invest in their roles.

“Just be careful,” Meggin finally said. “There’s no need to call attention to yourselves as yourselves — I would remind you that you’re both respected members of Edinburgh society now, not high-spirited schoolboys.”

Both Cobby and Hugo contrived to look abashed, but their eyes were twinkling.

Meggin eyed them, then softly snorted, cynically unimpressed; she turned once more to Jeremy. “This is all very well, but I do have reservations about Miss Cynster’s journey south. I’d accompany you myself if I could, but with the bairns to watch over, I can’t leave.” She glanced down the table at her spouse. “Especially not if Cobby’s gone, too.” She looked back at Jeremy. “Are you sure you shouldn’t take a maid, to lend Miss Cynster countenance, as they say?”

All three men frowned. All gave the suggestion due consideration.

All valued Meggin’s insights; they knew they were, all three of them, wont to ignore aspects they deemed irrelevant, such as society’s strictures.

Eventually Jeremy pulled a face. He looked at Cobby. “I still think taking a maid is too problematic. For a start, if they don’t take your bait and instead mount a wider search for us around town, our having a maid will call attention to us, which is precisely what we’re striving to avoid. Secondly, a maid will mean we’ll have to drive, and quite aside from then having three people, one a maid, in a carriage — precisely the combination of bodies they’ll most likely be searching for — we’ll need something bigger than a curricle or phaeton to accommodate the maid, and that will slow us down.” He looked back at Meggin. “We would definitely need more than a day to cover the distance, and that will give them more time to come at us.”

Meggin scrunched up her nose.

Jeremy shook his head. “No — I think our plan as we have it is our best option.”

Both Cobby and Hugo nodded agreement.

Meggin sighed. “Very well.” She glanced at the clock on the wall.

The others all looked, too.

“It’s getting late.” Jeremy met Cobby’s, then Hugo’s, eyes. “We should go.”

No one demurred.

They rose from the table; in the front hall, the three men shrugged into their greatcoats and collected lanterns.

Meggin stood ready to unbolt the front door.

Jeremy looked at Cobby, then Hugo, then nodded to Meggin to pull open the door. “Let’s get moving — it’s time to get ‘The Rescue’ underway.”

Time to get Eliza Cynster out of her captors’ hands.

he night seemed interminable. Eliza didn’t even try to sleep. Once the candles guttered, darkness so intense she couldn’t see her hand before her face closed in.

It weighed on her like a suffocating blanket.

She wasn’t normally afraid of the dark, but this dark had a menacing quality. Despite the covers, she found herself shivering; the basement was cool, but the chill gripping her owed little to the temperature.

Time quickly lost all meaning.

She tried to keep her mind from the question of what would happen if the laird came for her before Jeremy did. What should she do? What could —

Rat-tat.

She blinked, glanced toward the door, but there was no sign of it opening. Not that her captors were likely to knock.

Not that they were likely to come for her at this hour, whatever hour it was.

Rat-tat.

Slowly sitting up, she frowned. The darkness was disorienting, but she thought the tapping was coming from … under the bed.

Rat-tat.

The rhythm was regular, a man-made sound. Throwing off the blanket, she groped on the floor, found her slippers, and slid them on.

Rat-tat. Rat-tat.

“I’m coming,” she whispered, although she couldn’t imagine …

Crouching beside the bed — a typical iron-and-wire-framed bed, the base a foot and more off the ground — she peered underneath. It took her an instant to realize that the reason she could see anything at all was that faint light was glowing through the worn fabric of the runner.

Grabbing the rug, she pulled it back, just as another
rat-tat
sounded.

Thin slivers of light outlined the sides of a square set into the floor.

For an instant, she stared at what her stunned brain informed her was a wooden trapdoor, then, hauling in a quick breath, she reached out and rapped her knuckles on the panel:
rat-tat
.

For an instant, nothing happened, then the trapdoor jiggled and pushed up from underneath, but clearly it was fastened in some way.

Her heart leapt, but she reminded herself that she had no idea who was on the other side. They might be burglars. Leaning close, putting her face near the edge, as loudly as she dared she asked, “Who is it?”

A pause followed, then came, “Jeremy Carling. We’ve come to rescue you.”

Sweeter words, she’d never heard. Relief, gratitude, and a curious, eager excitement surged through her. “Just a minute. I have to move the bed.”

Scrambling to her feet, she pushed and lifted the end of the bed away from the wall until the space above the trapdoor was clear, then she fell on her knees and felt along the edge opposite where the panel appeared to be hinged.

Her fingers fumbled along what seemed to be a simple bolt. “I have it.” Finding the bolt’s knob, she lifted it from its anchoring slot and drew the bolt back.

