Books by Kristi Ann Hunter
HAWTHORNE HOUSE
A Lady of Esteem: A HAWTHORNE HOUSE Novella
A Noble Masquerade
An Elegant Façade
An Uncommon Courtship
An Inconvenient Beauty
HAVEN MANOR
A Search for Refuge: A HAVEN MANOR Novella
A Defense of Honor
Legacy of Love: A HAVEN MANOR Novella from The Christmas Heirloom Novella Collection
A Return of Devotion
A Pursuit of Home
© 2019 by Kristi Ann Hunter
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-2093-3
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by LOOK Design Studio
Cover photography by William Graf, New York
Author represented by Natasha Kern Literary Agency
To the Ultimate Example of Love
1 John 3:16
And to Jacob, who has shown me the true meaning
of service and sacrificial love.
Contents
Cover
Half Title Page
Books by Kristi Ann Hunter
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
Epilogue
Author Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Ads
Back Cover
Prologue
SOMEWHERE IN THE FRENCH COUNTRYSIDE
1806
Sometimes stories are more about the one doing the telling than the tale being told. The true magic is the heart in the words, the emotion in the pauses, the depth of the conviction.
That was why Jessamine Beauchene always asked her father to tell it again, even when the request made her older brother groan.
“You’ve got it memorized by now,” he complained as he dug his toe into the dirt in front of the log he, Jessamine, and their father were sitting on. They’d escaped into the night to give Mama a bit of space. Some days were more difficult for her than others.
Jessamine could hardly remember the large rooms and enormous gardens of the palace. This small farm with its four-room cottage and large barn had been home for half her life. It was different for Mama, Papa, and Nicolas. They remembered the grand parties and the fancy clothes.
Mama said they’d go back someday, and it was important to remember what that would be like. Sometimes she would have their cook, Ismelde, make an elaborate meal in the rudimentary kitchen. Jessamine would help, even though that made Mama frown.
Jessamine and her mother would dress in their finest worn, outdated gowns, and they’d simper and saunter the way Mama said people did at court. Jessamine always felt silly but it made her mother happy, so she did it.
Tonight had been one of those nights. It hadn’t made Mama happy, though. It had made her cry. Lots of things made her cry lately. Ever since Jessamine’s uncle, the king, had been forced to flee the capital a few months earlier and go into hiding with the rest of the family, Mama had despaired of ever getting to go home.
She tended to hurl blame when she was in despair, so they’d learned it best to let her have the back bedchamber to herself on evenings like this. Once she was asleep, they could all creep back in and find their own beds.
“It never hurts to hear the story again,” Papa said, patting his son on the back. “Remembering your legacy is essential to finding your destiny.”
He shifted his position on the log, and Jessamine’s heart beat a bit faster as the energy crackled through the air. It was like a fairy tale to her, recollections of memories so vague and distant they might have been a dream.
“Many centuries ago,” Papa began in a grave voice, “Evrart the Wanderer set out to establish a land of his own. Through the mountains and along the rivers he wandered, sleeping under the trees and in caves, refusing to even pitch his tent until he’d found the perfect place.
“Then one day he topped a mountain. A spring bubbled forth from the rocks atop that mountain, creating a steady stream of water that flowed down the rocks and joined other streams until it became a river rolling across a lush countryside. In the distance was the sea, a barely visible line on the horizon.”
“Verbonne,” Jessamine whispered.
“Yes, my child. He pitched his tent on the mountain and named the place Verbonne. From the mouth of the spring he pulled an opal. Large, smooth, nearly translucent in its perfection. He called it the waterstone and considered it a sign that he was meant to rule over this land.
“He built a fortress out of stone and declared himself king. He was anointed with water from the spring, poured over the waterstone and onto Evrart’s head. Soon others came to join him and his kingdom grew into a powerful land.”
“Not powerful enough,” Nicolas grumbled, though without much conviction. He always made this observation at this point in the story.
“There is power beyond might and strength, my son,” Papa said, just as he always did. “Evrart did everything he could to make Verbonne a place of intellect and culture. His children and his children’s children continued that very legacy. A university was formed, filled with minds to rival those in any other country. Our art was renowned, with even the Italians coming to study our creators. Verbonne became the jewel of Europe.
“But jewels are sometimes coveted, my children, and others wanted Verbonne for themselves. Though strength of arms could not withstand the onslaught, strength of mind and heart prevailed.”
“Not yet,” Nicolas grumbled.
