He flipped the letter over. “It doesn’t say, though the delivery is supposed to arrive today or tomorrow, so likely a day or so after. There’s also a drawing on here. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be a duck or a horse.”
Derek leaned over the desk. “Are you sure it isn’t a flower?”
“I’m not sure she didn’t hand the quill to a toddler. You’re the art expert.” Ryland tossed the paper down on the desk. “Your bags have been taken up to your room if you want to go freshen up.”
“I told them to leave them at the door,” Derek said. “How would they know I’m now staying?”
Ryland pointed at the study door. “It’s open. I’ve only expressly forbidden eavesdropping near the bedchambers, my private parlor, or when I’m in a room with the door closed.”
Sure enough, a maid popped into the study. “Your room is ready, Mr. Thornbury. Would you like me to show you?”
A few hours later, as they were sitting down to dinner, the echo of the brass knocker on the door could be heard throughout the public rooms of the house.
Ryland frowned. “It would seem Jess’s delivery is a bit insistent.”
Derek abandoned his plate to make his way to the front hall, curiosity overtaking his manners.
The last thing he expected to see when the butler opened the door was King Nicolas.
“Who is that?” Ryland asked, coming up to stand beside Derek.
Before Derek could answer, the king made to push past the butler, pointing an angry finger at Derek and preparing to yell.
Until he had the air knocked out of him as the butler flipped him onto his back. “I didn’t say you could enter, sir.”
The two guards who had been standing behind the king rushed inside, only to find two maids pointing pistols in their direction.
Ryland crossed the hall and waited for King Nicolas to catch his breath and climb to his feet.
“I am the king of Verbonne,” he said angrily.
“And I’m an English duke,” Ryland said dryly. “Should we test who really has more power right now? Given that you’re standing in my home, I’d think twice before you answer.”
Miranda looked over the scene and sighed. “Jess sends the absolute worst gifts.”
This was what happened when Jess tried to make a plan instead of just barreling through one item at a time.
Still, she wouldn’t trade the past month. It had been necessary. As much as she knew she didn’t want to live in Verbonne, she also knew she wanted it to thrive. She loved it, in a way, and it had needed a month of her time. That was all that had been needed to put a few plans in motion to keep her brother in check while he realized the world wasn’t at war anymore.
One of those measures had been breaking his former greatest enemy out of a rather poorly guarded dungeon and taking him on a tour of the country.
Bucanan was now fully prepared and equipped to be Verbonne’s ambassador to England. Or at least their advocate. She wasn’t entirely sure how citizenship worked in a newly established country, or whether Verbonne would be diplomatically recognized. Still, if the country was going to survive on its own, it needed an ally as powerful as England.
Since England would benefit as well, it shouldn’t be that hard to convince them. As long as she could convince Nicolas without Ryland killing her.
How long had he been here? A day? Two?
Was he even still here, or had Ryland thrown him out? Nicolas was a king, after all. That would gain him a bit of respect, wouldn’t it?
She knocked on the door to Ryland’s London home. Depending on who answered and how mad they were, there were several things she could say.
Every thought she had in her head disappeared when Derek opened the door.
He was grinning at her. His hair had grown and now flopped across his forehead again. His spectacles were a bit crooked, with a smudge high up on one lens, and Jess was convinced that never had a man looked better. Well, objectively speaking, there were several better-looking men, but she preferred seeing this one.
“You’ve really done it now, haven’t you?” he asked.
“Probably,” Jess answered, her lips forming a grin of her own.
Derek pushed the door open and granted Jess and Richard entrance. Once they were standing in the hall, Derek looked back and forth between the two of them. “You aren’t pretending to be married to him, are you?”
“No.” Jess lifted her chin in triumph. “I’ve a proper lady’s maid now.”
Richard snorted. “I don’t think hauling a scullery maid out of the kitchens counts as proper.”
“Sounds like a proper lady’s maid for a cook,” Derek said.
This time Richard laughed outright. “She said the same thing.”
“Must make it true,” Jess said. “I’m assuming my troublesome brother is here?”
“Yes.”
Jess bit her lip. “What has he said?”
“Nothing much. He said he came to talk to you—not a duke and certainly not a professor.”
Jess frowned. “But you aren’t a professor.”
“I don’t think he cares.”
“Well, he needs to learn to.” Jess crossed her arms over her chest. “People matter. I’ve been trying to tell him that all month.”
“He said he hasn’t seen you in a month.”
“He hasn’t. I’ve been sending him letters.” She stopped and looked up at Derek. “I thought about writing you letters, too, but I hate writing and I knew I’d never send them. I wanted to see you when I told you I loved you.”
