Chapter Seven

Jess knew how to look relaxed. A small smile, shoulders down and slightly rolled forward, elbows slack, and fingers lightly clasped. She’d gone through the mental checklist just before entering the room, ensuring the men would think her at complete ease, even though she was anything but.

“We need you to give Mr. Thornbury permission to seek out a piece of art on your behalf,” Jess said. She braced herself for an interruption from Mr. Thornbury, but given his current position inelegantly flopped over a chair, skin looking more than a little pale, she was safe from him claiming control of anything.

“I need more art?” Lord Chemsford asked. “I have more than I know what to do with right now.” He gestured toward Derek. “I had to hire someone just to determine what all I have.”

“You don’t have to actually buy it.” Jess was equal parts amused and exasperated. Amusement better served her right now, so she let it tilt one side of her mouth upward. “You only need pretend like you might.”

“I suppose I could do that.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and waved it about. “Daphne says you may have found your family?”

Jess groaned. “Daph has a loose tongue.”

It was true what they said: three can keep a secret if two of them were dead. Since Jess was a little too fond of Daphne to kill her and she wasn’t entirely sure where Kit was, she might as well accept that at least part of her secret past wasn’t secret anymore.

The question was just how much her two friends had told their husbands about Jess. And how much had Lord Chemsford told Mr. Thornbury?

“Your family was lost?” Mr. Thornbury asked, straightening a bit in his chair.

“Her family is dead,” Lord Chemsford responded. “At least she thought they were.”

“Yes, I thought my family dead.” Volunteering a few facts might stem the curiosity. “Most of them are, as far as I know. If even one of them is alive, though, that changes everything.” She took a deep breath and looked at Mr. Thornbury. “That’s why I need your help.”

It was becoming slightly less painful to say those words, even though the more she allowed him to do, the more beholden she became. She didn’t like owing people. It left her under their control, at their mercy. Her arms tightened over her chest and her chin lifted the slightest bit as she stared down the men.

The color was back in Mr. Thornbury’s face, and that little crease he got on his forehead before asking a question was starting to form.

There was a good possibility his question would go in a direction she didn’t prefer, so she gave a bit more. “If my family is alive, there is likely someone out there who wants to change that. I’d rather not lose them again.”

She opened her eyes wide, pushing until the strain caused her lashes to tremble a bit. It made her look vulnerable and on the verge of crying. That form of manipulation had always made her feel a bit ill, but it had seemed to work for the children fairly often when they wanted something from Daphne.

Jess blinked, surprised to feel a genuine burn at the edge of her eyes. It had been ages since she’d cried. Lifetimes. But the memories being dredged up in her mind were from a time when crying had been allowed—in private, anyway. “Their only hope is that I uncover the secret of that diary.”

Mr. Thornbury’s mouth opened and then snapped shut. The line between his brows smoothed. “I’ll visit the museum tomorrow.”

“I’ll go with you,” Chemsford offered. “Perhaps my presence will lend credence to your request.”

The burn at the edge of her eyes had been bad enough. The strange ache sliding along her breastbone was worse. Jess resisted the urge to rub a hand against the sting, knowing it wouldn’t do any good. It wasn’t truly there.

She’d felt it before, whenever she encountered someone with the potential to send her life spiraling in another direction. It wasn’t any sort of mystic premonition, but something was happening in this room, something she saw but couldn’t quite recognize, that her mind considered a threat to her current life.

Since Chemsford had never caused her any distress, that something had to be Mr. Thornbury, the one man she needed if this mission was going to be a success. Keeping him at arm’s length was more imperative than ever.

The chamber Derek was shown into was vastly different from the one he’d been residing in at Haven Manor. Everything about this room had been designed to impress and give comfort to the occupant. He ignored the cozy chairs and comfortable bedding for the solace of pacing. The busyness and opulence felt unsettling instead of restful.

Or perhaps that was simply the situation.

Tomorrow he was going to seek out an old friend—a professional acquaintance, really. He was going to actively involve himself in this scheme of Jess’s. No longer would he be able to claim he’d been a mere bystander. If he did this . . . if he involved himself in the diary’s treasure hunt . . . if he accepted the sense of urgency that had propelled Jess to do everything she’d done in the past few days . . .

His thoughts stumbled to a halt as he realized that was the tipping point for him.

Jess.

He’d seen her trembling in the drawing room, seen the emotion in her eyes. Mentioning her family had driven away that irritated, bored anger he was so accustomed to seeing on her face.

This wasn’t about the diary anymore. It was about her.

