A Pursuit of Home

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  “Well,” the duke said, “that’s one small favor.”

  “That’s one more painting,” Jess said as she began packing up the slides. “Maybe two. How badly do we need the rest of them?”

  “Seeing as I have no idea if what I’ve determined thus far is correct, I’d say we need them fairly badly.” Derek ran a hand through his hair and almost got his fingers stuck in the knotted mess.

  He really needed a trim.

  “They’ll be looking for a touring couple,” the duke said, rubbing his chin. “Who else can get in to see privately held paintings?”

  Jess laughed, though the mirth sounded sluggish and thick. “Anyone with enough nerve and a bit of coin can knock on the door. As it happens, though, I’ve already taken care of it.”

  Derek snapped his head in Jess’s direction. What did she mean?

  She cleared her throat and busily straightened the already-neat stack of slides. “I sent a few messages today—well, yesterday—to men who can draw.” Her gaze flicked up to meet Derek’s. “You said you looked at a lot of paintings as a student, didn’t you?”

  Derek nodded. When he’d thought he could be an artist himself, he’d petitioned for entry into a home or two to study particular paintings. Even then he’d been more interested in the works of the masters instead of his own. That should have been a clue as to what he really wanted to do with his life.

  “You’re calling in your favors?” Marshington asked, clearly in a bit of awe.

  Derek looked back and forth between Jess and the duke. “What are we talking about?”

  “I look rather like my mother. I can’t risk them recognizing me.” She swallowed. “I’m also running out of time.”

  “We are running out of time,” Marshington corrected.

  “You have all the time in the world,” Jess grumbled, “because you are not getting personally involved, remember?”

  Derek cleared his throat. “What are we talking about?”

  Jess’s eyebrow rose, but only a little bit, an indication that she was surprised by his question but didn’t yet consider him a complete fool. “Sending other people to look at the paintings.”

  “An individual can ride a horse faster than a carriage, especially if he changes horses repeatedly,” the duke added.

  “We still need—” Jess stopped in the middle of her sentence to yawn and give her head a small shake. “We still need to meet with them to make sure they know the most important details to capture, and I need to know where to send them. I have three, if all of them answer.”

  “They’ll answer,” Marshington said with hard assurance. “But you aren’t sending anyone out tonight. Get some sleep.” The duke looked at the two men flopped back in uncomfortable chairs. “I suppose we should wake them.”

  Jess snorted. “We should have woken them two hours ago.”

  Derek shook his head. “They wouldn’t have gone to bed then.”

  The duke gave him an assessing look. “True. Well, we’re all off to find some sleep now. You two find a couple of beds that don’t have bodies in them.”

  “How kind of you to offer up someone else’s home,” Jess murmured.

  “As if he wouldn’t offer were he awake.” Marshington waved a hand in William’s direction.

  “A convenient assumption.”

  “You know the rules of war, Jess. You take what you need.”

  Jess didn’t disagree with his assessment, but she didn’t look exactly comfortable with it.

  To tell the truth, Derek wasn’t either.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Because Daphne’s housekeeper appeared on the verge of quitting and because Ryland had nothing to do besides follow Jess around and try to steal her sanity before breakfast, she insisted they move the proceedings to Montgomery House.

  If she’d thought that would put some distance between her and the disapproving glares of Kit and Daphne, she was mistaken. They packed up and came along with everyone else.

  The sudden influx of visitors, even ones with their own home a few streets away, didn’t make Miranda or her housekeeper blink. Of course, the housekeeper had once dressed as a man to join her husband in the army, routinely forging ahead to remove ammunition from fallen soldiers of both sides to distribute to her comrades until her husband became one of the fallen, so her composure was difficult to rattle.

  As for Miranda, she was the perfect lady when she chose to be.

  Of course, she could also be a renegade when she chose. She and Jess had never gotten on well, but Jess had to admit most of that was her own fault. It was probably too little too late, but she was doing her best to make up for it now.

  “Thank you for making room for us. We won’t be here long,” Jess said as Miranda showed her to one of the guest rooms. They’d be here longer than Jess liked. She had nowhere to go while they waited for her contacts to go get their sketches.

  “Stay as long as you need,” the duchess said gracefully. She gave Jess a nod and then turned and glided for the door.

  “I’m sorry,” Jess blurted, wincing at the harsh way she’d thrown that into the conversation. She took a deep breath and tried again. “I’m sorry for being, well, difficult. At first I was just trying to protect Ryland from making a mistake. I didn’t think you’d be able to accept him as he was.”

  One side of Miranda’s mouth tilted up. “And then it simply became a habit?”

  “Yes.” No. Then it had become about jealousy. That wasn’t something Jess wanted to admit—not to herself and certainly not to Miranda. She wouldn’t understand.

  It wasn’t that Jess wanted to be married, and it especially wasn’t that Jess wanted to be married to Ryland, but she envied Miranda having such a sense of who she was that she could truly be a lady but know when those rules weren’t necessary.

  “I’m starting to wonder, though, if I’ve ever actually met you.”

  Maybe Derek was right. Maybe Jess was nothing but a series of masks covering up the nothingness she’d embraced when it looked like there was nothing else.

