A Pursuit of Home

by Kristi Ann Hunter

  Starting at the top, he inspected details. Strands of silver hair poked around the edge of the knitted head scarf, which, combined with the down-turned position, blocked the entirety of the woman’s face from view.

  Assuming it was a woman. If he was going to start thinking that all was not as it appeared, he had to welcome all possibilities. What if it were a man dressed as a woman for some obscure, ridiculous reason?

  Before he could stop it, his hand slid along the front of his coat, ensuring that the diary was still tucked neatly inside his pocket.

  The suspicion that it might be otherwise left him feeling ridiculous. He wriggled uncomfortably and let his gaze drop to the busily knitting hands. Or rather, the busily not-knitting hands.

  Like the head and shoulders, the hands were covered in yarn in the form of knitted gloves that left only the dirty tips of her fingers exposed.

  A shudder rolled through him as he looked at the filthiness of the fingertips. Most of the travelers had grabbed a meat pie at the last inn, where they’d stopped to change horses. Had she eaten with such grubby hands?

  The satchel in her lap told him nothing. Neither did the drab skirt that could have been either black or dark blue. She wasn’t any wider than her bag, though, so it was unlikely to be a man.

  Probably she was exactly who she appeared to be. A bit light in the attic, perhaps, but harmless in the way most little old ladies traveling home from taking the medicinal waters in Bath would be.

  With a shake of his head, Derek lowered his book and tried once more to read. He spared one last glance at the old woman to complete his perusal.

  Only the toes of her worn brown boots peeped out from beneath the dark hem, but it was just enough to see that one of them bore a long, thin, familiar scratch across the top.

  Loop, loop, loop. Click, click, click.

  Jess acknowledged and then ignored the line of sweat down her back that had turned from a trickle into a steady stream of discomfort. With its thick wig and abundance of wool coverings, her old lady disguise was overly warm at the best of times.

  A hot, confined carriage during the heat of a waning summer was far from the best of times.

  The monotonous motions of her fake knitting efforts weren’t enough to fully occupy her mind, but they were all she had. Her fellow riders didn’t require a lot of attention. Even if those threatening her brother had managed to track Jess to Marlborough, they couldn’t have known she was going to be on this mail coach or have had time to plant an informant among the people who had climbed aboard ahead of her.

  She herself hadn’t decided to travel this way until last night, or, really, very early this morning.

  Even if they’d been watching and suspected she was the hobbling old woman, the mail coach would arrive in London long before they could follow it. She would be so lost in the bustle of the large city that they would never find her in time.

  Jess stifled a yawn and peeked across the carriage at Mr. Thornbury. He was reading a book, pulling his arms in close and holding it high in the confines of the carriage.

  He’d looked suspicious at her urging that he travel to London alone in search of the paintings. She couldn’t blame him. In the end, she’d insisted and he’d given in, packing his bags to catch the mail the next day.

  There had never been any question of Jess going to London as well, even though she had no intention of remaining in that irritating man’s company while she did so. She would keep an eye on him while he did his searching, which would likely take him a while. In the meantime, she would do some of her own investigating, learning more about the situation and the direness of interpreting the diary.

  The noise outside the coach grew as they approached the outer edges of London. Jess resisted the urge to straighten her back and stretch. Every inch of her ached from holding this hunched position, but it was hardly the first time she’d suffered for a disguise. Aches would fade. Anonymity wouldn’t.

  If only there’d been more than one mail coach headed to London from Marlborough today, she’d have been able to use one of her more comfortable disguises. The old lady was the best at disguising her face, though.

  Finally, with a loud holler and the clatter of wheels, the mail coach pulled into its first London innyard. Jess waited, meticulously tucking her knitting into her satchel with shaky hands while the rest of the occupants disembarked. As she climbed down last, the trembling she’d had to work at earlier in the day was a good deal more authentic than she would like, given the ache in her muscles and the burning desire to stretch them properly.

  She collected her second satchel from the baggage pile and hobbled toward the inn head down, dragging her foot slightly the way the old shopkeeper in Marlborough did.

  That old lady scared Jess a bit, with her exuberant insistence on nosing her way into Jess’s life, never the slightest bit intimidated by scowls or silence. That frail determination made a fabulous inspiration, though.

  Just a few more steps. Once she found a secluded spot, she’d switch disguises and be able to walk freely into the city.

  “May I help you with your bag, madam?”

  Jess nearly groaned. Of course the scholarly Mr. Thornbury wouldn’t be so caught up in his own business that he would neglect an old lady struggling a bit with her bag.

  Making a point to cough loudly before talking and keeping a great deal of air in her words, she said, “Quite all right, young man. I’m not in any hurry. Either I’ll get there eventually or the Good Lord will take me on the way.”

  Mr. Thornbury snickered. “Delightful. Did Mrs. Lancaster help you with that line? I could see her saying such a thing.”

  As a matter of fact, that had been a saying Jess had picked up from the shopkeeper. The way she spouted Bible verses as if God was concerned about the condition of her bread was a bit strange but gave evidence to the source of her inner strength.

