Chapter Three

Derek had never been very good at sports, mostly because he couldn’t care less whether or not he won, which tended to make his teammates a bit perturbed. In the classroom, though, and particularly in the library, he’d been a whirling bundle of unstoppable energy.

Whatever drove other young men to succeed on the athletic field made Derek rabid for information. History and the way it manifested itself into life and art fascinated him. He couldn’t get enough of it. He delved and dug until the minute secrets of the past found light.

The current secret in question, though, didn’t appear to have an answer buried in a dusty library tome, protected only by its forgotten presence. Instead, it was held tight by a woman. A woman who, until twenty minutes ago, lived to thwart him.

He still didn’t know how he’d angered her, but from almost his first moment in the house, she’d held him in obvious dislike.

Dislike or not, now she needed him, and the opportunity she was offering was going to plague him for the rest of his life if he walked away from it.

The paintings of The Six, a group that wanted only to present the art and not themselves, had always intrigued him. He’d done as much research into them as he could, but there was pitifully little to learn. No names had ever been recorded, though a few had distinguishable habits, such as the one who tended to put a little flick at the end of his short, thin strokes.

But the writer of the diary had known them.

If Derek didn’t work with Jess, didn’t examine every page of that diary, he’d slowly go insane.

“What does that passage mean to you?” He reread the sentences, trying to make sense of the cryptic statement.

“What else does it say?”

Derek pressed his lips together to keep from muttering to himself. That was how she intended for this to go? He was merely to translate and ask no questions? He hadn’t become the foremost expert on antiquities and art history by not asking questions.

She wouldn’t be the first to assume his scholarly interests made him weak-willed, though. The question was whether it was more beneficial to go along with it for now or stand his ground from the beginning.

“Mr. Thornbury? What does it say?” Her lips twisted into a smirk. “You can read it, can’t you?”

The decision was suddenly much easier—or at least his pride seemed to think it was—but Derek didn’t do anything without thinking it through.

He closed the book with a snap, barely avoiding the desire to wince at the rough treatment of the old book, and folded his arms across his chest, casually tucking the book into his jacket beneath his arm. “I’ll work on it and get back to you.”

The smirk, which had fallen somewhere between teasing and goading, fell into a displeased frown. “What?”

“Unless you care to sit about while I work through the book. Or did you think I would translate on the go, so to speak, and sit here and read it to you?”

“I can’t allow this to drag on for months,” she grumbled. “This is a matter of some urgency, Mr. Thornbury.”

“Yes, yes. Lives at stake and such. I may be a historian, Miss, er, Jess, but I am not unaware of the present and the dangers it possesses. Nor am I ignorant of the fact that association can be just as deadly as intent. You’ve given me your word but not a bit of proof. Forgive me if our past encounters make me cautious.”

Derek bit his lip to keep from grinning at his sanctimonious speech. Everything he’d said was true, but poking at the little cook was also a great deal of fun. He’d never been the type to cause trouble on a lark. Mostly he’d just stumbled into it—usually quite literally—and even then it was no more than a social blunder of some order.

Riling Jess up was a challenge, though, one that required wit and brains and forced him to dodge one step ahead of her mentally. He always had enjoyed challenges of the mind.

“You have one day.” Her teeth clicked together. “One day to determine something about the contents of the diary.”

One day? He’d never be able to uncover the layers and subtexts and undertones of a significant portion in a single day.

Then again, she wasn’t looking for that, was she? She only wanted the instructions, which might be even more difficult, given the pages he’d glanced at.

Still, his mind was engaged, which meant he wasn’t likely to do anything else for the rest of the day anyway. He’d have something ready by tomorrow.

She didn’t need to know that, though.

“I have a job to do, you know.” He took a sip of his tea, trying to look torn and studious.

Jess didn’t buy it. She rolled her eyes. “Lord Chemsford is much too enamored with his new wife to care one whit about whether or not you’ve determined who painted the ridiculous smiling dog portrait you moved to your room. He wouldn’t notice if you disappeared for weeks.”

“Something I’m likely to have to do if you insist on starting to follow the directions before I have a chance to complete the translation.”

One of her delicate golden eyebrows curved upward. “Let me be clear, Mr. Thornbury. I may need your assistance gathering information, but at the end of the day, I work alone.”

He arched his own eyebrows and took a slow sip of tea before patting the coat pocket he’d slid the diary into. “Not anymore.”

Everyone had a point where pushing them would do more to pit them against you than sway them to your view. Jess had dealt with enough people and performed enough negotiations to know that Mr. Thornbury was very near to that point.

If she said anything else right now, her persistence would let him know that her need was so great he could ask her for almost anything in return and she’d have to allow it. At the moment it was best to give the illusion of nonchalance and patience.

Well, not too much patience. She couldn’t allow him to take days to contemplate. In her experience, people who sat around contemplating ended up dead.

Curiosity was obviously the carrot to pull him along. She could feed him enough information to keep him involved while leaving him out of the particulars. That was a difficult enough line to walk with someone she knew well. As much as she understood the type of man Mr. Thornbury was, she didn’t truly know his temperament.

Jess left him and the diary in the parlor, along with the plate of biscuits, and made her way sedately to the kitchens. There was a large pile of vegetables that she could take out her growing annoyance on. No one would be complaining that the mushrooms in tonight’s dinner were too large.

Ten minutes later, the quick, efficient, frustrated slices of the kitchen knife had all the servants giving the worktable a wide berth. That suited Jess. Right now she needed to think.

