Chapter Seventeen

As it so happened, finding the next painting turned out to be far easier than pretending to be married to Derek. Several inns, a couple of house visits, and one Verbonnian painting later, she was back to wondering how in the world this entire charade was supposed to work.

Jess looked out the window at the ivy-covered estate they were pulling up to, bracing herself for the dread and uselessness that was about to bombard her.

The dread was familiar. A similar feeling preceded every entry into a kitchen, where memories she’d spent half her life avoiding were going to be stirred up as surely as the ingredients in her mixing bowl. The uselessness, however, was new and very unwelcome.

There was no denying it, though. Derek didn’t need her to get him into the houses. His suggestion that they pose as travelers and simply walk up and request entry was working far better than she’d thought it would.

“This is Westmore, one of the estates belonging to the Earl of Bristford, right?” Jess asked. “Which painting does he own?”

“The Lifting of the Skies.” Derek tugged on his ill-fitting coat. “It’s one of the few I wasn’t able to confidently identify. This might be a waste of a visit.”

“They all might be, given the fact that most of these men have multiple homes in which they could be storing the paintings. We won’t know until we look.” The second house they’d toured had been just such a disappointment. Right owner, wrong location.

As they moved into their second week of searching, what had started as a niggling worry grew stronger, and she was becoming desperate to push it away. Worry was pointless and fruitless, as she reminded herself whenever she considered what her brother might be doing. Such ponderings could do nothing but paralyze her, and right now, she needed to focus on moving forward.

The memory of Mrs. Lancaster spouting off a verse about each day having enough concern of its own and letting the Lord handle the rest nudged at the other side of her mind, but Jess pushed that away as well.

The old woman from Marlborough terrified Jess with her determination to act as a mother figure, doling out hugs and wisdom and eyeing her as if she knew Jess wasn’t always as confident as she appeared to be.

Jess rolled her shoulders and repeated her mission over and over in her mind to bring herself into the present. All that mattered was getting into this house and seeing if the painting was here without raising suspicion.

Derek jumped out first and held his hand up to help Jess down. She let him, but only because it was possible someone was watching from the house.

He tucked her hand into his elbow, pulling her close to his side.

Instinct had her pulling away until he looked at her with slightly raised eyebrows.

Right. She was supposed to be his loving wife, enjoying a rare holiday through the countryside.

Ryland was the only man she’d ever pretended to be married to for a significant length of time. As neither of them had particularly fond and loving parents upon which to model their false marriage, it had been decidedly businesslike.

Derek’s family, as she’d seen with her own eyes, wasn’t like that. At every house and in the public rooms of every inn, he’d been there. Constantly offering her his arm, seeing to her comfort, being so nice and accommodating that it made her uneasy. To her recollection, no one had ever asked her if she was comfortable with the pace at which they were walking or shifted the chairs around at a table so that she could sit closer to the fire on a day chilled by low grey clouds and then made sure the choicest morsels of food ended up on her plate when dinner arrived.

Her pretend husband had done all that and more.

She allowed him to pull her into his side once more as they approached the door and knocked.

The housekeeper appeared, and Derek began his story about wishing to see a bit of the glamorous estate they’d heard so much about on their travels. Subtly he extended a coin. The housekeeper took it with a smile and opened the door wider.

Jess tried not to frown as they entered the house. What sort of foolish people allowed strangers to tramp through their home simply because they knocked on the door, smiled, and held out a coin? The coin wasn’t even going to the owner.

This was the third house that had granted them entrance, and if Jess were the thieving sort, she’d be far richer now, having seen multiple ways in which she could have absconded with small, valuable trinkets or returned later for larger thefts.

No one was likely to find their way out to Haven Manor and ask for a tour, but Jess made a mental note to make sure Chemsford wasn’t allowing any such nonsense at his other homes.

“The morning room is furnished completely from the Chippendale catalogue,” the housekeeper said, ushering them through a room.

Beneath her hand, Derek’s arm tensed, provoking Jess’s desire to laugh and making her smile a bit more natural. Obviously the man knew some burning fact about furniture, saw a particularly fine piece of art that she couldn’t even begin to recognize, or something in the room wasn’t actually Chippendale.

Whichever of the three it was, Derek was greatly disturbed by it, because his arm didn’t slowly relax the way it usually did. As the housekeeper moved them along, Jess couldn’t help leaning in and teasing Derek a bit. “It was the table, wasn’t it?”

He jerked his head in her direction. “What?”

“In the morning room. Was it the table?”

His eyes widened, the hazel flecks sparkling through his spectacles. He tipped his head closer and whispered, “How did you know?”

