A Pursuit of Home

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  Jess kept her expression blank, refusing to let him see how his glare affected her. “He can ride fast and draw well. Besides, he owed me a favor.”

  Those grey eyes narrowed further. “You’ve helped him before? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you didn’t need to know,” Jess said. This was the worst part of working with Ryland. He always assumed he was right and that he should know everything. Honestly, Jess didn’t know how Miranda put up with it. Turning her back on Ryland, Jess reached a hand out to Merkins. “Do you have the drawings?”

  “Yes.” His teeth snapped together as he talked. “But if you’re working with him on this, I don’t think I want to give them to you.”

  “I’m not working with him,” Jess said, giving Merkins a hard glare. “I’m simply using his house.” It was only a partial lie. Ryland’s assistance thus far had definitely been on the side.

  “If you don’t want to find yourself staying here indefinitely as well,” Ryland said in that low, gravelly voice that had made more than one grown man sweat, “you’ll hand over what you came to deliver.”

  Merkins held out a leather portfolio. “There’s several sketches in there. It would have been suspicious if I’d only done one of the paintings, so I did a few more. I’ve no use for them, so you might as well keep them.”

  He sneered at Jess but avoided looking at Ryland again. “Whoever told you those paintings had significance lied. The only reason the previous earl bought that painting was that it matched the view from his front porch.”

  With a cocky smile, he spun toward the door.

  “You don’t mention this,” Ryland said to Merkins’s retreating back.

  “Of course he won’t. If he does, I’ll happen to mention why he owed this to me.”

  Jess had her own version of intimidation.

  With a huff and a few muttered words that were likely not complimentary, Merkins left.

  “What a brilliant show,” Miranda said as the door shut behind Merkins. “Do you think you could use that on the gardener at Marshington Abbey? I don’t think he’s doing everything he could be for the roses.”

  A laugh gurgled in Jess’s throat as Ryland’s hard exterior immediately dissolved. He ran a hand over his face before giving his wife a look so soft Jess felt like she shouldn’t be witnessing it. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Good.” Miranda grinned at him and then cut a glance in Jess’s direction. “While you’re at it, you should remind Jess to make sure she sets up some sort of early warning system to notify her when someone approaches if she intends to have more private moments with Mr. Thornbury.”

  Ryland’s face, which moments before had been honed granite, broke into a grin.

  “I’m going to look through these pictures.” Jess held up the portfolio and then turned on her heel. “Perhaps this will be the one that breaks the code for us.”

  Heat scorched her cheeks as she walked back to the study. They needed to find the location of the bowl soon. Not only because her brother’s fate required it, but because if the past three days in this house had been difficult, the next were going to be impossible.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Derek flipped through the sketches quickly. “He’s very talented.”

  Ryland grunted and scattered the papers across the desk. “Which one is the one you need?”

  “This one.” Derek slid one to the middle of the desk. “It fits the description and the concept. There’s the direction.”

  His long thin finger followed the line of a horse race. It wasn’t a track but an overland race with a string of horses heading over a hill toward a cluster of trees. “This one is called The End of the Beginning.” Derek sighed. “I’ve no idea where it is. There’s a village and a set of crumbling ruins. That strange-shaped rock outcropping is probably distinctive, but where is it?”

  “Merkins said the view was from the front of the house. I’m sure he’d have kept the information to himself if he’d known how badly we needed it,” Jess said with a rather satisfied smile.

  Jeffreys pulled out the map. “They’d be riding east, then.”

  Derek pinned a length of ribbon into place. The newly laid ribbon overlapped the blue one at a spot very near to Haven Manor.

  It was a little too coincidental for Jess’s comfort.

  “How long until your other recruits return?” Ryland lifted his gaze from the map and looked at Jess. “Am I going to want to throw them out of my house as well?”

  Jess couldn’t quite read the expression in Ryland’s face. It wasn’t anything she’d seen from him before. Had he expected her to never act on her own or do something differently than he did?

  “The second could be back this afternoon.” She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin in his direction. Given the quality of the sketches, she’d been right to choose Merkins. “The earliest the third could arrive is tomorrow.”

  Derek braced his hands and leaned over the map of England, shoulders hunched almost to his ears as his head hung down. “I’m missing something.”

  Without conscious thought, Jess took his arm, once more hit by the warmth she felt whenever she touched him now. “We’re taking a break today, remember?”

  “What?” Derek shook his head before tilting it up to look at her. “Yes. Right. What should we do, then?”

  Jess grinned. He’d taught her to knit. Perhaps she could return the favor. “Have you ever thrown knives in a ballroom?”

  The problem with throwing knives in Ryland’s ballroom was that he wanted to join them. Today, he brought Miranda with him. Everyone else followed.

  “Are you teaching her to throw?” Jess asked with a nod toward the duchess.

  “Me? No,” Ryland scoffed. “She might get frustrated and try to stab me like you did.”

  “I didn’t stab you,” Jess grumbled.

  “No, but you tried.”

  That was true. She had. Frustration hadn’t been her motivation, though. Anger had.

