A Pursuit of Home

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  She could lick him, she supposed. That would be gross enough to momentarily get his hand off her face.

  “It almost sounds like a party,” the low whisper continued. “I’m afraid my French isn’t skilled enough to make out such a jumbled conversation.”

  The realization that she, too, had lost track of the conversation made her want to kick something. Preferably her own backside.

  How could she have been so foolish as to allow herself to be distracted, especially by something as unhelpful as feelings? Their lives could very well depend on her knowing what was being said on the other side of that door.

  She reached up to peel his hand off her face and eased her shoulders away from the warmth of his chest. Even as she felt the loss, her brain slid back into doing what she expected of it at a time like this.

  They weren’t talking about the party anymore. They were most definitely interested in the artwork now, admiring the shading and the strokes, the subtle depths.

  Was there something broken in her that she didn’t share the fascination of staring at something someone else created and seeking the meaning behind it? A painting of an apple was a painting of an apple.

  Unless, of course, you were one of her great-great-great-grandmother’s Verbonnian painter friends, in which case your painting of an apple was actually an indication of the way the surface of the sun glinted on the dome of St. Paul’s and told you that what you truly sought was somewhere on the east side of London.

  Or some other similar ridiculousness.

  Derek’s arm slid across her and landed on her shoulder, effectively surrounding her with his presence.

  She should hate it, but she didn’t. The normal instincts that jealously protected her personal space rolled over and succumbed to that attraction she’d finally acknowledged, along with some other emotion she couldn’t quite identify. Whatever it was made her skin feel tight and her breath determined to flee from her lungs.

  There suddenly seemed as much danger inside this closet as outside it.

  Did he feel the pull as well? Was that why he was holding her? Or was it some misbegotten notion of being her protector? Was he trying to save her? As if there was anything they could do if that closet door swung open. There was nowhere to hide.

  He eased closer to her until they were pressed so tightly together that they had to breathe in unison or risk throwing the other off balance.

  She fought for focus, listening as another voice joined the group, still speaking in French but with a touch of a foreign accent. The ambassador, if she had to guess. A loud scraping noise, followed by a thump that could be felt through the floorboards, made her wonder if they were as safe from discovery as she’d thought.

  Gritting her teeth, she turned her face away from Derek, closed her eyes, and concentrated. Between the door and the way the men talked over one another she could hear only bits of the conversation.

  “. . . not sure what it is for . . .”

  “. . . if she wants it . . .”

  “. . . waste of time . . .”

  “. . . can have the art . . .”

  “. . . once we have the crown . . .”

  Jess stiffened. So much for hoping the voices in the room were unrelated to the interlopers in the closet.

  Lord Bradford’s voice had not been among the ones in the room. Despite the spread of years, she’d have recognized it. What if he wasn’t part of whatever had brought the men to this painting? It was true that other people wanted Verbonne, even the English government. Was it possible someone she trusted had turned on her?

  The effort required to keep her breathing slow and shallow grew until she was reconsidering how quietly she could pant.

  She couldn’t stop whatever they were doing to or with the painting, so she abandoned all thoughts of it, instead planning what she would do if they opened the closet. Such an event could mean the end of Jess and Derek’s lives.

  Hers they might spare, as they believed she held the secrets and possibly even the bowl itself, but they would consider Derek the larger threat and expendable.

  Could she bargain for his freedom? Probably not in any permanent fashion. No matter what she did, they would consider his only value was getting her to do what they wished. They would torture him, maim him, whatever they thought would convince her to capitulate.

  But once she did, they’d kill him.

  Panic clawed up her spine at the very idea. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe at all. Every last bit of air had left the closet, and she was going to have to open the door before they somehow drowned in nothing.

  The arm around her shoulder tightened, pulling her back into him. His chin rested atop her head and one of his legs even shifted until his foot was in front of hers. She was engulfed in him, wrapped in warmth and the scent of his soap.

  She would be finding that soap and tossing it out as soon as they returned to the inn.

  The panic was seeping from her brain, though, sending a fine tremor rolling through her body. Her mind was once again her own and she could do what she did best. Assess. Plan. Survive.

  They weren’t looking for her and Derek. Had no idea they were here.

  That scrape had probably been them taking the enormous frame from the wall. Hopefully Derek had seen whatever he needed to see. It was a frustrating loss, to be certain, but an unavoidable one, so Jess disregarded it.

  Their closet was safe, at least relatively so. All they had to do was wait.

  If the ambassador or anyone else opened the closet, Jess and Derek would be blinded by the light from the lantern. What little light seeped around the door wasn’t enough for their vision to adjust. They’d be captured before they even saw their attackers’ faces.

  As soon as the scenario played out in her mind, she knew what she would do.

  She would save Derek. The diary and painting were important, as were her country and her family, but they were nebulous. A concept she barely understood.

  Derek would not be sacrificed for those.