  Needing to get out of there, just for a little while to get herself back under control, Jess followed Miranda out of the room and went to find Derek and Jeffreys. They needed to get their belongings cleared out of the inn if they were going to live at Montgomery House for the time being, and they needed to meet with the men she was sending off. She’d given them times and places to rendezvous. Hopefully they would show up.

  Climbing into the carriage with Derek felt familiar, and she let out a heavy sigh as she leaned back into the worn seat.

  “What’s wrong?” Derek asked.

  “The idea of staying still agitates me,” Jess lied. “I hate waiting.”

  At least that second part was true.

  There was going to be a confrontation, that much was certain. At some point, she and the people working with Lord Bradford were going to come face-to-face. It was inevitable. The question was, who would have the upper hand when it happened? In order to make sure it was Jess, she was going to have to lie low for a while and wait.

  That didn’t mean she had to like it.

  “I have to admit I’m looking forward to not covering miles a day in this vehicle.” Derek patted the cushion next to him with a wince. “Did you know that before the invention of elliptical springs such as this carriage has—which, by the way, has made the ride ever so much better than it could have been—carriages were suspended with leather? Imagine all that weight on four measly strips of leather.”

  Jess grinned. She knew how to remove an axle pin and dislodge a tire from its wheel, but she’d never thought to look at the body of a carriage. “Why do you know that?”

  “I was curious as to why the shape of carriages suddenly started changing in the paintings. Style didn’t seem to be a reasonable explanation. The older ones were significantly more ornate, probably to disguise the necessary suspension. Then, of course—” He stopped and shook his head. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”

&
nbsp; “Yes,” Jess said with a laugh, “but I don’t mind.”

  It was surprising, but true. She no longer minded that he knew facts she didn’t, as long as he didn’t share them while they were hiding from people who might want them dead. He wasn’t telling her because he thought she was stupid, but because he thought it was interesting. Information excited him, and the facts just sort of spilled out.

  He was sharing something of himself with her, and she couldn’t find it in her to complain about that. He was letting her see how he worked, offering for her to get to know him.

  “Did you know,” she said, her tongue feeling a bit thick, “that willow bark can be used to make the hair brown?”

  He stared at her for a moment, and then a slow smile spread across his face, drawing dimples into his narrow cheeks. “Have you used it?”

  “Yes, but I find wigs are better most of the time. Faster and easier to change.” She grinned. “I save the willow bark for the aches and pains that come from hiding in cramped positions for hours.”

  “Good,” he said and then winced. “Not good that you were in pain, of course, but good that you don’t change your hair. Or, well, I like it blond.”

  How was she supposed to respond to that statement, or the warmth that spread through her chest as a result of it? This was different from attraction, different from friendship, different from anything she’d ever known.

  This made her feel vulnerable.

  This was terrifying.

  Thankfully, the carriage pulled up to the inn. One good thing about moving to Montgomery House was that she and Derek would be in separate rooms again. Obviously their prolonged private exposure was starting to affect her.

  The prospect of crossing the Channel for the first time in five years to approach a brother she didn’t know anymore was inspiring a plethora of feelings to rattle about inside her. She didn’t need whatever Derek was stirring up as well. If emotion overtook her, she’d be a danger to herself and others.

  She needed to clear her head and focus, even if that meant leaving him behind.

  The first meeting went well. Langley didn’t ask any questions beyond what he needed to know, didn’t ask who Derek was or what Jess needed the sketch for. That amount of trust being placed in her was humbling. She and Langley hadn’t worked together in years, and he still took her at her word implicitly.

  It took a mere half hour for Derek to explain what Langley was looking for and for Jess to give him warnings of what to watch out for—then the man was off.

  The second meeting went much the same, though Mathis asked a few more questions. He and Jess had been injured in the same skirmish, but it had taken him a bit longer to get home and he now walked with a limp. Jess had wanted to express concern about the length of riding she was asking him to do but bit her tongue. He knew his abilities, and as the best artist of the three men she’d contacted, she couldn’t afford for him to walk away.

  It was the third meeting that jarred Jess’s growing confidence.

  Leonard Merkins, the only man she’d contacted who still worked for the War Office, sat on the ground, back to a tree in the park where they were meeting, and threw a crust of bread to a nearby bird. “How is this painting going to fit in with the others?”

  Jess stopped nudging a rock with her toe and narrowed her gaze. “What do you mean?”

  “There was a man named Richard Bucanan who contacted us a few months ago, trying to tell us something about some paintings.” Merkins shrugged. “Thought it was crazy ramblings until now, but if you’re looking for these paintings, too, there must be something to it.”

  “What did he say?” Jess asked, gut twisting. Had Lord Bradford appealed to the English government when his bid with Napoleon had failed?

  “He said that he feared what would happen if the feud continued, and he wanted to end it. If we helped him find the paintings, he could put the rightful man on the throne of Verbonne.” Merkins’s gaze met Jess’s. “Seeing as England isn’t all that interested in Verbonne having a throne at all, the man was sent away. He talked as if he thought we knew a lot more than we did.”

