A Pursuit of Home

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  He was a walking, talking reminder of everything she wasn’t good at, and he pointed it out to her constantly. The man couldn’t open his mouth without making Jess feel like a veritable idiot.

  Unfortunately, those skills were exactly what she needed.

  He knew how to read and interpret old texts and he knew art. Jess knew tactics, strategy, and intricate disguises. Her current plan had her in the kitchen, preparing a tea tray with all his favorites. It had been a while since she’d cooked them, as she’d avoided making any dish he seemed to favor.

  Subtle, petty revenge was also a skill Jess held in great abundance.

  Voices broke the solitude of the kitchen that had been Jess’s refuge for the past three years as a pair of maids passed through on their way to the washroom. They were just two of the many people who now filled the home that had been a perfect hiding place for so long. Even though all of the servants hired within the last two months had been born and raised in the local area and couldn’t possibly know of her past, Jess found herself watching them with constant vigilance, seeking the slightest hint that they might not be who they said they were.

  Not that it mattered if they’d been the ones to reveal her location. Jess had known this secretive, sheltered house would eventually become exposed. Despite the danger, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to move on.

  She’d stayed, even as the others stepped out of hiding and got married, even as she went from the kitchen’s solitary inhabitant to having authority over a small kitchen staff, even as guests started coming and going.

  Or coming and never leaving, in some people’s cases. She frowned at the tray she was putting together.

  In all fairness, he’d been hired to assess the enormous amount of art in the estate, but he was also close to the owner and taking an awfully long time to complete his task. He hovered somewhere between employee and friend.

  Rather like herself.

  Jess had come to care about the people she’d been in hiding with. Despite knowing that it made her vulnerable, she’d exposed part of her heart.

  Now she’d been found.

  It was, actually, a good thing. The regret that would have risen from learning the contents of the letter after it was too late would have slowly eaten her alive until she was nothing but a pile of misery and guilt.

  She didn’t have to worry about that, though, because she did know the contents, did have what was needed to potentially solve the problem, and did have a plan.

  Of sorts.

  It was more of a notion, really.

  Actually making a workable plan required Mr. Derek Thornbury’s help, which required a peace offering of syrup-infused Naples biscuits.

  Jess went to the larder for flour and turned an ear to the conversation two maids were having. One of them was stuttering a bit, something she did only when she slept poorly the night before. On the way back to the worktable, Jess took a slight detour to nudge a bucket out of the way of another maid crossing the room with her arms piled so high with linens that she couldn’t possibly watch where she was going.

  Soon the biscuit dough was mixed, including a little syrup to make the final product soft and cake-like. The suggestion of the additional ingredient had been the first thing that man had ever said to her. Jess hated to bake, or cook for that matter, hated the memories attached to the skills, but she knew she was good at it. Very good. An art scholar shouldn’t have known more about it than she did.

  When she’d tried to prove him wrong, the result had been delicious.

  Jess had thrown them in the fire and refused to make any more.

  Until today.

  One transgression wouldn’t have been enough to make Jess hate the man. Probably. He made it excessively easy, though, by continuing to be a pompous font of knowledge and suggestions. Well, perhaps not pompous.

  The man was often too focused on what he was doing to care about lording his exceptional brain over everyone else in the room, but that didn’t change the fact that he knew facts others didn’t and felt the need to broadcast it on a regular basis.

  With any luck, however, she could get him to display his brilliance one more time in a way that benefited her.

  With the tea steeping in the steaming pot and the plates of food as prettily arranged as she could manage, Jess took the tray up the servants’ stairs. She got a few strange looks, but then, people tended to look at whatever was different. It was the first rule of disguise. Try to look as normal as possible for the surroundings you’re in. No one paid attention to normal.

  Unfortunately, there was nothing Jess could do about the fact that before now she’d rarely showed her face abovestairs, and she almost never hand-delivered a tray. Sometimes there just wasn’t time to set up a proper scene.

  Once out of the servants’ domain, she faced a problem. Where in the world was her target? As far as Jess could tell, there was no rhyme or reason to Mr. Thornbury’s path through the house as he catalogued the abundance of art and antiquities. She could only hope the records he was keeping were more organized than his methods.

  Ten minutes later, with the steam no longer curling as nicely from the teapot, she found him in the upstairs private parlor.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Thornbury.” She pasted a smile on her face, reminded herself that she’d done worse in the name of necessity, and set the tray down on a little side table.

  He looked up from the notebook he was forever scribbling in and tilted his head as he looked at her, making the overgrown flop of brown hair droop over his eyebrows. “Good afternoon.”

  “I brought you tea.”

  “I see that.” He crossed the room and lifted the top of the pot to gaze into the depths of the brown liquid. “Is it poisoned?”

  Jess gritted her teeth but didn’t let her smile drop. One single time she’d threatened to put foxglove in his tea if he didn’t stop leaving paintings and sculptures spread out on the dining table, and now he looked at every drop of liquid she prepared as if he expected a sea creature to jump out of it.

