In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster Read Online Free PDF Page B

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