In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster by Stephanie Laurens

“Come on, old son. Back the way we’ve come.”
    Turning the curricle in the empty road, he set Jasper pacing, then urged him to lengthen his stride. “It’s the border for us, then Scotland beyond.”
    Absentminded scholar though he was, he had a damsel in distress to save.

Chapter Two
     
    liza determinedly paced the wooden floor of an upper-story room in the coaching inn at Jedburgh. The stout oak door was locked, sealing her in. Her captors had supplied her with a tray of food, then gone downstairs to enjoy their dinner in the more convivial atmosphere of the inn’s dining room.
    Reaching the wall, Eliza swung around, her gaze falling on the tray set on a table on the other side of the room. Even though she’d had no appetite, she’d forced herself to eat all of the broth, and as much of the game pie as she’d been able to swallow. If she was to escape her three jailers — Scrope, Genevieve, and Taylor, the burly coachman — she would need her strength. The possibility of escape, however remote, was the reason she was pacing, hoping the exercise would help burn off the lingering effects of the laudanum.
    Stepping out again, down the long room, she had to work to hold her balance. The drug was still in her system, still sapping her strength, leaving her muscles weak and wobbly, and her relatively helpless. They’d kept her drugged for three days — this was, they’d said, the third night after Heather and Breckenridge’s engagement ball — so she probably shouldn’t be surprised or too concerned that it was taking some time for the potent sleeping draft to completely wear off.
    Reaching the tray, she paused to lift a glass and swallow a mouthful of water; she was fairly certain drinking water would help, too.
    She was trying, quite desperately, to keep her hopes up, but …
    Given all she’d recalled about him, having to rely on Jeremy Carling was hardly reassuring.
    He was widely acknowledged as having a brilliant mind, but as that mind preferred ancient times to the present, and usually appeared to be distracted, dwelling on civilizations long gone to dust rather than paying attention to what was happening under his nose …
    Setting down the glass, she hauled in a huge breath, held it until her nerves settled again. There was no sense in working herself into a state. Jeremy would either do something to help, or he wouldn’t.
    There was nothing she could do to influence that.
    Pacing again, she tried to ignore the insidious, carping whisper that slid from the deepest recesses of her mind. Heather got Breckenridge, her hero, as her rescuer. Who did I get? Jeremy Carling. How utterly unfair!
    Brushing the irrational complaint aside — at the moment she’d be happy to be rescued by anyone, never mind her hero — she doggedly marched across the room.
    Her mind returned to that moment in the coach when, fast approaching the very brink of despair, she’d seen Jeremy and her heart had leapt. She could see him quite clearly in her mind’s eye — sitting upright, broad shoulders square, his greatcoat, open, draping from said shoulders, framing a chest that, compared to her previous memory of him, appeared to have improved in both width and strength, or at least the impression of it.
    Frowning, she paced on, remembering, recalling. She had to admit there was nothing in his present appearance that disqualified him as a potential rescuer. Indeed, dispassionately considering the recent image burned into her brain, she concluded that even absentminded scholars could eventually grow into the sort of gentlemen ladies noticed.
    Regardless, as that little voice of darkness within her was quick to point out, what he looked like didn’t matter. Just because Heather’s rescuer had turned out to be her hero was no reason to suppose anything of the sort would happen to Eliza.
    Besides, all she knew of Jeremy Carling suggested he was infinitely more interested in any musty, dusty, ancient tome than he was or ever