  He’d been trying to teach her how to defend herself, and she’d been a horrible student, cringing at the idea of doing anyone harm. He’d said if she didn’t want to end up in the same place as her family and make her father’s sacrifice pointless, she needed to act differently.

  Jess had attacked, Ryland had fended her off, and she’d landed in a heap on the floor, where she’d cried for the first and last time since losing her family. Then she’d taken Ryland’s words to heart and chosen to act differently.

  “I’m sure I could do better now if I tried,” Jess said, trying to move away from the emotional trip down memory lane and back toward the lighthearted jest it was supposed to be.

  Daphne, Kit, and their husbands had been watching in silent fascination, but the exchange drew timid snickers from their little huddle.

  Ryland grinned. “I’ve learned a few tricks myself in the past ten years.” He grinned at his wife. “I won’t teach her, but I thought you could.”

  Miranda frowned. “A lady does not throw the cutlery. My mother says so.”

  Jess tried to turn her laugh into a cough. Miranda’s mother was the most ladylike woman Jess had ever met, so there was no question that she had an extensive rule book on what should and should not be done. Still, this seemed extreme. “Your mother actually told you not to throw knives?”

  “Hmmm, yes. When I was nine and Georgina was complaining about the size of the tarts.” Miranda gave a graceful shrug and an innocent smile. “Tarts are one of my favorite treats, and I didn’t want the cook to stop making them just because Georgina complained.”

  “I say,” Kit broke in with a frown, “does that mean I should give up throwing knives?”

  “You were never any good at it,” Jess said, wishing her friend had remained too intimidated to participate in the barbed discussion.

  “Oh, I’m not complaining,” Kit said. “I’m just thankful for the excuse to remain awful at it.”

  Jess looked away. It was nothing but a humorous ane
cdote when Miranda said it. Kit viewing the idea of knife throwing as inappropriate solidified that Jess wasn’t meant for the polite world anymore.

  Ryland stepped up next to her and nodded to where Derek was inspecting Ryland’s knife-throwing targets. “Good fit.”

  Ryland was wrong. Derek’s interest had nothing to do with knives. He probably thought the straw figures were some type of statue. “I’ll bet he’s never thrown a knife in his life,” Jess whispered. “You name the stakes.”

  The duke’s snort of laughter tickled Jess’s ear and made her jerk. “Of course he hasn’t. But he knits.”

  Jess frowned. Ryland had made the statement as if it made complete and utter sense, but it didn’t. What did knitting have to do with throwing knives? If anything, it showed how completely opposite they were from each other.

  He didn’t mean anything derogatory by his statement, did he? Jess jerked a glance to Ryland’s face, but his expression was completely blank. Then his eyes widened.

  Jess turned to see Derek had abandoned the straw dummies and was now in the center of the room on his hands and knees, examining the intricate inlaid woodwork on the ballroom floor.

  Of course he was.

  Jess shook her head and left him to it, taking the time to lay out her knives on the table. She honestly didn’t care if he learned to throw knives or not; it was just the first idea that had come to mind when she’d needed to get him out of the study.

  She should have known he’d care more about the ballroom floor than knife skills.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to learn?” Jess asked Miranda. “It would hardly be the first time you defied your mother.” Hopefully Miranda saw the invitation as the peace offering Jess meant it to be.

  “No,” the duchess said with a shake of her head. “If I learned how to handle a knife, there might be times I would truly want to throw it at him.”

  “Another reason for me not to learn,” Kit said.

  Her husband, Graham, laughed. “You never get mad at me.”

  “You make me angry all the time,” she muttered.

  “Only when I point out things that make you angry at yourself.”

  Jess stepped away from the happy couples. After checking to make sure Derek was well out of harm’s way, she threw three knives in quick succession. It felt good. She’d thrown knives in the woods at Haven Manor on occasion, but there was always this sense of the forbidden about it.

  As the thwack of knives in straw echoed through the ballroom, Derek yelped. When she turned to face him, he strode across the room, mouth slightly agape. “You’re really going to throw knives in here?”

  She’d told him that’s what they were doing, hadn’t she? “Yes, are you ready to try?”

  He looked positively appalled. “What if I miss?”

  Ryland coughed. “Oh, you will.”

  “I am not risking putting a gouge in this floor. Have you seen it?”

  “Derek, people walk on this floor.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Not on knives, they don’t.”

  “Clearly you’ve never been to a London society ball,” Miranda murmured.

  Jess couldn’t hide her grin.

  “If you want to throw knives about, do it over there.” He pointed to one end of the ballroom, where strips of wood formed a wide border around the large central mosaic. Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed one of the dummies and began moving it.

  Shoulders shaking in silent laughter, Ryland grabbed another and joined him.

  Miranda stepped up next to Jess and sighed.

  “What was that for?” Jess asked.

  “Ryland gets to reject any social activity for the next month.”

  “Why would you agree to that?” Jess asked. “It means you won’t go anywhere except dinner at the Duke of Riverton’s house.”

  “I know, but I didn’t believe him when he said Mr. Thornbury was the perfect man for you.”