Most people thought she was a master of manipulation. What they didn’t realize was that manipulation required tact and a delicate hand, two qualities Jess absolutely did not possess.

If there was a need for someone to slip in somewhere unseen and gather information? She was that girl. Someone to inflame emotions and cause a riot as a distraction? She’d done it more than once. Watch over someone or something with no one being any the wiser? There were few who could do it better.

Subtly maneuver people into doing what she wanted them to do? Not so much.

She should be good at it. It should be a skill ingrained in her since birth. After all, manipulation made the world go round, and nowhere was it more evident than the politics lining palace hallways. Knowing what to say should have been second nature.

But she’d been too young when her family had fled those gilded hallways, hadn’t yet been forced to deal with underhanded maneuverings and unspoken promises. Instead, she’d gotten the necessities of survival sheened over by the remnants of a higher life.

She sliced through a chicken with a skill and precision that would make the royal German chef who’d taught her proud. The memory of her encouraging smiles sliced through Jess as effectively as the knife.

Throwing the chicken pieces into a pan with a few onions, Jess pulled her mind back to her current predicament. There was nothing to be gained by thinking about Ismelde and her cooking lessons, nor the others who had provided Jess’s unusual education.

She knew about people, what they did when they were emotional, afraid of betrayal, relying on instinct. The more heightened the emotion around her, the clearer her sense of purpose.

Mr. Thornbury hadn’t been emotional, though. She’d expected him to be, given how fervent he was when he pursued a new discovery as far as he could, even if he got in the way of the servants.

That passion hadn’t made an appearance upstairs. Instead, he’d been the picture of calculated, knowledgeable logic.

What could she do with that? Nothing, other than wait for him to think it through and try to guess what his questions were going to be so she could formulate answers that would satisfy him without giving anything away.

Patience was another of her less-developed skills.

Her hip banged into the table as she slid the sliced and diced vegetables into a pot of water. The crinkle of paper in her pocket combined with the dull thud of food against metal reminded her that her pride was the least of what was at stake in this situation.

Her mind burned to learn how her brother could possibly be alive, but coded correspondence wasn’t the place for such details. Of much more importance was the fact that her brother was attempting to claim governance of Verbonne, restoring its independence and sovereignty.

It wasn’t going well.

The letter was by necessity short and vague, but it implied that a great struggle had arisen over the future of Verbonne and much of it hung on an old legend.

The sources didn’t know enough about Verbonne’s history to know what that meant, but Jess did. It meant she couldn’t run out of hiding and see for herself that a member of her family had managed to survive, no matter how much she wanted to. First, she had to follow her father’s directive and solve the legend if her brother was to have any hope of succeeding. Depending on how intense the struggle currently was, it might even determine his continued survival.

Jess hung the pot over the fire and began to stir. The raw vegetables swirled in the cold water, crashing into one another and the sides of the pot in a jumbled mess. There was no need to stir it, as the first bubbles hadn’t even begun to form on the surface, but stirring made her look normal to anyone walking by. She could think without drawing notice.

And she desperately needed to think.

She needed to come up with a story, one that would satisfy Mr. Thornbury, one that would sound noble and selfless and compel him to help her.

One that was absolutely not the truth, because even if sharing the truth wouldn’t put him in possible danger, it was far too incredible to believe. She barely believed it herself and she’d lived through it. Her spencer sleeve, a small-patterned muslin that was neither eye-catching nor remarkably drab, shifted as she stirred the pot, revealing a small scar across the top of her wrist.

She wasn’t supposed to have scars. Mama would have been appalled that she’d been in a position to injure herself enough to cause one.

A practiced shrug had the sleeve sliding back into place, covering the jagged line. Mama wouldn’t recognize her now. Of course, Jess probably wouldn’t recognize her mother either. Or her father or brother or any of the other people who’d run to that little farm in search of refuge.

War had a way of changing people.

Her free hand itched to pull out the letter, to read it again, to dive into the hope that it was somehow true. If she didn’t trust the writer so much, she’d have thought it a trap, a trick to pull her out of hiding and into the arms of the people who wanted her dead. People she’d hoped would give up without Napoleon’s support.

She’d lived enough, traveled enough, thrown herself into enough ridiculous and dangerous situations to know that peace was fleeting. It didn’t last long because contentment didn’t sit well with a lot of people. Still waters only meant the path was clear to move forward, to claim what had been too difficult to grasp while conflict raged.

The wooden paddle thudded onto the table as she gave up the pretense of stirring.

In some ways, the restlessness of peace felt more dangerous, left a person more exposed. That was why she’d fled to this hiding place to begin with. Even though peace had been temporary that time, it had made her realize the treacherousness of her previous hiding place.

The past had caught up with her once again.

She jerked a knife from the knife block and began to methodically demolish a loaf of bread. There would be no more hiding. Not only was there nowhere else to go, but the people she left behind would be in danger.

Ten years ago, when she’d thrown herself into the world of shadows and intrigue, it had been a desperate lark. She’d been too lost and too young to know or care about the potential consequences. When those consequences had made themselves known, she’d gotten out.

She couldn’t get out of this. Life wasn’t a game. Whatever she did next mattered. Somehow, despite her best intentions, she’d managed to fill her life with people she cared about. She’d lost one family and God had blessed her with another.

No one, not even a hesitant, nosy, too-smart-for-his-own-good scholar was going to keep her from protecting them.