A Pursuit of Home

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  Married? She wanted them to pretend to be married? What exactly did a charade of that nature entail?

  Derek looked at Jess, prepared to argue the idea, but quickly diverted his gaze back to the list he’d been studying when she made her pronouncement. She was still in her servant costume, consisting of boots, trousers, shirt, and close-fitting vest. The trousers were the part he couldn’t quite get over. Clothing that had seemed too large when he’d seen her standing beside the duke now looked much too fitted as she leaned over the desk. Whoever had decided the female form should wear layers of draped fabric had the right idea for certain.

  He didn’t dare suggest Jess go put on a dress, though, not if he didn’t want her deciding they should travel as brothers instead of a couple.

  Not that the couple idea was going to work either.

  “We can’t be married,” he said, reading through the titles on the paper over again, even though he couldn’t find enough spare thinking capacity to remember the diary’s details and guess what description matched what name. The paper was the only way he could reasonably keep his eyes away from Jess.

  “It’s not real, Derek, just a story to keep anyone we encounter from being too curious about me.”

  “What about their curiosity over me?” His frustration allowed him to look up from the paper and keep his gaze on her face. Didn’t she see the problem? “I will see some of these people again. What do I tell them when I am no longer married?”

  She shrugged that annoying, indifferent shrug that made him want to shake her until she decided to care. “You would hardly be the first widower in existence.”

  He choked. “How, pray tell, are you to have died? Should I have suffered a tragic and immediate loss, or the slow, painful agony of watching you waste away with illness?”

  “I don’t much care.”

  “Jess,” Miranda said softly, but Jess ignored her.

  “Pick your favorite tragic painting and pretend that happened to me.” She turned away from Derek and moved to the shelves. “You must have a lineage book in here somewhere. Where do you keep it, Ryland?”

  That was it? Discussion over? “What if they see you again? England is large, granted, but seeing someone you know has been known to happen.”

  “I doubt they’ll see me again. If we’re successful, well, I’m not sure what that will mean. More than likely I’ll return to Haven Manor. It’s as good a place to live out my life as anywhere.”

  Live out her life? He wasn’t sure how old she was, but he would be surprised if she were anywhere close to seeing thirty yet. Living out her life could take a while.

  “I was led to believe earlier that you didn’t particularly care for your position as cook.” Everyone’s reaction to learning what she was doing proved she’d chosen isolation above comfort. She would be able to choose differently after this.

  She spun from the bookshelves and flattened her hands on the desk so she could lean toward him. Her hard face should have been glaring at him, but her eyes were flat. Emotionless. “It doesn’t matter. You need to understand that this is dangerous. I will shield you however I can, make sure no harm comes to you because of your assistance, but the fact is I may not have a future beyond this. My brother has, possibly unknowingly, painted a target on my back. Even if we are successful, my future could quite possibly be something completely out of the realm of current contemplation. Planning is an exercise in futility, and I refuse to participate in fruitless endeavors.”

  Derek didn’t know what to say to that. Nor did it appear that the room’s other occupants knew what to say. For several moments, no one moved, at least not in a way that made any sound. Derek couldn’t see them, his gaze trapped by Jess’s. It was the calm coldness that convinced him she truly believed what she was saying. She would not look beyond her next objective.

  “I’ll chaperone,” Jeffreys said. “You’re going to need a driver anyway, and it might as well be someone who knows how to pick a lock almost as well as you do.”

  “We’re going to pick locks?” Derek asked.

  Another shrug from Jess. He was going to tie a plank to her shoulders before they were finished with this. “We have to get in the houses somehow.”

  “That’s true,” Ryland said, returning to the desk and pulling out a sheet of paper on which he started listing routine household occurrences. “Most houses run on a rather basic schedule. It shouldn’t take much observation to know where and when your best entry point would be.”

  “Why don’t we simply knock?” Derek asked.

  Jess, the duke, and Jeffreys all looked at him blankly. The clink of cups as Miranda poured tea was the only thing that kept the room from falling into uncomfortable silence once more.

  Derek resisted the urge to squirm. “It won’t work in Town, obviously, but in the country, most housekeepers are happy to give a tour in return for a coin or two.”

  Ryland chuckled and threw his pen down on the paper. “I think we’ve been doing this too long, Jess.”

  “Or we’ve taken too long a break from it,” she returned.

  “That only leaves determining which houses to visit,” Jeffreys said. “There’s only so many you can visit in a month, even with continually renting fresh horses.”

  “Are you going to be able to match the names to the descriptions?” Jess asked.

  Derek shook his head. “Not with this alone. I’ll need another source, something that puts the titles with a description of the painting.”

  “Do you know where we could find one?”

  He took a deep breath and was thankful Miranda began handing out tea, as it gave him an excuse to sit down. After taking a small sip, he set his cup aside and finally answered. “Yes. I know where such a book is.”

  “Excellent. We’ll go there first. Where is it?”

  “In my room,” Derek said quietly. “At my parents’ home in Oxfordshire.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The carriage ride away from London was decidedly different from the one they’d taken there. For one, the carriage was small and private.

  Two, Jess was dressed as, well, herself in a simple muslin dress covered in pale purple flowers and a purple spencer jacket.

