by Heather Snow
“She made inquiries, of course.” Emma frowned at him. “I assume she still had connections in France—and you were her only son, Derick.”
His skin prickled with unease. What kind of connections might his mother have had that would have known such potentially sensitive information?
Emma had noticed his hesitation. That wouldn’t do. He’d worry about his mother later. Tonight was about deflecting Emma’s curiosity regarding his past. And the best way to do that was to put her on the hot seat a bit, too. He leaned forward again, giving her a slow grin. “You say you hounded Mother for information? About me? Why ever would you do such a thing?”
Her blush made it obvious. Her childish infatuation with him must have run very deep. How had he not seen it? He nearly snorted. He’d been seventeen, that was how. And he’d seen her as little more than an adolescent pest. But now…
Emma cleared her throat. “We were discussing what happened when you were detained,” she said pointedly.
Now she was an adult pest. His eyes raked over her. An incredibly distracting one.
“So we were.” Satisfied that the subject of the viscountess was closed, Derick considered. He hadn’t realized Emma knew of his detainment. Damn. He’d have to reveal a little more. “With my darker coloring—and this nose, of course—my French heritage was obvious.”
“Half French,” Emma corrected.
He let her believe what she would. “As you can imagine, tensions were high. Many of us, particularly young men, were held apart from the others. Loyalties were…questioned.” He nearly shuddered. That was as close as he would come to discussing those weeks of “interviews” that turned to interrogations—followed by extreme…intimidation.
“I was approached by the French. You see, they knew of my family connections. They also knew of my position in English society—that I would inherit a viscountcy one day.”
They’d thought it a great lark, hadn’t they? A coup of sorts, to have a full-blood Frenchman accepted as British aristocracy—a truth they’d learned courtesy of his sire’s brother, who’d become a high-ranking official in Napoleon’s government. “It made me the ideal candidate to spy for the French.”
“You refused, of course,” she said staunchly.
Derick blew out a breath through his nose, and yet her unwavering faith in him soothed a place inside of him he hadn’t even known still hurt. He hadn’t missed the snide insinuations and distrustful stares whenever he returned to England. People usually assumed the worst. After all, everyone knew his mother was French, and he had been in France most of the war.
So why was Emma different? “What makes you so certain? Do you forget I have French blood flowing through my veins?”
Emma stared at him as if he were a prize idiot. “Well, for one, you wouldn’t be admitting it to me now. You know very well there’s no leniency for traitors, no matter how much time has passed since the offense was committed. You couldn’t expect me, as a magistrate—as an Englishwoman—to keep my vow of confidentiality if you’d betrayed our country.”
Ah. It was logic that convinced her, not any faith in him. What had he expected? Still, disappointment nettled.
“Besides,” she said, “blood doesn’t matter. It’s how we are raised that determines who we are.”
“Blood doesn’t matter? What rot. Just look at the successions of kings and nobility for ages. Or how some families are bad to the core.” Like his. “Blood matters above all.”
“That’s rot,” she said. “But that’s not what I meant. I meant that it doesn’t matter whose blood runs through your veins. It’s what you’re exposed to that makes you who you are. There’s great debate about the subject, of course, but I am a firm believer that John Locke is correct with his tabula rasa theory.”
Derick translated the Latin. “Blank slate?”
Emma nodded. “Precisely. He says each of us is born a blank slate, and our personalities, who we are, develop not because of who sired us but because of where and how we are nurtured. There’s no such thing as ‘bad’ blood or ‘good’ blood, only bad and good choices. So no matter what blood runs through your veins”—she pointed at him for emphasis— “you were raised here. You love England, the same as I do. The same as any Briton. You would never betray her.”
He scoffed. “How would you know such a thing?” She’d spent a few summers with him at best. Even the man who had raised him, the old viscount, had doubted his loyalties. “My own…father died thinking me a traitor,” he uttered, his voice harsh. Unexpected pain sliced through his chest, stealing his breath. God, he’d thought he’d dealt with these feelings, accepted them as a tolerable sacrifice for the choices he’d made. Emma’s gloved fingers slipped over his where they rested on the table. He tried to pull away, but she grasped tight, infusing his cold skin with her warmth. “Then he was a fool.”
Derick stared at her. Her face was open, her amber eyes bright with moisture—his pain reflected in her eyes. Christ.
“Stop looking at me so.” He pulled harder, this time successfully extracting his hand from hers. He shifted in his chair, putting distance between them.