  But how could Mr. Thornbury possibly have recognized the old woman in Jess? He couldn’t know. Was he assuming she was a resident of Marlborough? Everyone who lived there knew Mrs. Lancaster.

  “Afraid I don’t know a Lancaster, son,” Jess said with a bit of extra rasp. “Run along. Don’t let me keep you.”

  He sighed and moved his own satchel to his left hand before reaching down to grasp her larger bag in his right.

  It was either give up the ruse and wrestle him for it or let him take it. Little old women who shuffled across courtyards didn’t have very strong grips. If she’d had her knitting needles out, she’d have poked him with one.

  She let him take the bag. It wasn’t as if he weren’t a trustworthy fellow. He was almost annoyingly—and dangerously—honest. “As you wish, then.”

  He laughed again. She wasn’t sure she’d heard him do that much at Haven Manor. Grudgingly, she admitted it was a nice sound. Too many people sounded grating when they laughed. His was mellow, even, warm.

  His head lowered until she had to hunch over farther to keep him from seeing her face. “Do you intend to maintain this pace for your entire visit to London? That should make it easy for whoever you’re hiding from.”

  Jess gritted her teeth. No one ever saw through her disguises. This man couldn’t possibly be the first. “Can’t walk any faster than I’m able. But don’t let me keep you. Just set my bag at the door and be on about your business.”

  Another sigh. “Jess, must we continue this? What are you doing in that mess of wool?”

  Apparently sweating herself to death for no reason. Giving up the rasp, she whispered, “Get a private dining room and order a meal. I’ll be there presently.”

  He waited for a moment, keeping pace with her shuffling gait. “Is there actually anything in this bag?”

  “Wouldn’t bother carrying it if there weren’t,” Jess grumbled.

  He didn’t respond, simply strode on toward the inn, presumably to follow Jess’s instructions. Nerves and indignation joined the aching in her muscles, making the shaking more pronounced as she plodded on. />
  Had Daphne told him what to look for? No, she didn’t know Jess’s ability to disappear in plain sight—hadn’t even known Jess intended to go to London.

  Jess felt a bit bad about that, actually. The poor woman might not know she didn’t have a cook in residence until someone informed her no one was fixing dinner.

  There was a note for her to find when she went looking for Jess, telling her not to worry.

  Not that it would do any good. Daphne always worried.

  Once in the inn, Jess stopped by the retiring room for a moment of privacy, as much to stretch her back properly as anything else. She couldn’t shed the disguise, though, not until she’d dealt with Mr. Thornbury.

  Was he more than he appeared? She knew some spies who cultivated a single disguise for years, buried so deep it altered who they were. Was he one of those? Had danger been under her nose?

  The man wore a self-satisfied smirk as she shuffled into the room he’d secured. That smirk gave her a sense of peace, even as it irritated her. A professional informant wouldn’t be crowing over his success at identifying her. He’d be stoic, ready to interrogate her.

  The smirk wasn’t taunting. It was the look of a child excited that he managed to get the best of his parents.

  No, the man wasn’t a spy.

  Perhaps that meant she’d lost a bit of skill in her years of hiding.

  He said nothing as she hobbled into the room, maintaining the ruse in front of the maids delivering the food. As he rose to hold out a chair for her, she prepared to kick or poke him if he said anything in front of the servants.

  All he did was thank them for seeing to the comfort of his grandmother as she settled in the chair.

  Her foot twitched in a desire to kick him anyway, but he circled the table quickly to return to his own seat. Well, she’d always freely admitted that the man was smart.

  Once the door closed behind the servants, she lifted her head to spear him with what she hoped was a withering glare that showed not an inkling of the unbidden respect she felt that he was able to see through her disguise. “How did you know?”

  He paused. “Aside from the fact that you weren’t really knitting?” He reached for the food with a slight shrug. “Your boots.”

  Her boots? Jess pushed the chair back and lifted both her feet out in front of her. She saw the telltale sign immediately—a slash across the toe of her left boot. Who knew where it had come from?

  That thin white line was a sign that she had gotten much too comfortable in her country seclusion. She knew never to wear anything with identifiable markings, but it hadn’t even crossed her mind to check her normal clothing items before using them.

  With a grumbling sigh she lowered her feet back to the floor. “Now I’m going to have to buy new boots.”

  Mr. Thornbury laughed and pushed a bowl of stew and chunk of bread in her direction. “That’s all you’re going to say? That you need new boots?”

  Jess reached for a spoon. What else did he want her to say? “Someone is trying to find me and the diary. If my boots give my identity away, they need to be replaced.”

  He shook his head. “If someone is trying to find you, as you say, they wouldn’t know about a mark on your boots. We’re working together, so of course you weren’t hiding from me. I’m sure you had every intention of revealing yourself once we were safely in town.”

  She glanced up to see if he truly believed his words. He didn’t. His eyebrows were lifted in exaggerated innocence even as he glared in accusation.

  The last thing she could tell him, though, was the truth. If he knew there were parts of this situation she had no intention of sharing with him, he’d refuse to help her.

  Already he was far too curious for her own good. If he learned how much of a past she really had, he’d be even more so. “I wasn’t sure if you would be able to manage not saying something while in the coach.”

