Chapter Twenty

There weren’t enough words in any language to describe Jess’s emotions upon seeing that portrait and realizing just whose house she was in. Darkness had crept along the edges of her vision until looking up at that portrait had been like looking up through the floorboards.

Childlike terror competed with the resilience of the woman who had learned to fight. She’d wanted to run, wanted to grab her knife and slash through the painting until the image was gone, wanted to cry, wanted to . . . wanted to . . . There were so many warring desires she didn’t even know what she wanted to do.

Fortunately, she’d known what she needed to do. Before anything else, she’d needed to get Derek away from that house.

He sat across from her now, thoroughly shaken by the entire experience, if the fact that he was allowing her to ride backward was any indication. He shoved his hair off his forehead and resettled his spectacles.

The rattle and noise of the carriage clipping along the lane filled the space, thanks to the open hatch in the roof.

“I’m not seeing anyone,” Jeffreys called down. “No one followed me when I left either, though I got some strange looks. More than one gardener will remember it.”

“How did you know to go to the lane?” Derek asked, shifting so he was perched on the edge of the seat and yelling to be heard over the horses.

“Jess gave me the signal,” Jeffreys called back.

Jess sighed, peeking over at Derek to find the accusatory look she’d expected. If he wanted to know all the safety measures she and Jeffreys had put into place for this trip, it was going to be a very long conversation. Even now, they weren’t headed to the original next destination but to a nearby village, where an old associate of Jeffreys would likely grant them a place to stay without asking too many questions. It might be a barn or an empty crofter’s cottage or even an attic. Jess had utilized all sorts of places in moments like this, and she and Jeffreys had determined several options when they’d set out the path.

She’d hoped Derek would never find out about it.

“There’s a signal?” Derek said, lowering his voice enough that Jess knew he was talking to her and not Jeffreys.

“Yes, there is a signal. I would never walk into an unknown situation without some established form of communication with my partner.”

His eyes narrowed and his mouth flattened. “I thought I was your partner.”

Jess resisted the urge to squirm. Thankfully, the noise outside prevented Jeffreys from hearing anything beyond yelling, or he’d be chiming in, making this discussion even more of a mess. “You were with me.”

“And apparently in some danger I had no idea about.” He crossed his arms and glared at her, saying nothing but obviously thinking.

He was always thinking. He’d claimed she was, too, but she didn’t think like he did.

The more he stared, the more the desire to squirm built in her and the more she pushed herself to remain still and appear nonchalant. Never give the enemy a sign of weakness.

Not that she considered Derek her enemy, of course. She thought of him more as a . . . as a . . . Heat speared across her cheekbones, and she turned to look out the window, even pressing one cheek against the cool glass in an attempt to battle the threatening blush.

“The window,” Derek said, tilting his head to consider her new position. “The whole business with the bonnet at the window. That was when you knew we needed to leave.”

Her skin once more feeling normal, she turned back to face him. “Yes. Fortunately, the portrait gallery faced the front of the house.”

“And you simply took for granted that I would follow your lead? That I wouldn’t insist upon seeing more of the house or ask about your odd behavior?” He planted his feet wide and leaned toward her, hands planted on his knees, elbows jutting outward. “That’s quite a risk. Am I your docile pet, then, trotted around at your whim?”

“Your job is to look at art. Mine is to keep us safe,” she said stiffly. The man had no right to be angry. “Just because I haven’t had to do anything until today doesn’t lessen the importance of that. I could have handled any normal reaction from you, whether exasperated or docile. Neither would make the housekeeper blink. Nervous fear, however, would. We’d have found ourselves searched for stolen trinkets.”

“Are you saying you believe I’d be foolish enough to put us in even more danger?”

“I’m saying you’re a liability.” As soon as she said the words she wished she could take them back. She didn’t mean them. Not really. He wasn’t a liability. If anything she was impressed with the way he’d handled himself thus far—the heavy travel, Jess’s various characters chosen the moment she got an impression of the housekeeper, and even the way he’d remained calm and followed directions as they fled the house.