Derek didn’t know how to handle a her. She was alive and breathing, with life still ahead of her. What direction would that life take if he succeeded?

He swallowed around a suddenly thick throat. What would happen if he failed? If they failed? Because they were a they now, whether she realized it or not. She may think he was simply going to hand over the information he learned and let her scamper away, but he was invested now, putting his personal and professional convictions on the line. They were partners.

Derek blinked and stumbled to a halt. He hadn’t consciously chosen to entwine his life and immediate fate with Jess’s, but the idea was firmly rooted in his mind now and refused to be reconsidered.

All that remained was convincing Jess it had been her idea.

It took both William’s title and Derek’s reputation to gain them entrance to the British Institution in Pall Mall. The gallery walls of the prestigious museum were covered in the enormous paintings of foreign masters. Only the resolve from the previous night allowed Derek to walk past them with a mere glance, keeping the objective in the forefront of his mind.

William sighed and shifted his shoulders.

“Try to look a bit impressed,” Derek whispered, punctuating it with a nudge from his elbow. “We’re supposedly here because of your obsession with art.”

“Right,” William murmured. He clasped his hands behind his back, tilted his head, and gave a low, thoughtful hum as he gazed at a nearby painting.

Derek resisted the urge to chuckle as he continued the search for his former schoolmate and colleague. They found him in the central exhibition hall, examining the work of one of the resident student painters.

“Mr. Cathers,” Derek said, injecting his tone with a note of friendship while maintaining the somberness a room with this much beauty required. “It’s been much too long.”

The short, portly man turned his head, and a large smile stretched across his face as he extended his hand. “Mr. Thornbury. I had no idea you were in London. What brings you to the Institution?”

Mr. Cathers led Derek and William a step closer to the center of the room as a woman entered with a small easel and a bag of supplies. She set up her easel among the other students lining the room, using the inspiration of the painters they admired to perfect their own work.

Derek had to fight a pang of jealousy as those men and women worked steadily away, the low swish of brush and paint on canvas filling the room with as much gentle ambience as the sunlight pouring through the ceiling glass. There had been a time when he’d aspired to be among their ranks, but his paintings had always been lacking something.

“Ah,” Mr. Cathers said, nodding as he looked toward the wall that had captured Derek’s attention. The woman was setting up her small workspace beneath an exceptionally large Tintoretto painting. “You couldn’t stay away from our Italian masters, could you? They are spectacular. Can I show you around?”

As much as Derek wanted to say yes, the urgency from last night, as well as the fact that William would slaughter him for dragging him about the museum, gave Derek the wherewithal to turn down the offer with a small, sad shake of his head. “Not today, old friend. I’m doing a bit of work on the Marquis of Chemsford’s collection.”

Mr. Cathers’s demeanor shifted in an instant as he straightened his back and smoothed the smile from his face. “My lord.” He bowed. “Highest apologies for not recognizing you. Please accept my condolences on your recent loss.”

William’s eyebrows shot up, and he dipped his head low enough to cover his cough. The death of his father a few months prior hadn’t been the blow many assumed it to be. William had considered the relationship lost long ago. Still, he managed a somber, “Thank you.”

Derek continued quickly, trying to keep the target in mind. He couldn’t afford to forget why he was here. The walls held far too many distractions. “His European collection is quite extensive, and he’d like to purchase a Verbonnian painting to round it out. He’s particularly interested in getting one from the Fournier period.”

Mr. Cathers smiled. “What luck! We happen to have a Fournier. We hung it just last week. I can’t seem to stop coming in here to stare at it.”

He gestured toward the wall, and all the men turned to look at the depiction of a grand royal caravan riding along the edge of a cliff. The ocean roared far below them, and the sky stretched wide and glorious above. The characteristic blend of clarity and abstract areas gave it that unique feel of a Fournier painting. At any other moment, Derek would have been overjoyed at this opportunity.

But Fournier had barely been mentioned in the diary and always as the teacher, never as the artist. “Fascinating. We’d much rather locate a work by one of The Six, though. The mystery fascinates his lordship.”

William attempted his thoughtful hum and accompanying nod again.

Mr. Cathers sighed as his shoulders slumped a bit, no doubt disappointed at the loss of a potentially hefty commission. “We tried. It was my hope to fill this wall with Verbonnian paintings for our European exhibit. They were once in a single collection, you know. Almost every known work by The Six was in a personal collection in Derbyshire. It was auctioned off about twenty-five years ago.”