  “No, it isn’t poisoned. In fact, I was wondering if I could presume to share a cup with you.”

  “You want to have tea.” He placed a hand on his chest, making the dull brown coat he’d left unbuttoned fall open. “With me.”

  Jess silently counted to three before speaking. “Yes.”

  He glanced down at the tea and then back to her, his hazel eyes narrowing a bit behind his round black spectacles.

  She couldn’t fault his suspicions. Their situation was a strange one. Officially, she was the cook of this country estate and should never approach a gentleman visitor, even if he was, technically, also an employee of the marquis who owned the place. She was, however, a friend of the new marchioness, and before the marquis had come to live here she’d been much more than just the cook, so the social hierarchy was more than a little muddled.

  There was also the fact that she’d done nothing to hide how much he irritated her. They’d yet to have a conversation anyone would consider pleasant and proper.

  Finally, Mr. Thornbury cleared his throat and nodded before gesturing toward a chair beside the low table. “As you took the trouble to make the tea, I see no reason why you should not partake in it.”

  Once Jess was seated, he lowered himself onto the sofa that sat at an angle to the chair and table, watching silently as Jess fixed the tea and served plates of food.

  He gave the cup she handed him one more contemplative glance before sipping it. “There’s a fascinating Caravaggio piece in this room. Just over there. It’s hanging in the corner, as if it’s trying to hide. A rather odd place to hang such a masterpiece.”

  Jess took a deep breath and reminded herself that there was more to life than book knowledge. “I don’t know anything about Caravaggio.”

  “I know,” he said slowly. “Which does make me wonder why you’d want to have tea with me.”

  Jess had to give him credit for not being a coward. He’d never had any problem sa
ying what he thought. If only he didn’t have such smart thoughts, she might admire that ability.

  Carefully, she set her cup to the side and clasped her hands in her lap before raising her eyes to his. Even though she wanted to keep her gaze steady, she was forced to blink away the grittiness of two sleepless nights before she could focus on him properly. She knew the words she needed to say, knew that to continue on with her efforts alone would mean significant delay and possibly even failure.

  Knowing this didn’t make the task any easier.

  One hand slid against her leg, and the slight sound of paper crinkling reminded her of the letter nestled in her pocket. Her brother was alive and doing everything he could to restore the family legacy. Someone—presumably the same someone she’d been hiding from most of her life—wanted him to fail. She held the key to ensuring her brother’s success . . . only she didn’t know how to use it.

  If she wanted to prevent her father’s life work from fading into the war-torn lands of Europe, she would have to allow Mr. Thornbury deeper into her life.

  She straightened her shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Mr. Thornbury, I need your help.”

  Derek Thornbury didn’t know a lot about people, at least not living ones—and he knew even less about females—but he did know one thing: this particular female didn’t like him.

  It didn’t require advanced skills in observation, which he admittedly didn’t have, nor an abundance of knowledge in the ways women had interacted with men throughout history—which he did have. No, it was fairly obvious that she didn’t like him because the last few times they’d had a conversation, she’d said, “I don’t like you.”

  That was the type of social indicator even Derek couldn’t quite miss.

  Yet here she was, sitting down to tea with him, and, if his ears could be believed, she was asking for his help.

  Carefully, he set his teacup down. He set the biscuit down, too, though with more reluctance. Jess might confound him on more than one level, but he did very much enjoy her cooking skills. “What?”

  He’d meant to ask more, really he had. Perhaps, “What do you mean?” or “What do you need?” or even “What would make you desperate enough that you would willingly seek me out and spend more than a modicum of time in my company?” But since he wasn’t sure which question to ask, it simply came out as “What?”

  She sighed, releasing a longer breath than he would have thought her petite body capable of holding. “I need your help.”

  That didn’t answer any of his questions.

  He picked up the biscuit and put it back down again without taking a bite. “What do you need my help with?”

  “I have a diary of sorts, an old one written by an ancestor of mine. It’s in Italian.”

  “You speak Italian.” In fact, she spoke it very well, with a flawless accent and the fluency of a native. They’d argued in the language more than once, though his verbal skills were decidedly less eloquent than hers. He rather thought that was why she chose to use the language.

  Pink stained her cheeks, and for the first time he could remember, her golden gaze refused to meet his. “Yes.” She cleared her throat. “I speak it, but I’m afraid reading it is a bit of a slow endeavor. I have to sound everything out and say it aloud. Even then I don’t always know what it’s talking about. Translating the diary would take me weeks, possibly more. I’m afraid I don’t have that kind of time.”

  Derek leaned back on the sofa and tilted his head as he considered her.

  She rubbed one hand over her skirt before continuing. “There’s . . . well, for lack of a better word, this diary holds a message about where this ancestor hid something of great value.”

  He picked his tea back up, more than a little disappointed even as he was intrigued. She wouldn’t be the first person to try to pull him into a bit of potential thievery by glorifying it as some sort of treasure hunt. “And you would like to get your hands on it?”