“Thank God!” Relief surged anew as the bolt slid smoothly free.

Using the knob as a handle, she tried to lift the trapdoor. The instant she did, hands beneath pushed it up. Sinking back on her heels, she watched as arms followed, swinging the trapdoor back until it came to rest against the wall.

Lantern light welled out from the open space.

Still on her knees, she leaned forward and looked down.

Directly into Jeremy Carling’s upturned face.

Beyond delighted to see him, she beamed.

He stared rather blankly up at her for a moment, then blinked, frowned slightly, and quietly asked, “Is there anyone near who might hear?”

“No.” She thought back, then decisively said, “After dinner, they brought me down here, locked me in and went back upstairs, and none of them have come down since.”

“Good.” He looked at her face again, then moved his gaze to her shoulders, barely covered by her hideously crushed fichu. “Do you still have that cloak you had earlier? It’s chilly down here.”

“Yes.” Reaching out, she dragged the cloak from the bed; she’d been using it as an extra blanket.

Jeremy spied the edge of a thin blanket dangling from the bed. “Bring the blanket, too — it won’t hurt.”

Having swung the cloak around her, she tied its ties at her throat, then reached for the blanket.

“Is there anything else you need to bring?”

Folding the blanket, she shook her head. “They didn’t even give me a comb.”

“All right. Hand me the blanket.”

She passed it to him; he took it and handed it down to Cobby, waiting at the base of the ladder.

Looking up at Eliza, Jeremy made a circling gesture. “There’s a ladder here, but you’ll need to come down backward.” He retreated a few steps. “Take it slowly. I’ll catch you if you slip.”

She moved quickly to do as he’d said, easing down through the trapdoor, carefully feeling with her feet for each rung.

He continued to retreat as she descended. Eventually he stepped onto the rough stone floor of the tunnel; displacing Cobby at the ladder’s foot, he reached up to take Eliza’s elbow and steady her. “Almost there.”

She stepped down to the tunnel’s floor, then turned to bestow another of her blindingly brilliant smiles on him; as before, when their eyes met, a wave of heat, both pleasurable and discomfiting at the same time, rolled through him.

Reminding himself where they were, he turned to Cobby, who was hovering at his elbow. “Allow me to present Cobden Harris.”

“Cobby, Miss Cynster.” Cobby reached out and shook Eliza’s hand. “Everyone calls me Cobby.”

“And this”— Jeremy gestured to her other side —“is Hugo Weaver.”

Hugo juggled the bag of tools he’d carried into his other hand, then took Eliza’s and bowed gallantly over it. “Enchanted, Miss Cynster.”

Releasing her, Hugo looked at Jeremy. “I suggest we get going before the natives grow restless.”

Cobby stepped back and waved Eliza forward.

“Wait.” Jeremy glanced up at the open trapdoor, then he looked at Eliza. “Did you say the bed was over the trapdoor?”

She nodded. “There was a rug over it, and the bed stood over that. I had no idea the trapdoor was there — and clearly neither did Scrope or the other two. They’d never have left me there if they had.”

Jeremy flicked a glance at Cobby, then Hugo, then turned back to the ladder. “It’s worth spending a few extra minutes to confound any pursuit.”

He climbed quickly up, stuck his head into the basement room, and looked around. “Cobby — I’ll need some light.” Climbing up into the room, Jeremy waited until Cobby appeared on the ladder, holding up one of the lanterns so Jeremy could see, then he got to work setting their stage.

Five minutes later, after fluffing up the pillows and stuffing them under the sheet, then positioning the rug back across the trapdoor so it would lie flat, hiding the panel again once it was fully lowered, then, standing on the ladder and reaching out around the edges of the partially lowered panel, tugging the bed back into place, he finally lowered the trapdoor fully, then retreated down into the tunnel.

Resettling his coat sleeves, he grinned at Cobby and Hugo. “That’ll leave them wrestling with the classic riddle of how someone vanishes from a locked room.”

Cobby chuckled. “I’ve always wanted to leave someone with that mystery to solve.”

Hugo briefly smiled, then nodded along the tunnel. “We need to go.”

They shuttered their lanterns so that the light shone in narrow beams ahead of them, enough to light their path but hopefully not enough to disturb any of the denizens through whose abodes, as it were, they would pass.

Jeremy signaled Eliza to put up the hood of her cloak. Even in its presently disarranged state, the honey-gold of her hair gleamed in the light; far safer to keep it, and any suggestion of her quality, concealed.

Through the cloak and the blanket she’d slung about her shoulders, he located her elbow, lightly grasped it. He nodded to Cobby and they started off; Jeremy walked by Eliza’s side, fractionally behind her, ready to steady her over the rough ground, or to protect her.