Emma fisted her hand, slowly moving it back to her side of the table. After a long silence she said, “You asked how I know you love England?”
“Yes,” he said gruffly, glad the awkward moment had passed.
Emma leaned back in her own chair, seemingly lost in thought. Derick noticed her thumb moving against her fingers again. “When we were young, all you talked about was your home in Shropshire, the land, what you intended to do with it once you inherited. Every game we played featured you as a lord of the realm, the protector of hearth and home.” She shook her head and her lips twitched with a wry smile. “It was rather annoying, actually, and terribly unimaginative.”
He huffed. “Thanks.”
She shrugged. “As we got older, you would often speak of what you wanted to change when you took your seat in Parliament.”
Had he? He brought a hand to his temple, pressing. He hardly remembered, hadn’t wanted to remember. So much had changed since then.
“But more than that,” Emma continued, “there was so much pride in your bearing, because you knew your place. When we were playing on Aveline lands, it was as if you treated it with reverence. As if you breathed it in. Much as I feel when I’m riding Wallingford lands. That’s how I know you love England. It’s a part of you. That’s how I know you would have died before serving the French.”
Throughout her recitation, Derick’s chest had tightened painfully. Emma remembered a boy he’d long forgotten. Had he ever been so innocent, so…deluded to the realities of the world? He brought his hand down hard on the table. “Well, you’d be wrong,” he said harshly, taking a perverse satisfaction in her sudden shocked gasp.
He was angry now—unreasonably so, a distant part of himself whispered. He struggled to rein it in, which was more difficult than it had ever been. It seemed as if his control over his emotions frayed more and more every day. It must be this place.
He glared at Emma. Or this woman. This girl who knew nothing about him but thought she knew everything.
“D-do you mean to say—” Emma swallowed, her amber eyes wide and her face gone pale. “Do you expect me to believe you agreed to spy for the French?” Her tiny hands had curled into fists on the table and she looked a bit shaken.
Hell. He hadn’t meant to say anything of the sort. It had just burst out of him, the truth. Because he’d wanted to disillusion her noble ideals of him? Because he couldn’t stand the way she’d been looking at him, all soft and admiring?
Derick pushed back from the table, the wood legs of his chair screeching a high pitch against the floor. He paced away, leaving Emma seated there staring at him as if he’d suddenly shrunk a foot and a half and morphed into Napoleon himself.
“I did,” he said quietly, the weight of his words falling dully in the room. “I won’t explain my reasons, so don’t ask.” How could he explain that angry
young man, who’d just learned his entire identity had been a lie? That he was French, through and through, thanks to a cuckolding, faithless mother and her French lover? That he was an impostor, a bloody British aristocrat without a drop of English blood in his body. He’d been lost, broken, confused—easy prey for the persuasive tactics of the French. “Nor do I regret it,” he said softly.
He turned to face Emma, expecting to see disgust marring her beautiful face. Instead, she gaped at him, her brow furrowed and her gaze calculating—as if she stubbornly refused to believe she’d been wrong about him.
And that blessed Pygmy stubbornness lightened his heart, lifting the cloud of anger and darkness that had settled over him. Derick sighed. In a way, she had been right about him.
“I don’t regret it,” he repeated more forcefully, “because had I not gone over to the French, I never would have become as useful to the British as I did.”
He waited for Emma to work out his words. The stark relief that crossed her face when she did caught at him. Did she want to believe such good about him? Why did it matter to her?
“You became a double agent, then? But for our side?”
“For England’s side,” he demurred. He was no more British than Fouché. “It took only a matter of days for me to come to my senses, to realize I could no more betray the country of my birth than I could change the blood flowing through my veins.”
He lowered himself back into his chair, taking a deep swallow of wine. Well, this discussion hadn’t quite gone as he’d intended, had it? He slanted his gaze to Emma, who was now looking at him with a mixture of pity and understanding that both set his teeth on edge and filled him with an absurd relief at the same time.
He’d never spoken of that time in his life. For some unfathomable reason, it felt right to be sharing it with the closest thing he’d had to a childhood friend. Now, before he left England and this life behind him forever.