She could probably have sent him on this journey with only Jeffreys and he’d have been fine. Her presence was the only reason they’d been in significant danger today.

No matter what she told herself, though, she couldn’t form the words to take the sentence back, to apologize or claim it was said in the heat of the moment. She wanted—no, needed—to be necessary. If Derek saved Verbonne, where did that leave her? She would still be the child in the floorboards, useless and helpless and unable to save her family.

“I see.” The tension drained from his body as he slumped back in the seat, but the anger remained on his face. “What a shame I can’t simply loan you my brain, then, so you could do this without me.”

“That would make it easier,” she agreed, hating herself just a bit more. She had a reputation of easily telling people they were wrong or acting a fool, but this was a level of nastiness she didn’t recognize in herself.

He took three deep breaths through his nose, arms crossed over his chest. “And the dining room?” he asked, his voice surprisingly even, if a bit lower than normal. “How did you know the painting was there?”

“The title had the word feast in it, so it seemed a reasonable gamble,” Jess mumbled. She knew that was ridiculous, that artistic-minded people didn’t think that way or make those sorts of connections, but she hadn’t been willing to allow a further search of the house. Once more, she could thank her instincts, or what Ryland claimed was the prodding of the Holy Spirit, or whatever it was that had guided her over the past years.

“Feast? The title had—” Derek snapped his mouth shut and shook his head.

His face was tilted toward the window, but she didn’t think he was seeing anything. Only the noise of the rolling vehicle kept the interior of the carriage from being tensely silent.

Instead it was simply tense.

He didn’t rant or rave or do anything Jess was accustomed to normal people doing when they felt hurt or angry. Either or both of those feelings would explain his current behavior, so she’d expected some form of attack.

But he just stared out the window, face stern, arms crossed over his chest.

Because she was watching him so intently, she saw the moment he came out of his mind and returned to the carriage. Those hazel eyes blinked and the stern, grim line of his mouth turned down into a frown.

“Where are we going? This isn’t the road to Lincolnshire.” He turned his gaze on her, pinning her to her seat. “Another part of your contingency plan, I assume?”

Jess swallowed. On this, at least, she felt confident, even if her decision not to tell him could, possibly, deserve questioning. “Yes. We’ll hide for the evening somewhere safe and assess whether or not we need to change the rest of our plan or continue on.”

“Hmmm.” He gave a pointed look at his seat and then hers before dropping his gaze to the floor.

Jess sighed and gathered her skirts, preparing to make the slightly awkward change of seats in a moving carriage, but he didn’t move. His gaze caught hers briefly before he laid his head on the back of the seat, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.

“Based on his prior involvement, we have to assume he is a part of the other claim to the throne. They have to have some connection to those who fled, so we also have to assume he knows the paintings are somehow important.”

Derek listened to Jess with a growing sense of awe. Her voice was even, calm, matter-of-fact. There was no tension, no worry, no haste in her tone as she spoke.

“If he has given up,” Jess continued, “making a change in our plans won’t matter. If he hasn’t, he’ll start moving to put whatever paintings he can out of our reach. We need to prioritize those he’s most likely connected to and hope we can fill in the holes.”

As Jess and Jeffreys bent over a table in the hayloft of a barn, Derek reclined on a pile of hay covered in a rough blanket. He’d been listening intently, but so far he had no assistance to offer. It had all been about strategy and potential problems.

Derek shifted to adjust a bit of hay that was jabbing into his back. He’d never been in a hayloft before, but he imagined most of them weren’t like this. Blankets, a table, four chairs, three methods of departure, two guns, and a map of England marked with the fastest routes to the nearest known smugglers’ ports didn’t seem like the average hayloft inventory.

That last item didn’t make sense, even after Jeffreys had explained that sometimes the safest place for a spy wasn’t their home country.

Jess hadn’t been willing to explain anything. She’d simply spread their map on the table, along with his diary translations, and gotten to work.

“Is it time to enlist some help?” Jeffreys asked. “We could send other people out to these paintings.”

