Read In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster for Free Online Page A

comfort. To the fundamental difference that made a house a home.
    The house he shared with Humphrey was just that, a house.
    It lacked the essential elements to transform it into a home.
    He hadn’t thought it mattered, not to him or to Humphrey.
    In that he’d been wrong, at least with respect to himself. That error, and his consequent lack and refusal to pay attention and do something about it, was what lay beneath his restlessness, what drove it and, increasingly, gave it teeth.
    Minerva’s parting words had been, “You’re going to have to do something soon, dear Jeremy, or you’ll wake up one morning a lonely old man.”
    Her eyes had been kindly and understanding.
    Her words had chilled him to the bone.
    She’d put her delicate finger on the crux of what, he now recognized, was his deepest fear.
    Leonora had found Tristan, and Tristan had found her, and they, like Royce and Minerva, had made their own family, their warm and boisterous brood.
    He had his books, but as Minerva had intimated, they wouldn’t keep him warm through the years ahead. Most especially through those years after Humphrey, already old and frail, passed on. Would he then regret that he hadn’t bothered to make the time to find a lady of his own to share his life, to have children like his nephews and nieces? To do what was necessary to hear children’s voices, their laughter, rolling down the corridors, to have children of his own to watch and see grow.
    To have a son to whom he could pass on his own knowledge, his accumulated wisdom, as he’d seen Royce doing with his eldest boys. Perhaps to have a son, or even a daughter, with whom he could share the fascination of ancient writings, as Humphrey had with him.
    He’d long ago assumed he’d never want such things, yet now …
    He was already thirty-seven, a fact Minerva knew, no doubt prompting her remark, although with his lean frame, which had only truly filled out in his thirties, he was thought by most to be younger. Yet there was no denying the truth of her observation; if he wanted a family like hers and Royce’s, like Leonora’s and Tristan’s, then he needed to do something about it.
    Soon.
    He’d whisked through the hamlet of Rayless; a sign proclaimed that Raechester lay ahead. He had an hour of driving before him with nothing to claim his attention; he might as well use the time.
    And decide what he wanted.
    That took two seconds — he wanted a family like his brother-in-law had. Like Royce had. The details were there, glowing in his mind.
    Next: How to get it?
    Obviously he needed a wife.
    How to get her?
    His mind, widely proclaimed to be brilliant and incisive, stalled at that point.
    So he did what any academic would do and rephrased the question. What sort of wife did he want, did he need, in order to lead to his optimal outcome?
    That was easier to define. The wife he wanted and needed would necessarily be quiet, reserved, if not precisely self-effacing then at least of the sort who wouldn’t take umbrage when he spent days with his nose buried in some book. She would be content to manage his household and bear and care for any children they might be blessed with. He could imagine that she might be shy, relatively reticent — a meek, mild, accommodating lady who would not seek to interfere with his scholarly pursuits, let alone distract him from them.
    Slowing to trot through the tiny village of Raechester, he grimaced. His previous encounters with the fairer sex had left him very aware that such a paragon wouldn’t be easy to find. Ladies, certainly all those he’d ever dallied with, liked attention. That issue, of all others, was the one that invariably led to him and them parting company.
    That said, he had nothing against women per se; some, like the Cynster twins, Amanda and Amelia, he found quite entertaining. In earlier years, he’d indulged in various encounters with certain bored matrons of the ton, followed by three longer affairs, but ultimately he’d