  Did that mean she was willing to sacrifice them for Derek? That was an uncomfortable thought she was going to have to ponder another time. For now, she would simply accept her decision and worry about the motivation later.

  It was a bit disturbing, though, knowing that she, a woman who had risked life, limb, identity, and occasionally even sanity for the sake of her adopted country, would throw the country of her birth to the wolves in order to save the man beside her.

  She took a deep breath, and her shoulder pressed deeper into Derek’s chest.

  He wrapped her tighter, angling his shoulders so that, should that door open, he would be vulnerable and exposed.

  She was the experienced one, the brave one, the one who’d hidden for her life more times than she could count, and yet this art scholar was trying to protect her.

  Something inside her melted. Yes, she would sacrifice Verbonne to save him, and there wouldn’t be a bit of guilt about it later.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  If Derek had needed proof that he wasn’t ready for a life filled with danger and tension, the way his shirt was clinging to his body and his sweaty hair was matted against his head would have been enough. A drop of sweat slid across his spectacles and dropped into his eye. It stung, but he didn’t dare do anything about it.

  Beneath his arm, Jess shifted, tensing and then relaxing again. Of the two of them, she had far more experience hiding in closets so he wasn’t sure if the moments of tension were born from worry, fear, or excitement that it was all about to be over. No matter what emotion coursed through her, Derek wasn’t moving until she told him it was safe.

  Assuming they were able to emerge on their own timing.

  When she’d trembled earlier, he’d thought that was it, that there had been an indication that they knew there were intruders in the house. He’d instinctively moved to protect the woman at his side, though he’d known it was foolish the moment he’d shifted his weight. They were in a closet. The best he co
uld hope to do was push himself in front of her when the door was flung open and maybe provide enough distraction that she could get away.

  Not that Jess would run. He was pressed against her enough to know that she wasn’t wearing more knives on her back. Likely they were in the bag that hung at her side, but how long would it take her to get to them?

  Derek was under no illusion that he would be any sort of effective fighter, but perhaps he could buy her some time to execute whatever plan she’d formed. Not that there was much he could do beyond bodily throwing himself onto another person and hoping their combined weight would send them to the ground. Possibly effective but rather limited in usage.

  The voices drifted away and darkness returned to their little hideaway, but still they waited. For a while Derek tried to determine how much time had passed by counting seconds, but his overwhelmed brain kept falling back to forty after forty-nine.

  A soft chuckle filled the tiny space as a small, strong hand covered his and pulled it from the shoulder it had been holding so long that his fingers were a bit cramped.

  “You can let go now,” Jess said, her voice gentler than he could ever remember hearing it.

  “What? Oh yes. Of course.” It was only as he straightened and pulled his arms and legs back into his own space that he realized just how entwined around her he’d managed to become.

  Fortunately, the complete darkness of the closet meant she wouldn’t be able to see the heat flooding his face. “What do we do now?”

  “Get out of here as quietly and quickly as possible.” She shifted forward, and soon the scrape of skin on wood indicated her search for the latch.

  Did closets have latches on the inside? Obviously not, since she kept moving and the door remained shut.

  “Why is there a closet in the parlor?” Derek asked, running his hand along the back wall. He wasn’t sure what he was hoping to find, but as the danger passed, his curiosity spiked. He encountered a set of hooks, some empty and others draped with a garment of some kind.

  “I thought the same thing, but I’m more concerned about how they knew the paintings were important.”

  Derek paused his search. “Why do you say that?”

  She lowered herself down toward the floor, and her arm brushed his leg. “They said they wanted to get to the paintings before I could. We’ve already assumed the other line knows something, though not everything, about the paintings, but no one mentioned Lord Bradford. If the importance of the paintings has become known by the other interested parties, finding the bowl becomes nearly impossible.”

  “Let’s say those men were in league with Bradford, then.” Derek rubbed a hand over his neck. “Do you think finding this bowl will end the feud?”

  She froze for a moment and said in a small voice, “I hope so.”

  She stood, the wood of the door groaning slowly until the outer latch released and the door swung open.

  He blinked in the pale moonlight until her face came into focus enough that he could see her grinning at him. One of her hands lifted and brushed hair off his forehead. Then she shook her hand and wiped it on her skirt as she chuckled. “Nervous, were you?”

  “It was simply hot in this closet.” And it was, but not enough to make him look like he’d taken a dunk in the Serpentine. He dropped his gaze to the flat metal bar in her other hand. “Where did you get that?”

  She patted the leather satchel resting against her hip before sliding the metal inside. “There are a few tools I never break into a house without.”

  “You break into homes regularly?”

  “That’s where the best secrets are.” She pushed the door open wider and took half a step into the room before turning and looking back into the closet. “Speaking of secrets, I don’t think those men were concerned that someone was in the house. We have a bit of time. Let’s find out what we’ve stumbled across.”