Richard coughed. “Is there a drawing room? Parlor? Maybe I should just step back out onto the street?”
“Drawing room is through that door. The good brandy is in the lower part of the Chinese cabinet behind the vase of purple feathers,” Jess said, waving her arm to one side of the hall. Knowing how Ryland’s house worked, she pitched her voice a little louder. “If someone hasn’t already told Ryland I’m here, please do so, and have my brother come to the drawing room as well.”
And through it all Derek grinned. “Am I allowed to say I love you, too, now?”
Jess heaved a sigh of relief. “That would be greatly appreciated, yes.”
Derek took her hand in his, sending that familiar and now welcome warmth running up her arm. “I love you.” He squeezed her fingers. “Now can we please unravel whatever you’ve done so we can have a proper conversation about what that means?”
“I don’t know what you’re mad about,” Jess said, letting her brother realize the full force of her abundant confidence. The man looked a little bit lost in the face of it.
“You disrupted the entire country,” the king growled.
Jess sighed. “I did no such thing.”
Although she rather had. As the entire story was revealed, Derek had tried not to laugh. Ryland had no such restraint, until his wife bobbled her teacup and spilled a bit on his leg. Jess had turned the new little country on its ear, and Nicolas had been forced to accept it or admit that his own sister had undermined his rule and his guards couldn’t find her.
“You swear to me that you never left Verbonne’s borders?” Nicolas asked.
Jess rolled her eyes. “What would be the point of that? Richard needed to get to know Verbonne through something other than stories. For that matter, you and I needed to do the same. That’s why I sent you the letters.”
“You sent me taunts,” Nicolas growled.
“And it made you travel the country and meet your people. They were very appreciative of that, by the way.”
Derek marveled at Jess’s ingenuity. Wherever she’d gone, she’d sent Nicolas a letter. He would chase after her, but instead of finding her, he’d be surrounded by his subjects, forced to play diplomatically nice and live up to the stories Jess had told about him just before he’d arrived.
“Yes, yes, I talked to everyone. I would ask them if they’d seen you. They said they had and then proceeded to show me their businesses and families
instead of telling me where you’d gone. One old lady tried to teach me to knit.”
Jess leaned toward Derek. They were already sitting scandalously close on the drawing room sofa, but he didn’t push her away. “That reminds me. I made you a scarf.”
Derek sputtered a laugh into his hand. Never again would his life be dull. The boys who had teased him in school, the men he’d known since, none of them would ever believe that the perfect woman for him would be anything like Jess. He wouldn’t have believed it either.
Thank goodness God thought bigger than he did.
“You have to admit,” Jess said to her brother, “you know Verbonne better than you did before.”
Nicolas grunted and folded his arms over his chest.
“As entertaining as this is,” Ryland said, “why send him here?”
She motioned toward Richard. “To meet his new English ambassador. It seemed safer to do it here.”
Nicolas frowned. “He cannot be our ambassador. He is not Verbonnian.”
“His cousin is being tried as an English traitor,” Ryland chipped in. “He may want to change nationalities.”
“You need England,” Jess said. “Your plan to place the people under military rule and fairly well force them into slavery is wrong and foolish and the fastest way for Verbonne to end up right back where it was—at the mercy of whoever feels like overpowering her.”
“How did you know about that?”
Jess waved a hand about. “I speak French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, German, Dutch, and enough Chinese to probably get myself through a town without getting killed.”
“Honestly,” Ryland said, “you’re better off not saying anything in her hearing you don’t want understood. I’m fairly confident she could spend a month with my daughter and become fluent in child-speak. In fact, please do. I’ll pay you to interpret.”
Derek had spent a bit of time with the little one. He had thought it was because the child wasn’t his that he couldn’t understand her. He hoped Jess’s language skills would extend to their children, whenever they had them.
The idea of having children with Jess had him pulling her a bit closer on the sofa.
“What language I speak is not the point,” Jess said. “It’s time to make friends, gain allies, and focus on rebuilding your people. Verbonne doesn’t need bigger borders or a stronger army. England just defeated the army that defeated the army that took over Verbonne in the first place. Just make friends with the Prince Regent so they come running to save you next time.”
Ryland winced. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“Essentially it does,” Jess said, “and you know it.”
Nicolas and Richard stared at each other across the room for a very long time. Even Derek was growing uncomfortable.
“Do you think we should leave them to talk it out?” he asked Jess.
“Yes.” She stood abruptly and moved toward the door. “Whatever they do now is up to them. I fell in love with Verbonne and her people. I’ll be happy to help however I can, but I also love England. I have a home and family here.” Her eyes met Derek’s. “My future is here.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind traveling.” Derek grinned. “There’s a great deal of art to see.”
