A Pursuit of Home

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  “Thank you,” Derek murmured as he sat in the backward-facing seat and pulled his sketchbook from his bag. As the carriage rolled forward, he put down the lines of the painting they’d just seen.

  Jess waited until he was finished to speak. “You don’t have to do that, you know.”

  “What? Draw it out? I think it wise. Even though that painting wasn’t the one I thought it was, there might be a detail in it we need later.”

  Jess didn’t even want to think about how they would fit a group of frolicking angels onto a map of England. “You don’t have to bother with the seats.” She gestured between them. “It’s only you and me in this carriage. No one is going to know where we sit.”

  “I’ll know,” Derek said in a matter-of-fact voice.

  “As will I, but I’m saying it doesn’t matter. Riding backward doesn’t bother me.”

  Not like he did.

  Jess sat back with her arms crossed and watched the countryside roll by, just as it had for the past week. Half the time they rode in silence, half the time he droned about what he’d learned in his studies that she could never hope to understand or cram into her brain, and half the time she poked and prodded at him in an effort to make him as miserable as she was, only to have him sidestep her jab with the grace of a skilled pugilist.

  And yes, she was well aware that three halves were greater than a whole. She hadn’t completely missed being taught her maths. That was just how long this interminable trip felt to her.

  Perhaps if she used these carriage rides to learn about the diary and what Derek thought he was looking for in the art, she’d be able to cut Derek free.

  All she had to do was convince herself that it didn’t mean anything that he was smarter than her. Her entire life had been spent surrounded by people who knew more than she did, and until now she’d seen that as an advantage. She would gather what she needed from them and then move on. It was how she’d learned languages, fighting, and a host of other skills.

  If doing such now had the added benefit of removing the disturbance he brought to her emotions, so be it.

  “Did you know,” Derek said as he glanced up, “that some of the more detailed paintings of the seventeenth century were done on thin copper plates rubbed with garlic?”

  No, she didn’t know that. Why did he know that? Why did anyone need to know that? The interminable “did you know” questions were absolutely the worst part of being trapped in a small carriage with him. She never knew. Ever. She didn’t know useless facts about history or architecture or whatever else he’d spent his life studying.

  While she was aware that two halves made one whole, that was the extent of her mathematical skills, with the exception of a rather good ability to estimate how far away she was from a target and therefore how many revolutions her knife would need to make before it reached them.

  That was a good talent. She would bet Derek didn’t know that. She could play her own game of “did you know” and see if he knew at what angle to pull a man’s thumb so that it caused an excruciating amount of pain, thereby allowing his opponent to get away, even if she was half his size.

  Only the fact that he might have seen some obscure painting that allowed him to cite a better technique than hers kept her silent.

  She cleared her throat and gave him a short smile, just as she’d been doing every time he asked her “did you know?” for the past eight days. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  He nodded and went into more detail about it.

  When he started winding down, she brought the conversation back to the diary. “Have you learned any more from the translations?”

  Derek had been methodically working back through every line. Given the cryptic nature of the writing, they couldn’t afford to have only a general idea. They needed to know exactly what was said.

  He reached into the bag and pulled out the book, frowning at it but not opening it.

  “Your family . . . legend, for lack of a better word. Does it say how Queen Jessamine died?”

  Jess shook her head. “If it does I never knew it. That probably wasn’t considered a vital piece of the puzzle to pass along. How she died didn’t matter. She wasn’t even part of the royal lineage anymore.”

  He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable, a rare occurrence for him. He always seemed perfectly happy to be his odd self. And why shouldn’t he be? The man had friends, family, and a career he loved. He had no reason to be unhappy.

  He ran a finger along the spine of the diary. “These other people claiming the throne, who might be after you, do you know anything about them?”

  “Only a guess,” she said softly. She didn’t want to think back, not when she was alone and certainly not with him in the close confines of a rolling box where mere inches separated their knees. If she wanted to solve this, though, she needed her memories. How could she trust anything she remembered with the mindset of a child? Revisiting the stories as an adult, trying to see her father as he truly was, called everything into question.

  “Several years after Verbonne joined the Holy Roman Empire, when the kingdom had passed to King Nicolas’s eldest son by his second wife and then on to the second son, Johannes, after the first died with only daughters, another man arrived, claiming that he had the true claim to the throne. He claimed that Queen Jessamine had been with child when she left Verbonne, and he was the son of that son.

  “The emperor liked King Johannes better than the interloper and thus declared his claim void and without grounds. Every few years, the man tried again until the emperor had him executed. Five years later, his son made a claim to the throne.”

  Derek winced. “You think those descendants are trying to claim it again, now that it’s once more a free country?”