  With a little trepidation but a lot more curiosity, Derek turned to examine their hiding place. Most of it was empty. The garments he’d encountered earlier were coats, hung tightly together across the last four hooks along the back wall. On the other side of the closet, a trunk stood on its end, a strange collection of items haphazardly stacked on top of it. Among them was a large black cube with a round extension on one side.

  “Well, well, what do we have here?” Jess said.

  She’d never seen one of those? Had the war affected her childhood that much? “It’s a magic lantern,” Derek explained. “You put a candle in it and then place a slide against this tube here and it projects the picture onto the wall.” He shrugged. “It’s a common parlor game.”

  “I know what it is,” she said, smirking up at him, the pale moonlight cutting across her features and making them appear sharper. “But why is it stored here like this?”

  Her face turned away as she rummaged through the other items on the upturned chest. Then she stuck her hand into her bag and pulled out a candle with a flint and striker tied to it with a piece of twine. In moments she had the candle in the box and lit. “The interesting thing about magic lanterns,” she said as she closed the lid and the candlelight shone from the round opening, “is that light only comes out in one direction. It’s a great way to discreetly light a small area.”

  She beckoned him, and he stepped over to join her in the closet doorway. “Who brings coats up to a parlor?” Jess murmured.

  “Marshington takes his to his study,” Derek said.

  “Exactly,” Jess answered, moving toward the coats. “That’s because it’s the easiest way to hide something.”

  As she started patting down the coats, they parted to reveal another, smaller door in the wall, the kind that usually provided access to the rafter area in an attic or a section of roof.

  They weren’t anywhere near the roof.

  The door opened, and the light from the magic lantern shone on the inside of the door, which had been covered with a sheet of smooth white paper. The area behind the door was small, holding a cup of pencils and two baskets of magic lantern slides.

  Jess took one and slid it into the magic lantern. The slide was long, holding three pictures.

  A weak image appeared on the paper: a nondescript picture of a lady. The painting had been scratched and marred but didn’t appear to have been anything special to begin with.

  Jess slid the slide to the next picture.

  It was similar. A scratched and damaged painting of a woman in a garden.

  “Ingenious,” Jess whispered before passing the lantern to Derek, kneeling by the door, and grabbing a pencil. She quickly marked every nick and scrape. “Go back to the first one.”

  Derek adjusted the picture, and she marked the paper again. He shifted the slide to the third picture, and now the markings began to form crude letters.

  The short sentence that was revealed wasn’t all that exciting, at least not to Derek. Romney Marsh followed by a date, a time, and a name.

  “Smugglers,” Jess murmured as she sat back on her heels and stared at the paper. Derek pulled a basket of other magic lantern slides toward him. Were all of them scratched up? Even if they’d been painted with the purpose of relaying a secret code, it hurt his heart to see the marred art. Near the bottom of the basket, the slides had only one image on them and had been painted with far more care than the other crude images.

  One looked vaguely familiar, but given its miniature state, he couldn’t quite tell why.

  Without asking, he replaced the slide on the lantern.

  “Derek,” Jess admonished, “what are you doing?”

  Derek couldn’t answer, could barely breathe as he pointed at the picture now on the paper.

  It was a basic representation of the painting they’d just seen. The details such as the servants in the background and the depth of the pouring rain were obviously lost, but the essence of the picture was there.

  “Do you think there are more?” he asked, digging into the basket.

  “If there are, we want to look with bette
r light than this.” Jess ripped the paper from the door and grabbed the second small basket of slides before closing and securing the small door, moving the coats so they once again disguised its presence.

  Her movements were so rapid that he couldn’t tell what she was doing until it was done, but within minutes, her gown had been tied about her waist, the chopines tied at the straps and looped through the makeshift belt to hang by her leg, and the baskets of slides tucked into the leather satchel. She blew out the candle, shook the pool of wax onto the ground, and rewrapped the striker to it before placing it back in the bag as well. With everything secured, she stepped out of the closet and beckoned him to follow.

  He almost tripped trying to chase after her, but soon they were moving back down the stairs. She didn’t bother returning to the music room, instead taking him to the first room with a door in it and strolling through it as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

  They were on the other end of the back terrace from where they’d entered the house. The party next door had quieted some. Did they need to go back there? He ran a hand through his disheveled hair and winced. Anyone would certainly notice his less than polished appearance, and Jess looked like some sort of traveling vagabond. She wouldn’t draw much attention on the streets were it not for the bright yellow of her dress sash standing out so starkly against her dark grey dress.

  She stayed close to the shrubs and led him toward the back of the property. “I hope those shoes are comfortable.”

  He looked down at the evening slippers, which were nothing like the boots he was accustomed to wearing. Normally, he only had to wear shoes such as these to stroll down to dinner and then to the drawing room. “Not particularly.”

  “Hmmm.” She started walking down an alley.

  He followed. “Where’s Jeffreys?”

  She lifted that brow he was coming to think of as a prelude to her condescension, but this time it came with a bit of a smile, which lessened his dread. “I would imagine he’s gone to bed. Or perhaps he’s reading a book.”