Ryland shook his head and moved to the door as he looked to Richard and Nicolas. “Don’t kill each other. I’m putting my butler at the door.”
Nicolas groaned.
As Jess and Derek followed Ryland, Nicolas called out, “Just one question. What in the world did you draw at the bottom of the letters?”
Jess frowned. “It was supposed to be a person.”
Derek threw his arm around her. “I think in the future I’ll do the drawing while you do the talking.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.”
Epilogue
ONE YEAR LATER
Jess didn’t care for the massive number of people pressing in on her or the decided lack of exits available from the top floor of the Royal Academy, but she was ecstatic that one of her husband’s paintings was hanging on the wall for all these people to admire.
It was her, though no one would know it. She was painted from behind, her hair flowing down her back, face lifted to the sun. Yellows and golds flooded the canvas. He entitled it Girl in the Light.
It had taken Jess a while to convince Nicolas that she would not be participating in the politics of Verbonne. No matter how he tried to entice her, all she saw was more games to play, more darkness to navigate, and she refused to be that person anymore. She’d lived too many years in the shadows to step into them again, now that she’d learned what it was like to live in the light.
She wasn’t running anymore. She wasn’t hiding.
It felt wonderful.
Jess and Derek did travel a bit, but they’d settled back at Haven Manor. The cottage they were building approximately halfway between Haven Manor and Marlborough was almost finished, and Jess couldn’t wait to move into it. Even though she’d be frequently making the walk to Haven Manor to teach the women how to cook and protect themselves, she would have a space of her own to build a family and a future, to have roots.
She had a closet now, instead of living out of a trunk.
The kitchen still made her sad on occasion, but most of the time she allowed herself to remember Ismelde’s happy smile and the way she sang as she kneaded bread. Derek was painting and doing occasional work at Oxford, though he was going to start teaching at the local school in Marlborough the next year. Maria was still her lady’s maid and enjoyed sewing with the women at Haven Manor. Martha had chosen to live a simple life in order to raise her little boy and now worked for William’s new factory.
So much was going on around them, and instead of just watching, Jess and Derek were right in the middle of it. Their lives had purpose and peace, two things Jess had never realized she needed.
Derek came up to her and stood beside her, looking up at the painting. She lifted her hand to subtly twine their fingers together.
“You did that,” she said, referring to far more than the painting itself.
“No,” he said. “I just helped you see it.”
Author Note
While the timeline of Napoleon and the remains of the Holy Roman Empire are accurate, the country of Verbonne and its inhabitants are fictional. As an amalgamation of several bits of histories from several different countries, the country is not based on any one single place. Fournier and The Six are also fictional, so sadly no one will ever see their stunning and remarkable paintings. The other works and painters mentioned in this book, with the exception of the statute in Kettering, are real, though.
Acknowledgments
Many years ago, what sometimes feels like a lifetime ago, I wrote a book called A Noble Masquerade, and during one particular scene, I needed a secondary character. In walked Jess. She was supposed to be little more than a prop, a character I used to get something done, but she turned into so much more. I fell in love with her as I wrote her, and then she and the readers demanded she have her own story.
I had the most amazing fun writing this book, and the first group I have to thank for it is the readers who insisted Jess needed more. I completely agree.
There were a few more people who made this story possible as well.
I’d like to thank Van Gogh. I am not much of an art lover, but the one painting that does hold special meaning for me was done by him. That connection inspired much of Derek’s love of art. Thank you to my extended family for letting me drag you all to the Museum of Modern Art while we were in New York so I could see The Starry Night in person.
Huge thanks go to Robin, Athena, and Peri for their assistance in helping me understand how Jess could learn and use so many languages. It is a skill I don’t possess but find truly amazing. Particular thanks goes to Paty Hinojosa for helping me translate the Italian and to Melodee for my Russian.
More appreciation to Raechel Lenore for sharing her knife-throwing prowess. Since that’s another sk
ill I don’t possess—and not one I’m willing to learn by trial and error—your knowledge was essential!
Lastly, to my family, my agent, and everyone else who helped me with the creation of the HAVEN MANOR series, I couldn’t have done it without you. To God be the glory!
Kristi Ann Hunter is the author of the HAWTHORNE HOUSE and HAVEN MANOR series and a 2016 RITA Award winner, an ACFW Genesis contest winner, and a Georgia Romance Writers Maggie Award for Excellence winner. She lives with her husband and three children in Georgia. Find her online at www.kristiannhunter.com.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Half Title Page
Books by Kristi Ann Hunter
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
Epilogue
Author Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Ads
Back Cover
List of Pages
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
A Pursuit of Home Page 37