Auctions. The death knell for any art lover. It became nearly impossible to follow art once auctions were involved. The auctioneers were too protective of their wealthy and noble customers to provide information freely.

Dismay brought a slump to Derek’s own shoulders. He was going to fail Jess. Mere hours after declaring himself her partner—albeit only in his mind—he was going to fail to provide the one thing he was supposed to have: knowledge of and access to the paintings.

There had to be something else he could do. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like not to know his family was alive and well, living their lives a few miles from Oxford.

No, he couldn’t return to that townhome and tell Jess he’d learned nothing.

“Have you any idea who purchased the pieces?” The odds of Mr. Cathers knowing were slim, but God had been known to work miracles before. All Derek needed right then was a small one.

“Not many,” the short man said with a shake of his head, already appearing to lose interest in the conversation as his attention wandered to the nearby students. “The auction house sent a letter of inquiry for me. Most of them went unanswered, but one solicitor sent me a polite but firm refusal on behalf of two of his clients, the Earl of Woolsby and the Duke of Marshington. Neither of those men is in dire enough straits to sell.”

No, they weren’t, but Derek didn’t really need for them to sell. He only needed them to let him look. With any luck, William could make a few discreet inquiries and get Derek in front of the paintings. It would be a start.

Part of Derek wanted to flee the room immediately and begin discussing plans, but it would be suspicious for two men who loved art as much as they did—or were pretending to in William’s case—to depart the premises without looking about.

They stayed for another half hour, William giving occasional nods and hums while Derek and Mr. Cathers discussed art and mutual acquaintances and occasionally offered guesses as to which of the budding artists paying to work in the presence of their inspirations were going to be successful.

The man standing on a chair to better reach his giant canvas showed a great deal of promise. Certainly more than the girl who had arrived shortly after Derek and William. She’d be asked to leave the Institution within a month, given the bare rudiments of a picture she had managed to produce thus far. The woman on the other side of the girl was moving her brush in short, confident strokes, and the picture coming to life on her canvas was startling. Derek wasn’t sure if he liked it or not, but he was certainly going to remember it.

Eventually enough time passed and they could politely depart. Derek nearly ran for the exit, though he made himself drag his feet, taking a few last looks at paintings he’d only ever heard about. For once the idea of what he was going to do—formulate a new plan on the way home so he could return to Jess a conquering hero—held more appeal than looking at what had already been accomplished.

It was a bit sobering to learn on the ride home that William knew neither the Earl of Woolsby nor the Duke of Marshington. At all. That didn’t mean he couldn’t contact them. He was a marquis, after all, but it did lessen the likelihood of them granting Derek quick and easy access to the paintings. That didn’t give him much to offer Jess to convince her he was an equal partner in this adventure.

He was deep in thought as he handed his hat and greatcoat to William’s butler. There was no sense in putting off the discussion.

“Do you know the whereabouts of—” he cleared his throat—“Miss Smith?”

“Miss Smith, sir?” the butler asked as William’s chuckle echoed in the hall.

“I believe he means Jess, our other guest,” William said. “Smart of you, Derek. I should have foisted a surname onto her months ago. It would have made for considerably fewer awkward moments.” He grinned. “I can’t wait to see what she thinks of it.”

The butler looked between the two men but remained stoic in expression. “I haven’t seen her since breakfast, my lord. Shall I send a maid to her rooms?”

Derek shook his head. He’d see her eventually. Dinner, at the latest. Perhaps he could have something to share by then. If the earl or duke were currently in residence in London, William could contact them this afternoon. If not, that still gave Derek a few hours to come up with something else to offer as a suggested path forward.

While Jess had been the one to request Derek’s help, she likely had a dozen of her own ideas on how to proceed. There was still the diary to translate and the art to inspect and interpret, though. Even if Derek didn’t come up with something this afternoon, she still needed him.

It was rather nice to be needed.

His thoughts whirled, bouncing around from idea to idea. Art had always soothed him, so he strolled between the second-floor rooms, taking in the swirls of color, the captured moments in time. Slowly, he wound his way through the remainder of the house, eventually ending up back in the front hall, staring at a statue tucked into the corner, as if someone had slid it over there temporarily and then forgotten about it.

A brisk knock at the door broke his contemplation of the statue. There wasn’t a servant in the immediate vicinity, so he stepped over to throw the latch and open the door himself.

Jess strode in. When her glance flickered over his, her mouth went slack for the barest of moments before quickly returning to those smooth, perfect, unrevealing lines.

Derek frowned. The same notion of wrongness that had prompted him to examine the old woman in the carriage compelled him to look Jess over a bit more closely now.