“Persevered, then,” Papa said with a good-natured shrug. He didn’t care which words he said; it was the heart of the story he cared about.
It was all Jessamine cared about, too. The way his voice would rise and fall, the reverence that coated his words. Sometimes he would whisper certain parts because he cared too much to say them any louder.
“With the threat of war looming, our queen took it
upon herself to save the heart of Verbonne. She took everything that represented King Evrart’s legacy and stole away with it in the night. Even if they conquered the land, they would never lay claim to the true Verbonne.”
Jessamine sat up a little straighter at this part. She’d been named after that courageous queen.
“Alas,” Papa said with a sigh, “she was not to see her country reborn. Her life passed on, and our king, who had been reduced to acting as little more than governor of his beloved land, was forced to take a second wife if he hoped to one day restore the crown to its full glory.
“Others have threatened that tenuous hold, claiming to be the rightful heirs to what little power remains, but the descendants of Evrart have remained steady. Your uncle, along with you, my dear children, and your cousins are the latest in that line of steadfast leaders who maintain the hope that one day the heart of Verbonne will return to her. She will thrive in knowledge and culture again, in her own power and freedom.
“One day we will unlock the key sent to us by the queen mother, who fled that fateful night with Queen Jessamine. We are the trusted keepers of the secret, which will be revealed to us at the proper time, when Verbonne is ready to rise again.”
Jessamine sighed and laid her head on her father’s shoulder. She loved how Papa always said that last part. There was always such deep hope in it. In that moment, he didn’t sound tired or worried or frightened or all of those many other things he often seemed. It was the reason Jessamine loved this story so much. When he told it, he became the Papa she remembered from the palace, in her dreamlike recollections.
“I’ll help you make it happen, Papa,” Jessamine said.
“It’s not for us to do,” Nicolas said with a shake of his head. “When all of this is over it will be our uncle who pulls Verbonne from the ashes, or maybe Prince Audebert.”
“We will all play a part in the restoration of Verbonne. It is close, my children. I can feel it—” Papa stopped short as a small light appeared in the distance. One light became several, all moving quickly and growing larger.
“Inside. Now,” Papa said harshly, pulling Jessamine up by her arm and dragging her toward the house. He barged through the door of the cottage. “Someone is coming.”
Everything happened so quickly, as if everyone besides Jessamine knew what they were supposed to do in this situation. She’d never been told, never been warned. What was she to do other than stand in the middle of the room and stare?
Her uncle Gerard, King of Verbonne, was still decorated with the court robe he’d worn during dinner. He shifted the heavy leather curtain hung across the window in order to peer outside. “We must get to the barn and the safe room there. Get the bag.”
“Is there time?” Jessamine’s mother gripped her hands tightly in her skirt, wrinkling the faded silk.
“We have to try,” Papa said as he shoved the largest piece of furniture in the room—a sofa, brought from the palace in the early days of their asylum, but now showing the considerable wear of many years of country living. He pried up one of the wide floorboards as Mama and Ismelde ran for the door at the back of the cottage.
Beneath the floorboard was a dug-out area from which he grabbed a small sack. He handed it to Jessamine. “Hold this for me, mon oisillon.”
He was about to slide the floorboard back into place when the first scream cut through the air from behind the house.
For one breath no one moved, and then everyone did. Gerard, Nicolas, and Audebert ran toward the screams as Papa grabbed Jessamine’s small shoulders. Despite being fifteen years of age, she’d yet to grow much bigger than a child.
“No matter what you see or hear, my precious girl, you stay silent. Carry on the heart of Verbonne for me.” He glanced over his shoulder to the other side of the room, where some of the close personal servants and royal advisors who had become Jessamine’s hidden little village stood pale and frightened. When he turned back to her, his face was grim. “Carry on for us all.”
Then he shoved her into the hole, dropped his gaze to the bag clutched to her middle, and put the floorboard back in place.
Jessamine didn’t move, barely breathed. There was a small crack through which she could see, but only the front door was visible. Mere hours ago, she and Papa and Nicolas had escaped through that door, laughing about how Mama was in one of her moods.
Now the door shook from the force of blows that would soon render the wooden bar braced across it useless.
The pounding of feet returning to the cottage and incoherent yells filled the pit as surely as the smell of dirt and wood. The front door burst open and a man entered, lantern held high. For a moment, his face was framed by the crack Jessamine peered through.
He had a beard, dark and curly, and a scar slashed across his forehead. She couldn’t look into his eyes, but she didn’t need to in order to know he was a hard, mean man.