  “Did you know him?” Likely if it had been Lord Bradford, someone would have been able to identify him. The man was a peer, after all.

  “No. He owns a small farm up north. Not the kind of man I’d have thought would care much about a bunch of paintings.”

  No, not the description Jess would have expected either.

  Merkins popped the last of his bread into his mouth and gave Jess a long look. “What’s it matter to you what happens to Verbonne? You’re loyal to the Crown, aren’t you?”

  “Let’s say I’m repaying an old promise,” Jess settled on saying. Feelings and memories she’d thought dead and gone made her question everything these days. “Are you going to help me or not?”

  “I’ll help you,” Merkins said, “but this makes us even.”

  As if she would ask him for anything else. Just asking for this made her want to lurch for the nearest bushes and revisit her breakfast. “Agreed.”

  “If I find something that threatens England, I’ll not keep quiet for your sake, but I will keep your name out of it.” He stood and looked Derek up and down. “Strange one you got with you there. All he’s talked about is the painting.”

  Jess stepped between Merkins and Derek, arms crossed over her chest. “That’s all you needed to know from him.”

  Merkins stared down at her. “You always were a strange one. This painting isn’t far. I should be back in three or four days.”

  “Thank you,” Jess said, though without much warmth.

  With a final nod, Merkins strolled away, looking like a man with nothing on his mind and nowhere pressing to be. Jess and Derek moved in the opposite direction.

  “I wonder if Ryland’s contacts can learn more about Richard Bucanan,” Jess mused. Just how many people knew the secret of the paintings?

  “Your friend isn’t exactly cheerful,” Derek answered.

  “Nor is he my friend.” Jess sighed. “That was a transaction, nothing else. Credit and payment.”

  “Why did he owe you?”

  “He was tasked with transporting some papers, but he got sloppy and they were confiscated and locked in a trunk by one of Napoleon’s men.”

  Derek grinned at her. “You retrieved them.”

  “Yes. I had to hide under a bed for the better part of a day until the key was left where I could get it. More importantly, though, I never told anyone.”

  Even then she hadn’t done it for him. She and Merkins had never been friends. She’d done it because it was the best way to move forward. Merkins hadn’t lost the papers through betrayal; he was still loyal to England, and most of the time he was good at what he did. It didn’t make sense to report him.

  Where had that logical part of her gone? Maybe once she found the bowl, she’d be able to find herself, too. She couldn’t afford to get lost in contemplation until everything else was settled. In the meantime, she’d have to stay away from everything that encouraged her to give in and let it overtake her, including Derek Thornbury.

  Three days later, Jess was ready to strangle everyone in Ryland’s household, including the guests.

  Especially the guests.

  Every last disgustingly happily married one of them.

  Had Ryland gathered them all for a late-night chat to share his theory that Derek was a “good fit” for Jess, or was it simply because they’d all managed to settle into blissful marriages that they wanted her to be in one as well?

  Whatever it was, Jess felt like she was back in the war, ducking beneath tables and into alcoves when people approached, taking different routes every time she went somewhere, and retreating to the attic eaves so she could relax. Dodging conversations and ruining their schemes to make Jess and Derek share the same space was exhausting, but at least it gave her something to do.

  Jess stretched her neck and shoulders as she finished dressing for the day. It wasn’t that Jess
didn’t like Derek—it was, in fact, the opposite. Jess liked Derek rather a lot and enjoyed his company, but she didn’t want it ruined by flowers and sonnets and pointless rides that did nothing but bring you right back where you started. Even if she’d had time for courtship, what was the point of all that drivel that had nothing to do with what life with that person would actually be like?

  What they were all refusing to realize was that Derek didn’t seem inclined to utilize their efforts on his behalf. She’d tried explaining that to Jeffreys, because even that cantankerous unmarried clod was conspiring against her, but he’d simply shrugged and said, “It isn’t good for man—or woman—to be alone. Says it in the Good Book.”

  The last tug of her brush through her hair was a bit stronger than the previous ones. Why did they keep quoting scripture? It had been good and helpful during the war, of course. Ryland had shared quite a bit of it during their time together.

  The stories of Jesus and the idea of peace in the middle of such chaos had drawn her in. She’d needed that peace and was more than happy to latch on to Someone no one could bust through the door and take away. It wasn’t possible to count the number of her prayers as she traveled the continent to wherever she was needed or the number of times she’d asked Ryland to tell her a story from the Bible.

  But now, or at least until recently, everything was good. Shouldn’t God be focusing His efforts on the people who were as desperate as she’d once been? She still believed—knew—God would be there when this entire ordeal became too much for her to handle—but she wasn’t to that point. That meant she didn’t need Him yet. Didn’t it?

  The brush cracked against the dressing table as Jess threw it down and secured her bun with two more pins.

  Pondering questions she had no hope of answering was a useless endeavor. There were better uses for her time and brain. She had a job to do, a secret code to unravel, and it was time for her to take what she knew of the history of Verbonne and the legend of Queen Jessamine and apply it to the search.

  Anyone who insisted on foisting their romantic notions on her could find themselves with ipecac in their tea.