A Pursuit of Home

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  Derek had to admire the fact that, aside from the marriage bit, Jess and Jeffreys had managed to participate in much of the conversation without saying anything that was actually a lie. Misleading, yes, but not a lie. That made it even more difficult for Derek to keep up. What was he supposed to share? What did he hide? What truths had Jess told him that were crafted in a way to deliberately mislead him into thinking she meant something else?

  Maybe it was a good thing Jess hadn’t let him come here alone.

  “I thought you were cataloguing Lord Chemsford’s collection. Why do you need your books?” Lewis asked Derek. His brother had never quite understood what Derek did for a living. None of his family did.

  Derek swallowed. It was his turn to attempt an honest prevarication. “I need my books to, um, fully comprehend the meaning of an, er, item I came across in the, um, parlor. Its connection to, um”—he shifted in his seat and had to make a conscious effort not to look in Jess’s direction—“a particular class of art could have significant impact on its importance.”

  Complete silence met his statement. No one even moved a teacup.

  “No one understood that, did they?” Mary asked. “It wasn’t only me?”

  Her husband gave her hand a pat but said nothing.

  “Not only you,” Lewis muttered.

  Yes, if they died on this adventure, it was fairly certain Derek would be at fault.

  “Why don’t I show you to your rooms?” Mother asked. “You can freshen up for a bit.”

  “That would be lovely, thank you,” Jess said, the sweet tone of her voice sounding oddly natural. When had she started using the word lovely? If he didn’t know better, he’d believe she always behaved this way.

  Did he know better? What if this was her natural state and the prickly woman who’d refused to cook him Naples biscuits was a false persona?

  As she passed where Derek was seated, she stepped hard on his toe and threw him a warning glance before following his mother from the room. He sighed in relief as he wiggled his sore toe.

  It would seem he wasn’t entirely wrong about her.

  Jeffreys trailed behind her, shaking his head and chuckling softly.

  Once the soft sounds of their footsteps and chatter had faded up the stairs, the drawing room rumbled with his family’s questions.

  “What is really going on here, Derek? You’d let us know if you were in trouble, wouldn’t you?”

  “What do they do for Lord Chemsford? Are they servants? Should Mother be putting them in the guest room?”

  “Do you think the fact that one of his fingers is missing makes driving the horses more difficult?”

  “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be driven into the woods and left to fend for myself.”

  “Father,” Derek groaned. “They aren’t going to leave me in the woods.”

  His father shrugged. “Woods, middle of a village, seaside cliff . . . you’d best make sure you’re keeping some funds on your person.”

  Mary clutched her husband’s hand. “Father, do you truly think they mean Derek harm?”

  Derek held up both his hands to silence his family. “No one means me any harm.” Any harm he might encounter on this trip would be intended for Jess, a possibility that choked him up a bit. “I asked for the detour by here to pick up the books because I wanted to satisfy my own curiosity. William”—his father’s eyebrows lowered and Derek quickly corrected himself—“Lord Chemsford doesn’t have a particular interest in these details, so my visit will be short as it’s, uh, not for him.”

  This was tiresome. Derek’s father was a land-owning gentleman with an estate that kept the family comfortable and allowed them to circulate in the society of the village and, occasionally, nearby Oxford. He’d rubbed many a shoulder with a titled man, and of course he’d sent his sons to university with them, but he’d never approved of nor understood Derek’s familiarity with a few of the upper-class people he’d met over the years.

  Derek had never understood why a man’s title mattered more than his character when it came to choosing whom he associated with. Over time, he’d learned to simply not talk about it. That hadn’t been a difficult decision, really, as Derek preferred to talk about the art he worked with anyway.

  Fifteen minutes later, Derek had finally reassured his family, but then his mother returned to the drawing room and he had to start over again. By the time he escaped to his own room, he was exhausted. He took a spare taper up with him, though, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep until he’d located the books.

  Since he was alone in the upstairs corridor, he knocked lightly on the guest room door as he passed.

  It swung open to reveal Jess. She was still in her traveling dress, but her hair had been brushed out and braided, giving her a softer appearance. “Is something wrong?”

  “No,” Derek said. “I was . . . I’m not sure why I knocked. I suppose I’m making sure we didn’t need to do anything tonight.”

  “You’ve finished with your family already?”

  The surprise on her face sent a wave of guilt through Derek. He hadn’t seen them in months, though they’d exchanged many letters in that time. Despite their vast differences, his family was close. Perhaps that was the problem. “I find I’m not very good at lying to them. When this is over, I’ll return and have a proper visit.”

  Her gaze cut briefly to the right before she looked back at him, chin raised a bit. “We’ll have you back here as soon as possible.”

  Even if they failed, he’d be back in a month, barring some incredible danger. He didn’t mention it, though. He’d noticed that for all of Jess’s practicality, she didn’t entertain the notion that she might fail.

  “We’ll leave at the earliest polite moment tomorrow,” Jess continued. “As soon as we decide where to go.”

  Derek nodded toward the lit candle and extra taper he held. “I’m working on that now. The sooner we decode the diary, the better.”