Her amusement bubbled up into a small, breathy laugh. “I didn’t. It was a complete guess.”

“Oh.” He pouted and straightened as they continued after the housekeeper. After a few steps, he mumbled, “The legs were wrong.”

“Of course they were.” She took her free hand and patted his arm.

As her hand fell back to her side, she curled the fingers into her palm. How strange that she found it so easy to play this charade in the mode he’d created. Her pace now adjusted to his without thought, making walking arm-in-arm an easy feat. The first inn they’d entered as his version of husband and wife, she’d nearly taken out a chair trying to walk at his side. Even his small touches and glances were becoming easier to return.

The housekeeper smiled at them as she led them through a long gallery. “Where did you say you were from?”

Jess pinched his arm to keep him silent, one benefit his close proximity provided. “Derbyshire,” she said, naming the next county over, a reasonable distance for a holiday but not so far that one would wonder at their ability to make the trip.

“Beautiful country there,” the housekeeper said. “It’s nice to see a love match.” She looked around as if someone would overhear them, even though they had yet to see another soul for the entire tour. “The master and missus don’t have much to do with each other these days, as I’m sure you heard when they told you about the house. This room is rather well known.”

With that, the housekeeper opened the door to a salon, and Jess had to work to keep her mouth from gaping.

The room was split in half. Two walls were green, two were cream, and the furniture made distinct groupings in the two corners. On what Jess assumed was the wife’s side, though she probably shouldn’t make assumptions about anyone who would create a room such as this, the furniture was pale blue, with curved delicate lines. Sheer white drapes covered the window.

Smooth, pale brown wooden furniture filled the other corner. Both had writing desks and a small conversation grouping, though a person sitting in one area could never easily converse with a person sitting in the other.

“There was a great argument over who should use this room, as it gets the best light in the evenings.” The housekeeper stepped to the center of the room and stood demurely, obviously expecting that this was the room they’d come to see and that they would need to take some time looking at it.

Derek’s arm tensed again, and Jess immediately went on the alert. She tuned her ears to listen for signs that someone else had entered the room, but there was nothing.

Then Derek was guiding her over toward the master’s side of the room. “There,” he whispered.

She looked up and saw a painting of angels tripping through clouds. It was much better suited to the other corner, with its delicate, frothy wisps of cloud and sky. The husband had likely hung it here out of spite so his wife couldn’t see it.

“Is this what you thought it was?” Jess whispered back.

Derek shook his head and moved her on so that it wasn’t obvious they were staring at the painting instead of the room. “No. I think it might be another one of the false leads.”

Jess’s hope plummeted. They couldn’t afford to chase after false leads. Not that she blamed Derek. They were having to piece together so many broken pieces of information, there was bound to be a misstep or two. The queen had intended the collection to stay together, after all, for someone with diary in hand to be able to pick out the important pieces and put the picture together.

Guilt joined worry at the edge of her mind. Their brief time allotment was entirely her own fault. If she’d only told Ryland—no. Jess didn’t contemplate if.

Without the painting to look for, Jess wasn’t sure what to concentrate on for the remainder of the tour. They could hardly just turn and leave, so Jess dutifully followed Derek’s cues, taking in the views of the grounds and the apparently exquisite crown molding.

This was not enough to distract her mind from the detrimental emotions waiting to eat her alive. Her only available choices for diversion were the house or Derek. As the house wasn’t going to tell her anything of interest, much less importance, she turned her thoughts to Derek.

She looked up at his profile, the spectacles perched on a long straight nose over a pointed chin, all of which was topped with that hair that never quite seemed to stay where he put it. Why didn’t he cut it or purchase a pomade? Did he like it constantly dropping into his eyes? It made him look like a little boy who had forgotten he’d grown into a man, as if at one point his brain had matured so quickly that the rest of him forgot to keep pace.

“We could,” Derek said with a laugh, jarring her from her thoughts. “But that would make it difficult for us to return to our inn before nightfall.” He dropped his gaze toward Jess, obviously intending for her to be in on whatever conversation he’d been having with the housekeeper. Instead his eyes met hers as he caught her staring at him.

Jess jerked her face away, stunned to feel heat crawling over her ears. Was she blushing? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d blushed.

This house tour needed to end. Now.

She made it back to the front door without looking at Derek, then all but ran from the house as soon as they crossed the threshold. Only the firm grip of Derek’s hand holding hers against his arm kept her at his side. His long, thin fingers completely covered her smaller ones, meaning that if she wanted to retreat she was going to have to make a scene first.

He said his final pleasantries and guided her back to the carriage at an agonizingly moderate pace.