  “Yes. No.” She sighed again. “It isn’t for me.”

  That was new. “Who is it for, then?”

  “Someone I thought was dead but apparently isn’t.”

  There was a slight lilt to her words, an accent that almost sounded French but wasn’t. A tone that had been buried underneath a proper English sound for years. He’d heard it before, when she was especially upset about something he’d done. It was thicker today, though.

  “As interesting as a real-life Lazarus would be,” he said, “I’m going to need a bit more than that. I’ve a job I’ve committed to do, after all.”

  “You’ve been here for months,” she growled. “How much more could there possibly be?”

  “There’s a great deal of art that has been amassed at Haven Manor over the years. The original owner was a consummate collector.”

  “It isn’t going anywhere.”

  “Presumably neither is whatever you’re looking for, if you intend to locate it with a long-dead ancestor’s diary.”

  Her lips thinned and her finely arched blond eyebrows pulled in until a fierce frown covered her face. It looked wrong on her features. Everything about her was petite and delicate, perfect like a porcelain doll or a Botticelli painting. “I have reason to believe the item is now vitally important.”

  “And you want it before anyone else?” Wasn’t that always the way of art? Let one person indicate an interest and everyone would proclaim it a masterpiece.

  The actual quality mattered little when determining a piece’s value. It was all about who else wanted to possess it.

  Saddened, and in truth a bit intimidated by the little woman, he dropped his gaze to her feet. Sturdy, worn leather boots poked out from beneath the forgettable skirt. A long pale scratch cut across the surface of the left toe.

  Had she accidentally done that with one of those knives she was always threatening to throw at him whenever he dared to venture down to the kitchens?

  He should probably start sending a servant to fetch whatever he needed from belowstairs, but he found an odd sort of enjoyment in aggravating the tiny woman. Like a child taunting a dog on a chain, he got the thrill of danger with the security of knowing she wouldn’t actually do anything.

  At least, he didn’t think she would.

  “I already told you it isn’t for me,” she said. “But yes, I need to find it first.”

  Derek brought his gaze up from her feet, refusing to have this conversation with the floor.

  Jess—he didn’t know her last name, and it seemed much too strange to call her Cook—flicked one fingernail gently with the other. She moved in no other way. Her breathing was even, her posture calm, but her little fingernail tapped restlessly against her thumb.

  Derek was a scholar of antiquities. He worked with things created by dead people. Well, things that had been created by people who were now dead. Important distinction, that. When he was working, he might go days without a significant interaction with anyone who drew breath.

  Living people, quite inconveniently, required him to recall his manners and finish his sentences.

  Jess wasn’t merely an inconvenience, though. She was a massive complication, a mystery that was constantly changing, frustrating him to no end even as it kept enticing him closer.

  Right now she was offering him an opportunity to get close enough to potentially solve the profound mystery she represented. Curiosity had proven to be an undeniable nag over the years, and frankly, anything—or, in this case, anyone—who was intimidating enough to inspire Jess to seek out help must be fascinating.

  Of course, it was probably best if said person continued living in ignorance of Derek’s existence.

  Still, he couldn’t resist curiosity’s siren call. “Why do you need it first?”

  She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, sliding into a proper posture that would meet the approval of even the strictest governess. “Because the fate of a country might rest on who finds this treasure first and when.”

  A country. Not th
e country. He’d suspected she wasn’t from England, but that rather confirmed it. Considering the war that had only recently subsided in the French-speaking part of the world, that slight lilt in her voice encouraged skepticism. “Which country?”

  Her frown deepened. “Are you going to help me?” She pulled an old leather-covered book from the pocket of her apron.

  That was a bit unfair. Resisting the entire thing in concept was much simpler than denying his hand the chance to reach out and touch history, to open the pages and delve into the mind of someone who had lived before him.

  The book was worn and frayed at the edges, with darkened spots where hands had held the book over the years. Diaries were incredible windows into the past. People wrote things in diaries that never touched the pages of official historic documents—life, love, the stories behind the scenes depicted in paintings and sculptures.

  He wanted that diary. The only question was, did he want it badly enough to deal with her?

  She turned the book enough for him to see a crest branded onto the cover of the book. The curling flow of lines looked like leaves, but he was willing to bet they were waves crashing against rocks because in the center of those curls was a shield bearing the image of a horned beast, something like a unicorn with paws. One foot was raised with a sword pointed to the sky, while another paw tucked close in to the body, holding a cross. Other parts of the branded image had faded over time, but he knew that horned beast. He’d seen it in books.

  “How long ago was it written?” He swallowed hard, staring at the book as if it would disappear. If that diary was from the days before the fall of the monarchy, he wouldn’t be able to sleep without having seen it with his own eyes.

  “Only the first entry is dated. It says 1660.”

  Derek licked his lips. He’d like to think he had enough sense to keep his fingers from being burnt by meddling in the affairs of others, but he was already leaning forward and reaching toward the book.