Derek leaned a bit closer in order not to miss Jess’s response. It was true. They had some semblance of an idea what they were looking for. A sudden discomfort in his gut had him pressing a hand to his middle. Was he disappointed at the prospect of not continuing to be a part of this? After the way his heart had nearly exploded on that short walk across the lawn this afternoon, he should be delighted at the idea of going home.

If it was all about placing the setting and establishing a direction, that didn’t require any deeper understanding of art or symbolism or anything else. He could return to his normal existence and not worry about whether the side that eventually won this quietly fought battle was the one that actually should.

No, they didn’t need him now that they knew what they were looking for.

Except that today’s painting hadn’t been the same. In the other paintings, it had been obvious—a place, a path, a journey. The Feast of Future Fortune had been set inside a building. No one was going anywhere.

Yet he knew this one was part of the map. It had been the clearest of all the diary entries. Obviously, he’d missed something when it came to what they were looking for in the paintings.

He closed his eyes and pictured the painting: the crowns without jewels, the bare platters, toasting cups tilted at various angles and as empty as the serving bowls.

He needed to sketch it while the details were still fresh in his mind and before they lost the light of the setting sun. It was unlikely that Jess and Jeffreys intended to light the lantern sitting on the corner of the table. Even Derek knew that a light in a barn at night could draw notice.

As his pencil moved over the paper, he searched for lines, some indication that this painting, like the others, was sending them somewhere.

There was nothing.

With his new knowledge of where The Six had come from and why, he had to assume that this painting was one of hope. They were celebrating the future freedom of their homeland. Were the people in the painting The Six? Had Derek ever seen a portrait of Fournier?

Perhaps Jess had recognized one of the people.

He looked back toward the table in time to see them packing away everything and planning the path they’d take toward London tomorrow.

“I’ll take first watch,” Jeffreys said, stretching his arms over his head. “That way I can sleep before I have to drive.”

Jess shook her head. “Better to split it into three. I’ll take the first and third. I can sleep in the carriage tomorrow.”

The last edges of sunlight slid over the windowsill on the far side of the hayloft as Jess lowered the main ladder and climbed down, supposedly to keep an eye on the surrounding area.

“I didn’t think anyone followed us,” Derek said.

Jeffreys shrugged and gathered two blankets before moving to the haystack beside Derek’s. “Not that we saw. The chances of them finding us are small, but it’s often a slight crack in your guard that sends it tumbling down.”

Derek nodded, but before he could think of something else to say, the other man had thrown one blanket onto the hay, lain down, and covered himself with the second. In moments, his breathing steadied into the smooth flow of sleep.

Derek hadn’t even had time to pack away his pencil and sketchbook.

He got up from his pile of hay and moved to the window to look down. Of course he couldn’t see Jess. She knew what she was doing too well for her to allow that to happen. Then again, she could be on the other side of the barn.

Pulling back from the window, he looked at the shadowy lump that was Jeffreys. He and Jess worked well together, as if they shared a single mind. Jeffreys, though he looked a good bit older than Jess, would make a much better partner for her than Derek.

Not that he should care. He didn’t care. Jess’s not needing him was hardly a surprise. All she needed was a walking history book who could translate Italian. He just happened to be the conveniently available one.

As quietly as he could, he packed away his sketchbook and resettled onto the hay, biting his lip to hold in his body’s groan of protest. Eventually, he wriggled his way into a somewhat comfortable position and dozed off, but not so deeply that he didn’t hear Jess return up the ladder and gently wake Jeffreys. Whispers of sound accompanied the vague shadows as the driver made his way to the ladder and Jess settled into his abandoned bed of hay.

“I could take a turn,” Derek offered before she could drift off to sleep. There were three shifts and three people. It wasn’t right that Jess should take two while he took none.

She chuckled. “What would you do if you found someone?”

That was a very good question. “Scream, I suppose.”

Hay crinkled as she shifted. “That would allow Jeffreys and me to get away. You would be dead or captured by the time we could get to you, of course, so we would just grab the papers and run.”

“That doesn’t sound like good team camaraderie.”