Jeffreys was waiting there, awkwardly angled to hold the door open for them while holding the reins in his good hand. Ryland’s watchdog couldn’t quite hide his grin as he watched Jess trail alongside Derek like a demure little wife.

As far as Jess was concerned, they could both go dunk their heads in a bucket.

She clambered into the carriage, both to get them on their way and to remove herself from public viewing. If no one could see them, there would be no reason for Derek to keep her close or be overly attentive. In private, she could tell him to let her be.

Derek climbed into the carriage after her and paused, hunched over in the doorway, staring at her silently.

She frowned and stared back at him. Why wasn’t he getting in? She gave a pointed look at the seat across from her. He merely tilted his head.

More heat spread up Jess’s face as she shifted to the front-facing seat—the one a gentleman would always offer to a lady. Even without the prying eyes, he insisted on treating her as such. She’d never been a lady, not really. Farm girls, spies, and servants received a different sort of treatment.

“Thank you,” Derek murmured as he sat in the backward-facing seat and pulled his sketchbook from his bag. As the carriage rolled forward, he put down the lines of the painting they’d just seen.

Jess waited until he was finished to speak. “You don’t have to do that, you know.”

“What? Draw it out? I think it wise. Even though that painting wasn’t the one I thought it was, there might be a detail in it we need later.”

Jess didn’t even want to think about how they would fit a group of frolicking angels onto a map of England. “You don’t have to bother with the seats.” She gestured between them. “It’s only you and me in this carriage. No one is going to know where we sit.”

“I’ll know,” Derek said in a matter-of-fact voice.

“As will I, but I’m saying it doesn’t matter. Riding backward doesn’t bother me.”

Not like he did.

Jess sat back with her arms crossed and watched the countryside roll by, just as it had for the past week. Half the time they rode in silence, half the time he droned about what he’d learned in his studies that she could never hope to understand or cram into her brain, and half the time she poked and prodded at him in an effort to make him as miserable as she was, only to have him sidestep her jab with the grace of a skilled pugilist.

And yes, she was well aware that three halves were greater than a whole. She hadn’t completely missed being taught her maths. That was just how long this interminable trip felt to her.

Perhaps if she used these carriage rides to learn about the diary and what Derek thought he was looking for in the art, she’d be able to cut Derek free.

All she had to do was convince herself that it didn’t mean anything that he was smarter than her. Her entire life had been spent surrounded by people who knew more than she did, and until now she’d seen that as an advantage. She would gather what she needed from them and then move on. It was how she’d learned languages, fighting, and a host of other skills.

If doing such now had the added benefit of removing the disturbance he brought to her emotions, so be it.

“Did you know,” Derek said as he glanced up, “that some of the more detailed paintings of the seventeenth century were done on thin copper plates rubbed with garlic?”

No, she didn’t know that. Why did he know that? Why did anyone need to know that? The interminable “did you know” questions were absolutely the worst part of being trapped in a small carriage with him. She never knew. Ever. She didn’t know useless facts about history or architecture or whatever else he’d spent his life studying.

While she was aware that two halves made one whole, that was the extent of her mathematical skills, with the exception of a rather good ability to estimate how far away she was from a target and therefore how many revolutions her knife would need to make before it reached them.

That was a good talent. She would bet Derek didn’t know that. She could play her own game of “did you know” and see if he knew at what angle to pull a man’s thumb so that it caused an excruciating amount of pain, thereby allowing his opponent to get away, even if she was half his size.

Only the fact that he might have seen some obscure painting that allowed him to cite a better technique than hers kept her silent.

She cleared her throat and gave him a short smile, just as she’d been doing every time he asked her “did you know?” for the past eight days. “No, I didn’t know that.”

He nodded and went into more detail about it.

When he started winding down, she brought the conversation back to the diary. “Have you learned any more from the translations?”

Derek had been methodically working back through every line. Given the cryptic nature of the writing, they couldn’t afford to have only a general idea. They needed to know exactly what was said.

He reached into the bag and pulled out the book, frowning at it but not opening it.

“Your family . . . legend, for lack of a better word. Does it say how Queen Jessamine died?”

Jess shook her head. “If it does I never knew it. That probably wasn’t considered a vital piece of the puzzle to pass along. How she died didn’t matter. She wasn’t even part of the royal lineage anymore.”

He cleared his throat and shifted in his seat, looking uncomfortable, a rare occurrence for him. He always seemed perfectly happy to be his odd self. And why shouldn’t he be? The man had friends, family, and a career he loved. He had no reason to be unhappy.

He ran a finger along the spine of the diary. “These other people claiming the throne, who might be after you, do you know anything about them?”