  Three, as the only occupants in the carriage, Jess and Derek each had their own comfortable seat with enough space to give their legs an occasional stretch.

  Four, Jess had nothing to occupy her mind beyond listing all the ways in which this ride was different from her last.

  She couldn’t plan because she knew nothing beyond their next destination. There was no imminent danger within the carriage, and it was impossible to convince herself that there was a necessity to pay attention to the possible implications of every rut, bump, and jostle.

  Across from her, Derek was working away on the diary, a travel desk on his lap and papers spread out across the seat. A few had fallen to the floor. Jess had picked them up the first time they’d fallen, but two more had fluttered down as soon as she placed them back on the seat, so she’d left them alone.

  It wasn’t as if they were going anywhere. They were stuck in this carriage just like she was. The only difference was they had a purpose. She was currently useless. And bored.

  Derek slid the short steel-nibbed pen into its holder on the travel desk and rolled his shoulders with a groan. He stretched his head from side to side as he waited for the messy scribbles to dry on the page so he could add it to the stack around him.

  “Is there any way I can help?” Jess asked.

  He looked at her, eyebrows raised until they edged over the top of his spectacles. “I thought I was here because it would take you too long to translate the diary.”

  That was true, but she was going crazy with nothing to do. She hadn’t had nothing to do in ten years. “How much longer, do you think?”

  Derek leaned toward the window and took in the passing scenery. “Not too much, I think. Another couple of hours.” He glanced upward. “Maybe an hour the way Jeffreys drives.”
>
  An hour. She could do an hour. Compared to the last day and a half, an hour was nothing. They’d departed London with the first rays of yesterday’s sun, but even with Ryland sending servants ahead to arrange for fresh horses, they couldn’t make the journey in a single day.

  The night they’d spent at the inn had been uneventful. Jess had lain in her room, sliding in and out of a restless sleep, until it was finally a decent hour to rise and start their journey again.

  Derek yawned and let his head fall back against the cushioned seat. “Pardon me,” he mumbled.

  Jess glanced at the number of papers strewn about the carriage, a far greater number than there had been the day before. “How many candles did you burn through working on the diary last night?”

  “Four.” Derek scrubbed a hand across his face, dislodging his spectacles so they hung off one ear. He slid them back into place and blinked at the view again. “We can’t tell them we’re married.”

  Jess hadn’t given much thought to what they would say to his family. She wasn’t accustomed to going into situations where the people involved already knew her, or, in this case, knew who she was with. “What do you suppose we should tell them?”

  “Certainly not the truth,” he said with a shake of his head. “Not that they would believe it.”

  “I’ll take care of it.” Jess stood up into a crouch and banged her hand on the roof of the carriage. “I just need to get something from my trunk.”

  “You will not be a tiger,” he growled, referring to the young boys who frequently rode on the backs of carriages and acted as footmen. “In fact, for this entire journey, I insist you remain a woman. I’m having a difficult enough time with my part of this charade. I can’t slip up and call you my wife when you’re dressed in trousers.”

  Jess blinked at his disgruntled pout and had to bite her lips to refrain from smiling. “Very well. I’ll remain a woman.”

  “You could let me go alone,” Derek grumbled. “I don’t see why you have to accompany me in the first place.”

  “May I be frank?” Jess asked with a sigh, already regretting the offer.

  “That would be a delightful change, yes.”

  “Aside from the fact that we’re much too close to Marlborough for me to be comfortable showing my face anywhere, I don’t trust you.”

  “Well.” He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. “That was honest.”

  “What if your family asks questions you don’t know how to answer? What if you get frightened and don’t meet us in the morning? What if we aren’t as safe as we think we are and need to flee in the middle of the night? You don’t know how to handle those things.”

  “That . . . seems a rather different idea of trust.”

  Jess shrugged and began digging around in the small satchel she’d brought into the carriage with her, not wanting to delve into the meaning of a word she’d had little acquaintance with for several years.

  The carriage rolled to a stop, and the trapdoor in the roof flipped open, revealing Jeffreys leaning back from the driver’s seat. He was covered in road dust but didn’t look the least bit tired yet. “Why did we stop?”

  Jess wriggled out of her middle-class spencer and donned the plain brown pelisse she’d pulled from her bag. “I’m going to be married to you while we visit Derek’s parents. We’ll say Chemsford allowed me to come along because we’ll be going near to my own family’s home.”

  “Bit of a strange story,” Jeffreys said.

  “It will hold if we state it plainly.”

  Jeffreys gave a nod, blew her a kiss with a cheeky grin, and then shut the trapdoor before getting the carriage rolling again.

  Jess buttoned the pelisse and then looked up to find Derek studying her, the lenses of his spectacles distorting the squint of his narrowed eyes. “What?”

  “How many false husbands have you had?”

  She shrugged. “Ten, maybe? Eleven? I know it seems like I suggest it a lot, but most of the time I don’t need it. I don’t often travel in a capacity that would make someone question my connection to my companions, nor stay in one place long enough to need such a disguise.”

  “Does it mean anything to you?”