“We don’t help anyone if we all die.”

Her pragmatic view of death drew Derek’s curiosity enough to have him shifting in his hay pile, turning toward her even if there was nothing to see but varying shades of darkness. “I’m not sure I’m helping now.”

She didn’t immediately reassure him he was wrong.

A piece of hay tickled his nose, and he grabbed it and twirled it about his finger. As Jess had mentioned in the carriage, his job was to interpret the paintings. He couldn’t find the direction in today’s painting for the life of him.

That was an expression that suddenly carried a bit more meaning than it had a month ago.

“You are.”

Her voice came as such a surprise that he jerked, nearly falling off his hay. Did she truly believe that? “Jeffreys was right. You could send others.”

“No,” she said quickly. After a moment of silence, she spoke again. “There’s something we’re missing. The writing is too poetic to be that simple.”

The pounding of Derek’s heart eased a bit. That was solid reassurance, coming from Jess. He could rest on that for a while, couldn’t he? He let the silence return, knowing she needed to grab her sleep while she could.

“There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

“Of course,” Derek said automatically. Jess was too practical to start a fight instead of sleep, so whatever she was going to ask him must have been weighing on her mind for a while, brought out by the safety of the night and the unique circumstances.

“How did you know it was me? In all my disguises, how did you know? Even Ryland doesn’t see me.”

The duke was her benchmark for who knew her well? Someone she hadn’t seen in three years? “I looked at you like a painting. Meaning is in the smallest details in art.”

“What do you mean?”

“Art isn’t a slice of life—not real life, anyway. It’s an interpretation of it. You see what happened but also the effects of it, or perhaps it’s the representation of a feeling, like a dream or desire or fear.”

He shifted onto his back and stared at the dark ceiling. “Before you, I never thought of looking at people that way. In that carriage to London, though, something kept nagging at me. I didn’t understand it until you pointed out the serving girl at the inn. It’s changed people for me.”

Her laughter was light. “Is that a good thing?”

“I suppose.” He grinned. “It’s certainly not convenient, though.”

The hayloft fell quiet again. This time Derek prolonged the conversation. “You could do it, too, you know. You could look at paintings the way you look at people.”

“Paintings don’t move,” she muttered. “I can’t see where the people are going.”

“Have you tried?”

There was a long pause before she took a deep breath and admitted, “No.”

A surge of triumph went through Derek, similar to the kind he felt after identifying a particularly quarrelsome painting. “I could teach you.”

“I’m not a very good student.”

There was more to that statement than an excuse. Derek wished he could see her, that he could study the details, look for the little nuances that told him what she wasn’t saying. In the dark he could only guess at what was behind her words, and it frustrated him.

“I doubt that,” he said. “I’m sure someone taught you how to handle that knife you were holding earlier.”

“That’s different,” she whispered.

“Not really. The mind is a tool, just like a knife. Imagine me flipping that thing about like you did this afternoon.”

Her chuckle made him smile. “You would probably cut your own finger off.”

“I have a feeling you will make a better art student than I would make a knife student.”

“Care to see?” she asked.

“What?”

“You and me. We’ll trade lessons. You tell me about art, and I’ll teach you how to sneak about. Knife lessons might be a bit difficult in a carriage.”

Did he want to learn more of Jess’s world? The affirmative yearning that answered that question surprised him.

“Yes,” he said, “but on one condition.”

“What?”

“We’re partners. We do this together. You teach me, I teach you, and we find this coronation bowl together.”

He had to wait for fifteen heartbeats for her to answer. He counted each tense one, wondering if it would be the last one he made as part of this endeavor.

“You have a deal. We’re going to London tomorrow. If any of the painting owners is a cohort of Lord Bradford, it will be Count Rashido. He’s an ambassador from Russia. He’s not completely trusted, even though he’s never been caught doing anything nefarious. He’s watched.”

“I don’t suppose Russian is one of the languages in your repertoire, is it?”

“Ya robaryu tolka shtobyi ostatsa v jhivyix.”

He really hoped that meant she knew enough to keep them from getting killed.