  Jess stiffened. “I hope you also made a bet on nothing coming of this supposed perfect match.”

  “Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. If I tell you, it might affect the outcome.” Miranda grinned and followed the men over to the far side of the ballroom.

  Kit and Daphne stepped up on either side of Jess.

  “Daphne,” Kit said musingly, “do you think it’s too late for us to get in on that wager?”

  Jess sighed. As much as she hated everyone trying to get her married and settled when there were far more important things to worry about, it wasn’t escaping her notice that no one was telling her she was a perfect fit for him.

  If life were a series of paintings, Derek was currently living in one by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. From a distance, all might look normal, but upon closer examination nothing was quite as it seemed.

  They were at dinner. Everyone was nicely dressed and the food was exquisite. That was where any similarity to his previous dinners ended.

  The duke was telling William, a marquis, the best ways to sneak his wife in and out of social events in order to achieve maximum appearances with minimum interactions. The future earl was assuring the marchioness that all of her illegitimate children—Derek had to assume he was referring to the ones who had been under her care at Haven Manor—were faring excellently well with their new families, and the duchess and viscountess were trying to convince Jess that a more fashionably cut spencer would still sufficiently cover the leather harness she used to carry her throwing knives.

  As if that weren’t strange enough, every now and then the servants bringing the food to the table would add in their thoughts and opinions on whatever subject.

  The only confirmation Derek had that he wasn’t completely losing his mind was that William and Lord Wharton were also a bit startled every time one of the servants said their piece.

  Jess was seated to his left, and she never gave a second thought to the servants talking. She simply answered them as if they had a spot at the table.

  Derek leaned toward her and pitched his voice low. “Are all of the servants here former spies and soldiers?”

  “No,” she whispered back. “Some of them are reformed criminals.”

  And he spiraled a little further into a world where Arcimboldo’s portraits of people made of vegetables actually made sense.

  Mr. John Langley arrived at the house while the men were drinking port after dinner. Obviously Ryland liked Langley, as he invited the man, coated in travel dust and wearing clothes that would never grace another duke’s parlor, to join them for a drink.

  Langley took him up on that offer, looking like he felt more at ease with the concept than Derek did. Without Jess at his side, Derek didn’t have the same sense of belonging. Despite the fact that he and William were friends and had spent many a pleasant evening discussing history and current events, adding His Grace and Lord Wharton to the mix left Derek feeling like an apprentice painter hung among the masters.

  He left them to their discussions and took Langley’s sketch to the study. As the lantern light flickered across the drawing room, frustration welled inside him.

  This was another odd sketch, though he knew it mattered to the puzzle. Like Lord Bradford’s The Feast of Future Fortune and The Inspired Change of Desire at the ambassador’s, this was a single setting with no movement and no direction.

  The scene was the kitchen of a manor house. By modern standards the kitchen would be poor, but during the time of The Six it would have been the height of luxury. Two well-dressed women with aprons over their elaborate gowns were packing food into baskets. At the door of the kitchen, a third woman was handing a basket to a shabbily dressed family. A line of people in rags stretched behind.

  On the other side of the kitchen, the door was open to the larder, its shelves completely bare. Every cabinet and table beyond the packaged food was also empty.

  What did it mean, though?

  Derek pulled the sketches of the three similar paintings together on top of all the other papers. The circle of lantern
light spilled over them but didn’t bring any additional enlightenment.

  “Couldn’t stay away?”

  He was almost accustomed to Jess’s silent movements, if the fact that he barely flinched was any indication. “Another drawing arrived.”

  She stood next to him, her shoulder pressed against his arm, and looked down. A frown puckered between her brows.

  He watched her for several moments, an endeavor that was far from difficult. It was easy to watch her when she didn’t know he was watching. “Do you see something?”

  “I . . . maybe?” She tilted her head to the side and sighed in frustration. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”

  Maybe that was the problem. He was looking at these the way he usually did, bringing himself into the picture, finding the meaning to him now. While these paintings still elicited emotion even when reduced to a sketch, that wasn’t the point. Right now, they were something other than spectacular art.

  He scooped the three papers up and moved toward the bookcase. “Bring the lantern.”

  The light around him grew as he propped the sketches up against a set of books. These three paintings unlocked the puzzle. They had to. The others were creating some sort of framework, but these mattered more. Their entries had been more poetic, more obviously important.

  Excitement buzzed through him until he was nearly shaking. They were close. He could feel it.

  One quick shove had a small table positioned in front of the shelf, and he set the lantern on it before stepping back and pulling Jess to his side. Light flickered across the three drawings, but they stood on the edge of the bright circle, shadows creeping into their space.

  “We’ve been doing this wrong,” Derek said.

  “We have?” Jess asked quietly.

  Her tone broke his concentration for a moment as he glanced down at her, the pale color of her hair seeming to glow in the limited light. He swallowed hard and faced the drawings again.

  “As difficult as it is to say, yes. I’ve always thought there wasn’t a wrong way to look at art; there was simply what you experienced with it. With this, though, we need to look at the more concrete elements. These were intended to be a hidden source of clues.”