In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster Read Free Page B

note, so I will end it: Meet me in the back parlor, if you dare.
I’ll be waiting.
     
    Eliza couldn’t help but smile. How … impertinent. How daring. To send her such a note in her cousin’s house, under the very noses of the grandes dames and all her family.
    Yet whoever he was, he was patently there, in the house, and if he knew where the back parlor was …
    She read the note again, debating, but there was no reason she could see why she shouldn’t slip away to the back parlor and discover who it was who had dared send such a note.
    Stepping out from her hiding place, she slipped swiftly, as unobtrusively as she could, around the still crowded room. She felt certain the note-writer was correct — she didn’t know him; they’d never met. She didn’t know any gentleman who would have thought to send such an outrageous summons to a private tryst inside St. Ives House.
    Excitement, anticipation, surged. Perhaps this was it — the moment when her hero would appear before her.
    Stepping through a minor door, she walked quickly down a corridor, then turned down another, then another, increasingly dimly lit, steadily making her way to the rear corner of the huge mansion. Deep in the private areas, distant from the reception rooms and their noise, the back parlor gave onto the gardens at the rear of the house; Honoria often sat there of an afternoon, watching her children play on the lawn below the terrace.
    Eliza finally reached the end of the last corridor. The parlor door stood before her. She didn’t hesitate; turning the knob, she opened the door and walked in.
    The lamps weren’t lit, but moonlight poured through the windows and glass doors that gave onto the terrace. Glancing around and seeing no one, she closed the door and walked deeper into the room. Perhaps he was waiting in one of the armchairs facing the windows.
    Nearing the chairs, she saw they were empty. She halted. Frowned. Had he given up and left? “Hello?” She started to turn. “Is there anyone —”
    A faint rush of sound came from behind her.
    She whirled — too late.
    A hard arm snaked about her waist and jerked her back against a solid male body.
    She opened her mouth —
    A huge palm swooped and slapped a white cloth over her mouth and nose. And held it there.
    She struggled, breathed in — the smell was sickly sweet, cloying …
    Her muscles went to water.
    Even as she sagged, she fought to turn her head, but the heavy palm followed, keeping the horrid cloth over her mouth and nose …
    Until reality slid away and darkness engulfed her.
     
     
    Eliza swam back to consciousness on a sickening sway.
    She was rocking, swinging; she couldn’t seem to stop. Then her senses steadied and she recognized the rattle of coach wheels on cobbles.
    A coach. She was in a coach, being taken …
    My God — I’ve been kidnapped!
    Shocked surprise, followed by pure panic, shot through her. And helped focus her wits. She hadn’t yet tried opening her eyes; her lids felt weighted, as did her limbs. Even shifting a fingertip took effort. She didn’t think her hands or feet were bound, but as she could barely summon enough strength to think, that was of little immediate relevance.
    Besides, there was someone … no, two someones, in the coach with her.
    Remaining as she had been when she’d awoken, slumped in a corner, her head hanging forward, she reached with her other senses. When that told her no more than that there was a person on the seat beside her, with another on the seat opposite, she let her head loll with the next big sway of the coach, then forced her lids up enough to look out from beneath her lashes.
    A man sat opposite, a gentleman by his dress. The planes of his face were austere, rather long, his chin square. His hair was dark brown, wavy, well cut. He was tall, well built, lean rather than heavy. She suspected it was his body she’d been hauled back against in the back parlor. His large hand that had held that horrible-smelling