  Close enough to the truth to be believable. He didn’t need to know how deep her lack of trust went.

  “You think the other person who wants this diary was on that coach?” he asked with a frown.

  Did the man not have any pride? She’d all but accused him of having loose lips and no discretion, and he wanted to focus on her potential danger?

  “I don’t know who the other person is,” she said with a shrug. The memory of the man with a scar caused a spurt of childlike fear. It was almost enough to make her abandon the search for the hidden object, whatever it may be. Her memory of family, though, particularly the memory of her father’s conviction that the past could preserve the future, spurred her on.

  Even if she, more than anyone, knew the past could never truly be recovered.

  They fell into the quiet rhythms of hungry travelers until he broke the silence by saying, “Now that we are both here, does that change the plan moving forward?”

  “We are not here,” Jess said, picking up her bread. “You are here. Go on to Chemsford’s. Continue on as you intended.”

  “And what will you be doing?”

  Hiding and spying on him probably wasn’t the best thing to admit. “I have a few contacts who might know something.”

  She gave a nonchalant shrug, even though she was anything but blasé about the situation. Mr. Thornbury knowing she was in town made her task a bit more difficult, but nothing overly worrisome. Returning to the people she disappeared from when she went into hiding three years ago, though, was going to be less than pleasant.

  It didn’t escape her notice that they’d tracked her down when they had a warning to deliver, but not before. Perhaps they were too angry at her to help much more.

  She took a bite of crusty bread, ripping her teeth into it more forcefully than necessary before relaxing enough to chew with a bit of delicacy. The bread might as well be savored. It was going to taste a good sight better than the humble pie she would soon be eating.

  Chapter Six

  Derek gaped at the woman in front of him. She’d always seemed distant, even from the women she called friends, but was she truly so removed that she thought he would simply walk out of this inn and leave her alone in London?

  Obviously the answer to that was yes. She’d had no intention of him seeing her. Now that he had, he refused to forget it.

  She chewed slowly, her face a picture of contemplation and dismissal that proved her focus was on something outside this small private dining room. The delicate, fine-featured face looked out of place surrounded by an abundance of wiry grey curls and a ragged knit shawl.

  The woman was making mush of his normally ordered brain.

  Even though he already knew the answer, he asked, “When were you going to tell me you were in London?”

  If he expected the question to make her squirm or express guilt, he was doomed to disappointment. She merely frowned and shrugged.

  Probably as much of an admission as he was going to get out of her.

  “Were you planning to sneak back to Marlborough and wait for me to send word?”

  “That was an option,” she said coolly. “It would depend on what I found.”

  What she found. This one-sided sharing of information was growing tiresome. Could he even trust her claim that this hunt was a matter of vital importance? He was quickly returning to the idea of removing himself from this entire situation.

  “If I am to go to Chemsford’s, where are you going?”

  She fell still, staring at her bread with an intensity that revealed great internal debate.

  If she were a painting—and she was currently still enough to study her as if she were framed and on a wall—he would think her a woman on the edge of a life-changing moment. He would research the history of her life and time to see what great precipices awaited her. He would examine the painter’s life to see what agonized and plagued him, for artists frequently buried such turmoil in their work.

  He would know where this moment had led her instead of wondering what decision required such effort. It would certainly be nice to kn
ow what options she was pondering.

  “I suppose,” she said, seeming to talk to the bread more than to him, “that I will go visit Chemsford as well. We’ll see if your methods yield results before trying mine. Are you assured that you can ask of the paintings without raising suspicions?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve expressed fascination with Verbonnian art, and more than once I’ve sought out particular pieces for clients. If Chemsford is comfortable with me using his name, I can ask whatever I like.”

  If Derek hadn’t given up on the idea of being able to understand this woman, he might have been lured into thinking the look in her eyes was something akin to respect.

  Half an hour later, Derek was positive he’d misread Jess. She’d sent him here, to a street corner just out of sight of the inn, and told him to wait for her.

  Like an imbecile, he’d done it. Despite the gentlemanly upbringing that insisted he not leave a lady unaccompanied in a public place, despite the fact that he was beyond certain that she wanted to disappear into the shadows of London’s smog and leave him in ignorance, he’d done it.

  At least he’d kept her large satchel as an assurance that she would actually show up like she said she would.

  Perhaps he wasn’t a complete imbecile.

  She needed to make that appearance soon. He was starting to get strange looks. How long was she going to make him wait? Did she intend to limp and shuffle her way through the entirety of London? If so, why send him here? Why not simply catch a hack from the inn to take them to Chemsford’s?

  Five minutes later, a street urchin ran up to him, speaking in a thick accent. “You new in town, guv’nor? For a ha’pence I’ll take you wherever you’re going. Won’t get lost or attacked, guarantee.”

  Derek tightened his grip on both satchels. He’d heard tales of a grubby child acting as a distraction while someone else performed a robbery. This child was tall enough to cart away one of the bags himself, though. His head nearly came to Derek’s shoulder, an event that had likely happened recently given how high the ragged hem of his dirt-smeared trousers rode on the thin leg.