  “I’ll help.” Jess stepped through the door, crowding slightly into his space, and pulled it shut behind her.

  “Help?” Derek choked out.

  “I do know how to read, Derek.” Jess glared at him. “I’m assuming your books are in English?”

  “Well, yes, but . . .” He cleared his throat. “They’re in my room.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’ll try not to muss your bedcovers. Lead on.”

  “Should we get Jeffreys?” While Jess might see the other man only as another member of their party, Derek considered him the chaperon keeping them from total impropriety. If he were to join them, having Jess in his room would feel less awkward. Hopefully.

  “No.” Jess jerked her head toward the door. “He’s already asleep. Stripped the covers from the bed and made himself a pallet before I’d even had a chance to say I’d take the floor. If his snores are any indication, the floor isn’t bothering him any. I won’t wake him now. He can’t afford to nod off while driving the horses. You and I can always nap in the carriage.”

  There was no refuting that logic. Derek cast a glance at the closed door, forced to consider an unforeseen aspect of this charade. Would he be sharing a room with Jess? He couldn’t even handle the idea of looking at books in such a private space, much less bedding down, even if it wasn’t in the same bed.

  Perhaps he’d simply have to sneak out and join Jeffreys wherever he slept.

  That was a problem for the future, though. Not far in the future, but not tonight. “We can look at the books in the morning.”

  Jess’s shoulders tensed and her gaze narrowed. “Give me the candles, then.”

  “What?”

  “The candles.” She held out her hands. “If you aren’t going to be looking at the books tonight, you won’t need them.”

  “I’m not giving you the candles,” Derek sputtered, even as part of him acknowledged that he could easily hand them over and go down and get more. It was the principle of the matter. Jess was not going to take away his ca
ndles like his mother had done when he was a little boy and tried to sneak them into his room and read late into the night.

  “I’ll not allow you to keep information from me,” Jess said, looking ready to skewer him with his unlit taper. Or perhaps even the lit one.

  “I never intended to,” Derek ground out. He’d never felt the urge to argue with anyone, at least not over something other than art and its historic implications. Jess riled him up, though, in a way he didn’t completely understand. She frustrated him and, unlike a mysterious painting or an unknown sculpture, no amount of research was going to clear up the confusion she stirred.

  “Why won’t you let me see the books, then?”

  “They. Are. In. My. Bedchamber.” Derek leaned a little closer with each word he whispered. “Have you no sense of propriety? We are in my father’s house, he assumes you are married to another man, and you want to spend the evening in my bedroom. My apologies, but I don’t quite have the same disregard for normality that you seem to.”

  Something about his words meant something to her, because she jerked back and all of the aggression fell from her body and face. “You’re right,” she said softly. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Before he could adjust to her new attitude, she’d slipped back into the room and shut the door.

  Derek stared at it until a drop of wax from the candle he was holding splashed onto his thumb and jerked him from his reverie. Books. He would go bury his head in books. At least there, things made sense.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jess was taking delicate bites of egg and smiling at everything Mrs. Thornbury said when Derek stumbled into the breakfast room the next morning. In addition to the flop of hair across his forehead, there was now a spray of it sticking up from the back of his head. His spectacles only emphasized the tiredness of his eyes. The clothes he wore yesterday still hung on his body, though a bit more wrinkled, and the faint odor of burned tallow clung to him.

  Jeffreys, who’d already eaten and was now seeing to the horses, should have gone to Derek’s room and used his bed. Obviously it had been empty all night.

  Mrs. Thornbury simply clicked her tongue and shook her head before asking the maid to bring coffee. “How many candles?”

  “Only two,” he answered, running his hands over his face.

  “I’ll make sure the maid goes up today to clean the scorch marks from the wall and desk.”

  Derek frowned. “I’ve learned how to trim a candlewick, Mother. The smoke left a streak on the wall, of course, but that couldn’t be helped.”

  “Unless you’d gone to bed like a sensible person,” Jess said, so low that no one would hear her except possibly Derek, who had taken the seat beside her at the breakfast table.

  Derek frowned at her, indicating he had, indeed, heard her little comment. His only answer, though, was to take a bite of toast.

  Lewis joined them a few minutes later, making a few teasing comments about Derek’s appearance. When the younger brother didn’t respond, the elder soon fell into conversation with their mother.

  Eventually Jess couldn’t stay at the table any longer without drawing suspicion. She’d hoped Mrs. Thornbury and her eldest son would go about their day and leave Jess to talk to Derek while he ate. If she were a believer in luck, she’d think hers had long run out.

  “I believe I’d like to take a turn in your lovely garden before cooping myself up in a carriage all day,” Jess said with a sweet smile, trying to look and act like her friend Daphne. Even before the woman had become a marchioness she’d been . . . nice. It was a simple word, but the reality was far more difficult.

  Jess had only been attempting it for a few hours and found the business wearying. Disguises that required her to be a bit harder than she was were much easier. That, or complete and total mutton brains. She rather enjoyed those as well. A simple, graceful, nice girl, however, the kind who was welcomed in most of the genteel world, was the most trying of all identities.