  “It’s possible. The fact that we’re scrambling across the country on the trail of clues in an old diary is proof enough that family legacy can be a powerful thing. Pass enough passion along to the next generation and it doesn’t die.” Jess jabbed one fingernail into her palm and watched the skin change color. “They still cared ten years ago. The rise of Napoleon renewed their hope, I suppose. They joined forces with him, which was why, even though Verbonne was ready to peacefully change empires for the sake of survival, my family had to go into hiding. Napoleon declared my family traitors and acknowledged the other claim. He vowed to hunt my family down and end any future problems they might cause.”

  Jess swallowed hard, fighting back thoughts she hadn’t allowed herself to entertain. In her mind, Verbonne had been lost. She’d assumed that if it survived the war intact, the other line would gain control and rewrite history before moving the country into the future. Now, it seemed that even though the war was over, there was still a battle to be fought. Was it possible for this to end without one of the lines being eradicated?

  “Why do you ask?” Jess brought her thoughts back to where they needed to be, the here and now.

  Derek ran a hand over the cover of the book. “Because I finished another passage last night. If one were to read that entry in the right way, it’s possible the queen died in childbirth.”

  Jess didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing.

  Neither did he.

  The silence continued for a time that could have been five minutes but felt closer to an hour.

  “Did you know that—”

  “No,” Jess cut Derek off. “No, I didn’t know, likely no one knows besides you, and at this moment I don’t particularly care.”

  Was it possible everything her father had worked his entire life for, what he had died for, was a lie? Had the queen borne the true heir while in England? Was the other claim to the throne legitimate?

  If there had been a child, who had raised him? Had King Nicolas known? Was it in the letter he burned?

  Given Derek’s hesitation at mentioning the passage, Jess had to assume that the diary answered none of those questions. Her gaze dropped to the book sitting on the seat beside Derek
. She wanted to know what it said, but what if . . .

  What if her loss had been worthless? What if everything she’d known had been wrong? Worse than wrong. Stolen.

  Then again, what meant more? Blood or birth? None of the other line had ever lived in Verbonne. Could they love it enough to lead it properly?

  Did any of that matter now? The country was practically having to start over.

  “What does it say?” she asked quietly.

  Derek looked at her, the brown hair swooping gently across his forehead and dipping into his eyes so that he had to brush it back with an impatient hand. He smoothed the diary open in his lap. “With the symbolism of the rest of the book, it’s hard to say. She does write that nature managed what man could not when she mentions the queen’s death. But then it says that even in death she ushered forth a bright and glorious future.”

  Derek set the book aside and slid his spectacles off in order to wipe them with a handkerchief. “It could be a child, or it could simply be because she is the starting point of this journey. Much of the book is written as if she is the one taking the various paths. It’s quite clear that the queen mother adored her daughter-in-law.”

  The one Jess was named after but not actually related to.

  Queen Marguerite had never gotten to meet her son’s second wife nor any of the children that union produced. She had lived out her days in England, possibly more of an actual hero than Jessamine had been. The notice of her passing was the only other message sent back to Verbonne after the diary. The queen mother had left Verbonne behind, giving it a final gift and a hug farewell. As far as anyone knew, she’d never looked back.

  Perhaps Jess should have been named after her instead.

  “Do you think there was a baby?”

  “The diary isn’t clear, so I don’t know. I would have to think that the fact that the diary was sent back to Verbonne would seem to indicate she thought that the rightful heir was there.”

  This was why Jess hated history and scholastic thinking. It was so grey, so shilly-shally. There were no definitive answers. In Jess’s life, it was usually yes or no. It was about survival and making choices in the moment and living with them.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Jess admitted through a tight throat.

  Derek gestured toward the window. “I suggest we get a bite to eat, then bed down at this inn for the evening.”

  “Food and sleep aren’t going to fix this, Derek.”

  He winked at her. “They won’t hurt either.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Derek kept what he knew of the history of cooking to himself as they ate bowls of stew and crusty bread. It was only him and Jess tonight. Most nights the three of them could eat together without drawing too much attention, but this inn was nicer than the others, and dining with their driver would have drawn notice. Jeffreys ate with a group of other grooms and drivers, leaving Jess and Derek to dine alone.

  After five minutes of silence, in which Jess looked at everyone and everything besides him, Derek started voicing his observations. It was a bit more difficult than pulling facts from his head, but it was also enjoyable to observe the people around them and point out details as if they were a painting come to life.

  Twenty minutes later, Jess joined him.

  Her observations were nothing like his. Where he noticed what people wore or carried, if their hair had been recently cut or their bag patched a few too many times, Jess saw movement. That person limped, but only when she thought someone could see her. One man was seated in such a way that he could see all the possible entrances to the room. Another was slumped over his cup, but his eyes kept jerking to whatever table the serving lass was visiting.

  “We look at the world differently, you and I,” he said.

  She stiffened. “Yes, I suppose we do.”

  He took a bite of stew and studied her. Why hadn’t he learned before that people were a form of art? If there was so much to be learned from someone else’s interpretation of a moment, wasn’t there even more to be learned from his own?