  What did he mean? Did he think she got caught up in the sentimentality of her own lies? “It’s merely a disguise, Derek. Like changing my coat. It simply keeps people from taking a closer look.”

  “Do you think it will mean less to you when you truly marry?”

  He was scraping a rusty knife across her soul. It was on the tip of her tongue to make a cryptic comment that jabbed at his wit, but she couldn’t. She remembered the way he’d stumbled over asking for rooms for him and his wife at the inn last night. Derek was an innately honest person. Only the fact that he appeared genuinely curious and not the least judgmental allowed her to answer him truthfully. A small bit of honesty in private was the least she could give him.

  “I doubt I’ll ever marry,” she said.

  He tilted his head to look at her through narrowed eyes. “Why not?”

  “Given the fact that I am not made of paint and canvas, I suppose it’s possible you haven’t noticed that I am not the usual sort of female.” Jess looked out the window on the pretense of determining how much farther they had to go.

  Not that she knew. This part of the country was as foreign to her as the Americas would be. Looking out the window was better than watching him scrutinize her. Most of the time, being strange didn’t bother her. She’d much rather have the abilities and wit to take care of herself in any situation than the life of luxury that left one scrambling for purchase when things didn’t go as planned.

  It made her different, though, in a way that not all people would see as good. Those she allowed into her life on a prolonged basis saw no problem with her strangeness, but her life didn’t lend itself to the sort of closeness marriage would require. Marriage would gain her nothing materially, so companionship was its only lure.

  “Not every man wishes for a conventional wife,” Derek said. “Lady Chemsford is hardly a typical marchioness.”

  “Nor was she the kind Lord Chemsford was looking for.”

  Jess leaned a bit closer to the window. Daphne might not have all the typical feminine graces of an aristocratic wife, but if trouble came knocking, she’d tuck herself behind her husband’s coattails. Jess would climb out the window in order to circle around and stab it in the back. No man wanted that in a wife, not really.

  Derek murmured a sound somewhere between a grunt and an actual word. Jess took that to mean he saw her point and agreed.

  Irritation at his agreement had her gritting her teeth. Irritation at herself for finding his acceptance of the truth irritating had her flopping back into the carriage seat and tossing him into the uncomfortable position.

  “What about you?” she asked. “When do you intend to marry?”

  He blinked at her as if the idea had never occurred to him. “When I meet someone who suits me, I suppose. I’m quite comfortable, but I’m not amassing a great deal of wealth and I’m not the eldest son, so my marrying isn’t all that imperative.”

  “But mine is?” Jess raised an eyebrow, hoping he could feel the daggers she was throwing at him in her mind.

  He shifted in his seat and looked out the window. “We’re nearly there. I should probably try to gather these papers into some semblance of order.”

  Jess sighed and leaned her head back on the seat. Maybe that was what she could give him in return for his assistance on the diary. By the time this trip was complete, Derek Thornbury would know how to stand his ground.

  Awkward moments were nothing new to Derek’s family. With Derek prone to spouting off distantly relevant pieces of history; his older brother, Lewis, trying to turn everything into a competition of athleticism; Mary, the elder of his sisters, missing the meaning behind every single one of their father’s sardonic jokes; and his youngest sister, Jacqueline, placing flower fairy crowns on everyone’s head, family interacti
ons were tumultuous to say the least.

  The presence of a couple no one could quite explain sent the entire raucous family into a stunned silence. It didn’t help matters that Derek had forgotten Jess was supposed to be married to Jeffreys and had first introduced her to his mother as Miss Smith. Jess had smoothly corrected him by saying, “It’s Mrs. Smith, actually. May I say what a lovely garden you have?”

  Derek blamed the fact that he still didn’t know the infernal woman’s name, but in truth the moment had scared him a bit. If he didn’t come up with a way to keep their supposed story straight, he was going to get them killed or something equally as horrid.

  That was assuming, of course, that he managed to make it through this one single evening at home with his sanity intact.

  “You all work for Lord Chemsford?” Derek’s father asked as Mother passed tea around the gathering. It was just Derek’s luck that the entire family had been home when the unknown carriage had pulled up to the door. He’d been hoping that his elder sister, at least, would have been at her own home on the other side of the village, but no, she, her vicar husband, and both of their children had come for dinner.

  Nothing could make them go home until they’d heard everything.

  “We don’t want to be an imposition,” Jess said as she accepted a cup of tea. “Mr. Smith and I can find an inn for the night and return for Mr. Thornbury tomorrow.”

  Derek narrowed his eyes at Jess. Given their discussion in the carriage, he knew the offer was as fake as her marriage. She was depending upon his family’s curiosity to turn down her offer.

  And drat it all, Derek knew the ploy was going to work.

  “Nonsense,” his father said, because that man wasn’t about to let an evening like this one pass. He would have fodder for jokes for years the way this evening was going. “We’ve plenty of room here. Can’t you stay more than the one night? We only saw Derek for a week or two before he went off to work for Lord Chemsford.”

  Jeffreys did an admirable job of looking regretful. “I’m afraid we can’t linger. We’ve other items to procure before we return home and a very strict schedule to keep if Mrs. Smith here wants to catch her family at a good time.”