  As she escaped to the garden, she subtly lifted a hand to massage cheeks that were sore from all the soft smiling she’d done over breakfast. The door opened behind her, and Jess sighed silently before putting the mask back in place. She turned to see Derek shuffling out toward her and relaxed. “What did you learn last night?”

  He rolled his shoulders and rubbed his neck.

  Jess laughed. “Aside from the fact that sleeping in a chair at a desk is never going to end well.”

  “I learned that lesson a long time ago,” Derek answered. “I just choose to ignore it on a regular basis.”

  “Do you know where we’re going?”

  He nodded. “Not far, to start. We’re going to Oxford. There’s a book in their collection.”

  “More books?” Jess shook her head. “Derek, we need paintings, not books.”

  “It’s a book of paintings, or at least the engravings of paintings. When I was reading back through the descriptions of the collection of paintings by The Six, I remembered seeing one in this book. Another of their paintings also hangs in the Ashmolean.”

  That she could work with. The possibility of finding not just one but two paintings before the day was out gave Jess a bit of hope she’d been loath to admit was lacking. “What do we need to do to get into the Ashmolean?”

  Derek’s eyebrows lifted. “Walk up the stairs? It’s open to the public. Always has been. My grandmother would take me there when I was a boy. What I saw there made me realize how much more to the world there was. Most people never get to see such wonders. Once seen, some of them still don’t make complete sense.”

  “For example?”

  “There’s a stuffed bird there, very strange looking. Huge long beak, squat legs. A dodo bird, it’s called. Seeing it on display, it’s impossible to tell what it would live like, but then you see the sketches of life on Mauritius, and it makes more sense.”

  “To Oxford and the Ashmolean, then,” she said with a sharp nod. His statements made sense to Jess, at least on a certain level, though she didn’t know that she agreed with him. Art was nothing but frustrating. She always wanted to know what wasn’t there, what was about to happen next. Apparently The Six and the queen had felt differently, which was why Jess needed Derek—if only she could keep him focused. “Let’s say our farewells.”

  He nodded and turned back to the house. “There aren’t any dodo birds left, you know. They all died when the Dutch settled there. Pictures are all that remain.”

  Jess shook her head, but instead of wanting to shove a wad of linen in his mouth as he continued on about birds, she discovered she was amused. At least he was moving toward the carriage, even if he couldn’t stop himself from reciting every obscure fact about the smallest thing that no one in his vicinity even knew about, much less cared for.

  They said farewell to his family, all of whom were still watching Jess and Jeffreys as if their descriptions might be needed by the magistrate later, and climbed into the carriage, Derek still discussing the wonders to be seen at the Ashmolean.

  Derek loved the scent of books. Paper, ink, leather, and dust created an aroma that always made him feel at home. He could spend hours in this library, wandering the shelves, perusing the books, and learning new information.

  He could, but the two people creeping silently behind him would probably threaten to burn the place down.

  “Here it is,” Derek said, pulling a large book from the bottom shelf and laying it gently on the table running between the sets of dark wood shelves.

  “How do we find it?” Jeffreys asked, reaching for the book.

  Derek slid it out of reach and leaned over the tome, turning the pages gently. The picture was in here, he knew, but as page after page of attempts to recreate masterful pieces of art flipped by he could feel the tense anticipation of his companions.

  “You could be looking for the painting in the Ashmolean,” he said, hoping to get them to stop looking over his shoulder.

  “What good would that do?” Jess as
ked. “I wouldn’t know it if I saw it, and even if I did, I wouldn’t know what to look for.”

  Derek could tell them where to go, but he didn’t know what to look for either, and the reminder that his single purpose on this trip was to provide that direction only added to his apprehension. His heart pounded and his hand trembled as he turned one more page and then stopped, breath halting in his lungs. “I found it.”

  Immediately, the other two crowded in next to him. Jeffreys leaned over from the right while Jess pressed in on the left. Her small hand curved over his shoulder, and Derek felt a small pang of excitement that normally only came from viewing a rare painting he’d been dreaming of seeing in person. He cleared his throat and pointed to the book. “I found The Day That Never Was.”

  “Is it in the diary?”

  Derek pulled his satchel up to the table, careful not to dislodge Jess’s hand while doing so. He liked it there, liked the idea that she was leaning on him, depending on him, even though she could easily have stood on her own. “Yes. Though nothing is listed by name, it’s described well.” He opened the satchel and thumbed through his notes before extracting the page in question. “This isn’t a true rendition, obviously, as it lacks the detail and magic of the real one.”

  As fascinated as he was with the works of Fournier and The Six, this was one painting he rather hoped he never saw in person. The block print in the book almost brought him to his knees. The real one would probably rip his heart out. This was the first time his companions were seeing it. How were they remaining unaffected?

  Maybe Jess needed him more than he’d thought.

  “The diary talks of traveling forward to find the past. I’d have to check on a map, but from the orientation I’m guessing this road goes northeast out of Brookland in Kent.”

  Jess glanced at him and then leaned closer to the book. “How can you possibly know this depicts Brookland? It’s just a village.”