Nothing caught his attention. Her brown bonnet was ordinary, as was the blue pelisse that covered the rest of her. The brown gloves were just as plain. She looked like any other woman in London.

Except she was alone.

“Did you go out?”

She lifted a brow and glanced at the door behind her before smirking at him. “I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.”

He fought back the desire to roll his eyes at her like his six-year-old nephew. “Smarter than you, apparently. I took William with me when I left the house this morning.”

Even as he said it, he knew the statement was utterly ridiculous. This was why he avoided verbal sparring. He ended up slicing himself more than his foe. He cleared his throat and pressed on. “Where is your chaperon?”

She grinned. “Apparently you needed him more than I did. Relax. I’ve returned safely, haven’t I?”

A maid appeared, poised to accept Jess’s bonnet and pelisse. Jess brushed the woman away. “I’ll wear them upstairs.”

Derek’s frown deepened, that sense that he was missing something right in front of him growing stronger. “Why?”

“Because that’s the easiest way to carry them.”

“You don’t need to carry them. The maid can do that.”

“I’m going upstairs anyway, so there’s no need for her to make the trip as well.”

It was suddenly imperative that Derek get her to remove the bonnet and coat. Her insistence on doing something memorably out of the norm must mean that his instincts were correct and she was hiding something.

There would also be the satisfaction of coming out on top in a battle of wills.

He cleared his throat. “I thought we could step into the drawing room and I could tell you what I learned this morning.”

Guilt over his lack of anything to actually share nagged at him, but he easily pushed it aside. That fact was irrelevant right then.

“I’ll be happy to meet you there after I’ve had a moment to refresh myself.” Jess folded her hands before her. The maid just stood there, looking back and forth between them.

“What are you hiding, Jess?” There was no sense in Derek participating in a verbal game of which she was a master. Blunt and direct had always served him better.

“What makes you think I’m hiding something?”

“Because you won’t take off the bonnet.”

She turned her back on him and slid the bonnet from her head and over her shoulder before turning back to face him, the fabric hat crushed in her grip. “Happy now?”

He should be. But he wasn’t. “May I see it?”

“You want to see my bonnet?” she asked very slowly.

Now the maid wasn’t looking back and forth; she was simply staring at him, and Derek couldn’t really blame her. Oh well. He was too far gone to stop now. “Yes.”

“I don’t think it will fit you. My head is a great deal smaller than yours.”

“Only in the literal sense.”

It was a gamble which of them was more surprised by his quick return. She recovered her shock faster and grinned at him. “Well done, sir.”

He licked his lips and forged ahead, wondering if perhaps there was a bit more wit stored in that brain of his. “I deserve a boon.”

“It wasn’t that well done,” she laughed.

“The bonnet, Jess?”

She pinched the loose fabric back of the bonnet and shook it at him. “It’s a brown bonnet, Derek. It’s nothing special.”

“Then you won’t mind handing it over.” He really hoped something came of this exchange, or he was going to feel like a veritable idiot and never be able to trust his own instincts again.

She rolled her eyes with such perfect technique his nephew would be in awe, then handed the bonnet over. “Here.”

He took it. Stared at it. Called himself a total fool.

How was he supposed to know if this was a normal bonnet? He’d never had reason nor opportunity to inspect one before, and he had to assume that women’s bonnets were made rather differently than men’s hats.

It was one of those loose bonnets that seemed like a floppy bag with a brim on it. He turned it over to see that the hat had been lined with a pale pink fabric. No one but the servants would ever really see the inside of the hat, so why bother? Why put the pretty color on the inside and show the drab brown to the world?

He turned it in his hand once more, and that was when he saw it.

A second brim. A second set of ties.

He twisted and flipped and pulled, and the bonnet went from being brown with a pink liner to pink with a brown liner.

The same pink a certain inept painter had been wearing at the Institution that morning. How had Jess managed to gain access to the exclusive, high-priced art hall? No, he didn’t care. How she’d done it didn’t matter. What hurt was that she’d been there at all.

“‘Man looketh on the outward appearance. . . .’” Derek mumbled as he ran a hand along the cleverly constructed headwear.

Jess sighed. “Not you, too.”

He didn’t know what she meant, but he was coming to expect that was going to be a normal occurrence if he continued to spend time with her.

That was a very big if. He refused to be a tool she used when convenient.

“It would seem,” he said slowly, “that our meeting to exchange information would be unnecessary.”

He handed the bonnet back and strode from the hall without looking back.