  The mediocrity of his art skills meant he’d never been able to get the image in his head onto canvas in a satisfactory manner. Had he walked away from observing the life around him when he’d walked away from his brushes? How much had he missed because of that?

  If he were to paint this scene, this moment, what would it look like? Jess would certainly be harshly drawn, with sharp angles and deep shadows. He’d make the seat of the chair higher and a bit wider, giving her a place to hunch behind and hide. Her focus would be outside the frame somewhere, perhaps behind the viewer, making that itch appear between their shoulders until they turned their head to see if someone was lingering behind them, watching them.

  She would be defensive. Distant. Shielded.

  He picked up his bread and looked at it as he carefully tore off a piece, giving her as much privacy as he could while sitting at the same table. “Do you think that’s a bad thing, our seeing the world differently?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  With a shrug of his shoulders, he popped the bread in his mouth and turned to look about the public room as he chewed and swallowed. Then he turned his gaze back on her. “I don’t think so.”

  “There are others who do not share your opinion,” she said, giving him a haughty look and a smirk that tried to convey that she knew more about people than he did.

  Perhaps she did know more about people, at least modern people, but he didn’t think so. People were people, even when the clothing changed. Despite the change of styles and mediums, it was easy to see the thread of humanity over the centuries of art. Love, grief, anger, ambition. None of it was new; it just manifested itself in different ways.

  “Interesting thing about opinions,” he said, folding his arms on the table and forcing himself to hold her gaze, even though it made his gut quake a bit. “They tend to vary from person to person. If they didn’t, they would be facts.”

  Her smirk drifted into a frown, and Derek fought the desire to grin. It was difficult to argue with the statement of a word’s definition. But if anyone could come up with a way to do it, it would be Jess.

  Surprisingly, she seemed inclined to continue the conversation instead of turn it into an argument. “Whose opinion should influence me, then?”

  Derek stopped holding back his grin. “That’s a matter of opinion.”

  She cast her eyes toward the ceiling and gave her head a small shake before sitting back in her chair, lips curved into a smile instead of a smirk. “Where do you stand on the topic?”

  “My own opinion I suppose comes first. God’s, of course, though whether His thoughts are opinions or facts can be debated. Did you know that—”

  She held up a hand. “Stay with the subject, Derek.”

  He cleared his throat. “Right. At the end of the day, it’s only my opinion that guides my decisions. That opinion is influenced I suppose by God, my family and friends, my colleagues.”

  “More than that.” Jess tilted her chin toward the young girl who’d served them their stew. “Her. What was your opinion about her? Not one you form now, but one you already had.”

  He paused for a moment, trying to follow her instructions and quiet the thoughts that immediately came to mind. “I didn’t have one.”

  “Precisely. She is a servant girl—unseen, unnoticed. I know. I’ve been a servant girl in many a country. It’s the best way to gather information. No one sees you or notices you. You’re like furniture.”

  She pushed her bowl away and dropped her gaze to a scattering of crumbs on the table before continuing. “I don’t think or behave in a way that is normal. That limits where I belong. Opinions may not be facts, but they are not solely your creation. They’re conditioned.”

  Had Derek never seen this part of Jess because he’d never looked, or was this the first time her defenses had lowered enough to allow it to emerge? “I never knew you were a philosopher, Jess.”

  She stiffened, her face
falling back into its blank mask. “I’m not.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Philosophy is all of that complicated nonsense found in books and papers. It’s what you do with a painting, drawing all the information together to see the story and the intent of the artist.” Jess shook her head. “That’s not me.”

  The shadows on the painting in Derek’s mind shifted. No longer were they all around Jess, creating dagger-like angles and edges. Instead, he deepened the darkness between her and the rest of the room, almost as if the shadow weren’t created by her, but by some sort of invisible shield she’d erected between herself and the rest of the world.

  At the moment, he was being allowed to peek around the edges of that shield, and it was changing everything about how he saw her.

  “You’re a thinker, Jess.”

  One eyebrow lifted and the smirk returned. “Anyone I’ve ever worked with would dispute that. I’m rather known for charging in on a gut decision rather than developing a plan.” She gestured between them and then out to the room. “This is more of a plan than I’ve ever executed. Normally I act first and see what happens next.”

  “How is that working out for you?”

  “I’m still alive.” She shrugged. “My instincts haven’t failed me yet.”

  He pointed a finger at her. “Because you’re a thinker. A quick one, I’m sure. What’s your opinion of the serving girl?”

  “She likes working here.” Jess tilted her head. “There’s a difference between forced happiness and real happiness. You see it in the way people walk and hold themselves. Real happiness extends everywhere, while the false kind tends to be limited to the face and the feet.”

  Derek chuckled and stopped the hand that was reaching for his ale. “The feet?”

  She nodded. “They tend to bounce and smile. But the hands are still limp, the chest is still low.” Her gaze followed the girl about the room. “She’s not like that. She’s practically dancing between the tables, waving to people, chatting to those she isn’t serving. She’s happy.”