“Only a guess,” she said softly. She didn’t want to think back, not when she was alone and certainly not with him in the close confines of a rolling box where mere inches separated their knees. If she wanted to solve this, though, she needed her memories. How could she trust anything she remembered with the mindset of a child? Revisiting the stories as an adult, trying to see her father as he truly was, called everything into question.

“Several years after Verbonne joined the Holy Roman Empire, when the kingdom had passed to King Nicolas’s eldest son by his second wife and then on to the second son, Johannes, after the first died with only daughters, another man arrived, claiming that he had the true claim to the throne. He claimed that Queen Jessamine had been with child when she left Verbonne, and he was the son of that son.

“The emperor liked King Johannes better than the interloper and thus declared his claim void and without grounds. Every few years, the man tried again until the emperor had him executed. Five years later, his son made a claim to the throne.”

Derek winced. “You think those descendants are trying to claim it again, now that it’s once more a free country?”

“It’s possible. The fact that we’re scrambling across the country on the trail of clues in an old diary is proof enough that family legacy can be a powerful thing. Pass enough passion along to the next generation and it doesn’t die.” Jess jabbed one fingernail into her palm and watched the skin change color. “They still cared ten years ago. The rise of Napoleon renewed their hope, I suppose. They joined forces with him, which was why, even though Verbonne was ready to peacefully change empires for the sake of survival, my family had to go into hiding. Napoleon declared my family traitors and acknowledged the other claim. He vowed to hunt my family down and end any future problems they might cause.”

Jess swallowed hard, fighting back thoughts she hadn’t allowed herself to entertain. In her mind, Verbonne had been lost. She’d assumed that if it survived the war intact, the other line would gain control and rewrite history before moving the country into the future. Now, it seemed that even though the war was over, there was still a battle to be fought. Was it possible for this to end without one of the lines being eradicated?

“Why do you ask?” Jess brought her thoughts back to where they needed to be, the here and now.

Derek ran a hand over the cover of the book. “Because I finished another passage last night. If one were to read that entry in the right way, it’s possible the queen died in childbirth.”

Jess didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing.

Neither did he.

The silence continued for a time that could have been five minutes but felt closer to an hour.

“Did you know that—”

“No,” Jess cut Derek off. “No, I didn’t know, likely no one knows besides you, and at this moment I don’t particularly care.”

Was it possible everything her father had worked his entire life for, what he had died for, was a lie? Had the queen borne the true heir while in England? Was the other claim to the throne legitimate?

If there had been a child, who had raised him? Had King Nicolas known? Was it in the letter he burned?

Given Derek’s hesitation at mentioning the passage, Jess had to assume that the diary answered none of those questions. Her gaze dropped to the book sitting on the seat beside Derek. She wanted to know what it said, but what if . . .

What if her loss had been worthless? What if everything she’d known had been wrong? Worse than wrong. Stolen.

Then again, what meant more? Blood or birth? None of the other line had ever lived in Verbonne. Could they love it enough to lead it properly?

Did any of that matter now? The country was practically having to start over.

“What does it say?” she asked quietly.

Derek looked at her, the brown hair swooping gently across his forehead and dipping into his eyes so that he had to brush it back with an impatient hand. He smoothed the diary open in his lap. “With the symbolism of the rest of the book, it’s hard to say. She does write that nature managed what man could not when she mentions the queen’s death. But then it says that even in death she ushered forth a bright and glorious future.”

Derek set the book aside and slid his spectacles off in order to wipe them with a handkerchief. “It could be a child, or it could simply be because she is the starting point of this journey. Much of the book is written as if she is the one taking the various paths. It’s quite clear that the queen mother adored her daughter-in-law.”

The one Jess was named after but not actually related to.

Queen Marguerite had never gotten to meet her son’s second wife nor any of the children that union produced. She had lived out her days in England, possibly more of an actual hero than Jessamine had been. The notice of her passing was the only other message sent back to Verbonne after the diary. The queen mother had left Verbonne behind, giving it a final gift and a hug farewell. As far as anyone knew, she’d never looked back.

Perhaps Jess should have been named after her instead.

“Do you think there was a baby?”

“The diary isn’t clear, so I don’t know. I would have to think that the fact that the diary was sent back to Verbonne would seem to indicate she thought that the rightful heir was there.”

This was why Jess hated history and scholastic thinking. It was so grey, so shilly-shally. There were no definitive answers. In Jess’s life, it was usually yes or no. It was about survival and making choices in the moment and living with them.

“I don’t know what to do,” Jess admitted through a tight throat.

Derek gestured toward the window. “I suggest we get a bite to eat, then bed down at this inn for the evening.”

“Food and sleep aren’t going to fix this, Derek.”

He winked at her. “They won’t hurt either.”