“Gather them all,” he said in a voice that was most decidedly not French, “and search the entire place. This line of interlopers will cease sitting on the throne of Verbonne.”
More shuffling of feet, more screaming, more everything assaulted Jessamine’s senses. Pieces came to her, bits of phrases, pleas, and cries. The sofa was tossed on its side, partially blocking the crack Jessamine peered through. The rip of fabric followed. Her family was ushered out as the entire place was searched.
“I think we found it,” someone said in French, and a trunk was carried out the front door.
It was the trunk her uncle had brought with him. It held the king’s scepter and crown and all the most important government documents.
The man with the curly beard stepped into the edge of what Jessamine could see. “The line will be corrected and the proper head anointed. Burn this place. Start the fire in the crops so by the time it reaches here and attracts attention the blaze will be too much to fight. When I am finished, there will be no trace of their line.”
Then he was gone.
And it was dark.
The loud pounding of Jessamine’s heart was all that broke the total silence.
They were going to burn the cottage.
With her still inside.
She began to fight and scream and push, but the sofa was stretched across the floorboards, and her slight body, scrunched into a pit with no way to move, couldn’t budge it.
It wasn’t until she heard a man say, “What’s this?” in a voice bearing the same accent as the man with the curly beard that Jessamine considered the dire consequences of the noise she was making. What if the fire had been a threat to get her to reveal her location and that of the bag her father had deemed so important?
“We’re too late,” another voice said. “They’ve taken them all, and if there was anything to be found, it’s already been gotten.”
“Search the barn one more time,” the first voice said.
“The fire’s coming. There’s no point.”
“Search it.”
After a sigh, footsteps receded, and a soft grunt preceded the scrape of the sofa against the floorboards.
Jessamine wriggled and twisted until she could shove the bag beneath her stomacher. She normally hated the stiff dress bodice her mother insisted formal gowns still needed, despite the flowing fashions that had begun appearing before they ran from the palace, but at that moment, Jessamine was grateful for it.
With the bag shoved into a space that was already tight, though, she could barely breathe. Something sharp poked her in the stomach and that, combined with her fear, sent tears coursing down her cheeks. The sudden sobs made breathing even more difficult.
The board lifted, and the light from a single small lantern revealed a pair of grey eyes. They didn’t look like the eyes of a particularly nice man, but they looked kind and capable.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Jess—” hiccup—“Jess—” sniffle. Panic welled. She couldn’t find enough air to say her full name.
“Well, Jess,” the man said, “
I’m here to rescue you. How do you feel about going to England?”
Chapter One
MARLBOROUGH, ENGLAND
1816
Sometimes, despite time, distance, and a significant amount of ignoring it, the past never quite went away.
Over the past two days, everything Jess had run from had spilled over the wall of the past and covered her present like gravy. Lumpy, bitter, burnt gravy. Every emotion she’d worked hard to bury had risen to the surface, making her mind a muddled swarm of incomplete thoughts and sharp colors.
After one sleepless night, she’d done what she did best: shoved every modicum of mind-numbing emotion into a trunk, locked it, and set about determining how to solve the problem at hand.
A second sleepless night allowed irritation to trickle out of the locked trunk and fill her until she wanted to stab something. Of all the feelings she’d felt over the past two days—elation, fear, grief, excitement, hope, despair, really any emotion that could be elaborately overdone in a gothic novel—irritation was the one she most knew how to deal with.
People were often rather irritating, after all, especially when you were trying to extract secrets from them.
What wasn’t so easily determined was what part of her current situation irritated her most: that someone had been able to locate her to deliver the letter, that she’d been able to decipher the old code without the slightest bit of trouble, or that she was going to have to ask a very bothersome man for his assistance.
No, it was the last one. Definitely.
She’d known her days of hidden isolation were numbered, and no one could expect nearly ten years of living in the shadows of intrigue and danger to disappear with a few well-placed country breezes. Needing help was an annoyance, though.
Having to ask for it was an aggravation.
Having to ask him was almost nauseating.
There was nothing else for it, though. If the letter she’d received was true—and she had complete confidence in the man who’d written it, so she had to assume it was—then she didn’t have a choice.
She needed Mr. Derek Thornbury’s help.
To get it, she was going to have to ask him, which required talking to him, which required being in the same room with him without taking her knife from its hidden sheath and stabbing him in the leg. A tall order, as the man was simply too vexing for words.
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