Cobby walked ahead of them. Hugo strode just behind.

The scabbard of the short sword Jeremy had strapped under his coat tapped his thigh with every step. Cobby, too, had a similar weapon; as they walked, his hand hovered over its hilt.

Hugo, behind them, had a truncheon and a dirk.

They weren’t looking for trouble, but none of them were foolish enough to come into this area without being prepared for it.

Eliza recognized their protectiveness, guessed its cause. Even though she couldn’t see the danger, she could sense its nearness, the unseen, unvoiced menace. The damp chill of the sometimes narrow, sometimes cavernous, tunnels through which they passed was insidiously laced with the potential for violence.

Clutching the blanket closer, she edged nearer Jeremy. “What is this place?” Her voice was the merest whisper.

Ahead of their little group ranged three youths in rough clothing who’d been waiting a little way back along the tunnel from the ladder down which she’d come; the youths occasionally held up a hand to slow them down, as if checking the way ahead, then they would beckon and continue on.

Leaning close so his words wafted across her ear, Jeremy seized a moment when their guides had waved them to a halt to reply, “These are the vaults — the vaults between the bridges’ supports. When the elevated bridges leading north and south from High Street were built, those who later built houses against the bridges incorporated the spaces between the supports as multiple below-ground levels in the houses — second, third, and so on basements, one below the other.”

He fell silent as they moved forward again, swiftly and silently crossing a large, much wider area.

Eliza sensed movement in the impenetrable darkness of the unseen space. As their way once more narrowed, she whispered, “Why are there people hiding in the dark?”

“Not hiding. They live here — we’re walking through their homes.”

She couldn’t imagine it. “Why are they here?”

“When the fire five years ago burned down the original houses, removing all the levels above ground, the builders who built on the foundations of the burned-out shells simply sealed off the lower levels. Those lower levels — these tunnels — became a warren for the homeless, the dispossessed, the poor of every kind. Some, like the canny builder who built the terrace of houses your captors chose, left exits in the house basements in case of another fire. Most locals know of the vaults.”

“I think Scrope is English, and the nurse and the coachman definitely are.”

“Just so. They either rented a house or commandeered a house whose owner is away.”

They reached a set of crude steps cut into the stone. Cobby and Hugo hovered, alert and on guard, while Jeremy helped her down.

“It’s not far now,” he whispered as they started off again. “We’re descending the slope under the bridge — we’re not far from the end.”

Recalling just how long the bridge they’d walked up from the coaching inn to the High Street had been, Eliza thought of how many rooms must be hidden away, tucked underneath. How many people, families, groups. “At least they’re out of the weather.”

Jeremy didn’t reply. Ahead of them Cobby had come to a halt at a wide opening beyond which stars appeared like pinpricks in the black fabric of the sky.

Halting, Jeremy murmured to Eliza, “Go on with Hugo. I’ll join you in a moment.”

She hesitated, clearly reluctant, but then Hugo stepped forward and touched her arm, and she allowed him to steer her on through the opening and out into the relative safety of the night.

Cobby waited just beyond the exit, glancing back as Jeremy pulled a small purse from his pocket. The three youths who’d hovered in the darker shadows instantly drew nearer.

“Here.” Upending the purse in his palm, Jeremy showed them the coins he’d promised in return for their help navigating the vaults safely. “Your due, plus a tip.”

The oldest youth glanced at the other two, then looked back at Jeremy. “Can you divide it for us?”

Jeremy obliged.

More than happy, the youths took the coins, saluted, and melted away.

Jeremy joined Cobby; a few steps more brought them to where Hugo waited with Eliza in the shelter of a doorway.

As soon as Jeremy neared, she retrieved her hand from Hugo’s sleeve and grasped Jeremy’s arm. She looked at Cobby, Hugo, then up at Jeremy. “I can’t thank you enough. Scrope said he expects the laird tomorrow morning. I wasn’t looking forward to meeting him.”

Hugo smiled and swept her a bow. “Delighted to be of service.”

Cobby grinned. “Truth to tell, we haven’t had an adventure for far too long — it’s we who are in your debt. Now!” Face alight, he swung around. “Let’s leave this place for fairer climes.”

Once more, Cobby led the way, and Hugo brought up the rear.

“Where are we going?” Eliza asked.

Jeremy glanced down at her through the dense shadows; she felt more than saw his gaze as it moved briefly over her features. “To Cobby’s town house. It’s not far.”

Cobby patently knew his way; he led them unerringly through passages and tiny courtyards, through narrow alleys, and across larger lanes. Eliza kept up as best she could, but in ballroom slippers she had to be careful where she placed her feet.