“The French thought it best to leave me rotting away with the other British prisoners for a while, so as not to alert them of my change of allegiance. Sent me back, eyes blackened, lips split and bleeding, body bruised and broken.” He snorted. “A hero of British resistance.” Derick’s lips twisted in recall. “Smart of them, really. Within a week, I’d been welcomed by the leaders of the British rebellion. I was meant to uncover their secret plans and report back to the French, but instead, I told them the truth of my situation and offered my service to England.”
“They accepted you at your word?” Emma asked shrewdly.
“Not at first,” he admitted. “For many months I was tested sorely by both sides.” He shuttered his eyes, refusing to open himself to discussion on that front. “But in the end I won the trust of each. And I used it.”
Silence fell once again between them. While he didn’t care for the contemplative gleam in Emma’s eyes, the stillness wasn’t uncomfortable. Until he began to wonder what, exactly, she was thinking. Then his body tensed, as if he were a garrote wire pulled tightly, waiting for the right moment to take an enemy by surprise.
It seemed an hour before she finally spoke, though in truth it was likely less than a minute.
“So, now that your wartime service to our country is behind you,” Emma said, “what are your plans?”
Surprise flickered through Derick. He’d expected Emma to bury him under a barrage of inquiries now that he’d opened the door. She had to be curious about what he’d done, how he’d done it. Not that he would have answered her truthfully, but he’d certainly thought she’d ask. “No more questions about my past?”
But she just shook her head in a slow side-to-side motion. “No,” she murmured, her face serious, somber. “I know everything I need to know.”
Now what did that mean?
“Will you be settling in Shropshire, then?” she persisted. “At your seat?”
“I haven’t decided,” he lied. There was nothing to be gained by telling her the truth in this instance. That as soon as this last mission for the Crown was completed—and now, Molly’s killer brought to justice—he intended to depart for the Americas. To make a life for himself where his birth, his blood, truly didn’t matter. For now, it was best just to let her believe what she expected of an English viscount.
“You have no particular loyalty to that property?”
He shrugged.
“I imagine after years of such…intrigue, the life of a viscount must seem tame indeed,” she mused.
“On the contrary,” Derick murmured. “I grew tired of the deception. I would embrace a quiet life.” Indeed, he looked forward to losing himself in the vast, untamed wilderness of the Americas.
Emma’s gaze dropped to her lap.
Derick frowned. It wasn’t like her to go all shy and wilting. “Mmm.” She nodded. He knew Emma better than to think she asked idle questions. And he had a suspicion he knew where she was going with this.
Her gaze rose to him. “You could make your home here,” she said, confirming his fears. She took a deep breath before saying the rest. “In Derbyshire.”
Chapter Eleven
“Derbyshire…” Derick repeated. Damnation. That kiss between them today had been a mistake. Now that he knew Emma had carried a tendre for him, he could see why she might think there was hope, given how out of control their kiss had gotten.
“Yes.” She nodded. “It would be very quiet, and yet you could lead a useful existence.” Emma’s normally calm, sedate voice rose in speed and pitch in her enthusiasm. “Heroic as you are, you must be looking for new ways to be of service.”
“I must, must I?” He grew more awkward as the conversation went on. He really should disabuse her of any romantic notions. Heroic. He fought the urge to snort. If she only knew what he’d done to accomplish his great successes as a spy.
But that way of life was behind him. Or was it? He’d vowed to himself at the end of the war never again to use a woman’s desire for him solely to get information from her. Given how Emma had responded to his kiss, Derick knew it would be easy to exploit her in that way and he intended under no circumstances to do so. But now he was faced with a new dilemma. Her feelings for him apparently ran much deeper than desire. Since there could be no future between them, if he allowed her to hope there might be to suit his purposes, wouldn’t he still be breaking his vow, if not technically, then at least in spirit?
“Well, I know that the Earl of Stratford holds the magistrate position near your seat, being the highest-ranking nobleman,” she went on, oblivious to the ethical turmoil going on in his mind. “But if you made your home here, you would outrank my brother, and therefore be his logical successor.”
“Don’t you mean your logical successor? Why ever would you wish that?”
“I don’t, exactly. Nor would I expect you to just waltz in and usurp me.” She fixed him with a stern gaze. But after a moment it softened. “I was thinking more along the line of a…business partnership.”
“A business partnership…” Hell. This unexpected development was both the best and the worst at the same time. When Emma had voiced her suspicions about him being a spy this afternoon, he’d been certain that his mission was shot. He’d taken a risk being truthful with her, but he’d expected that she would become wary of him once she knew the truth, forcing him to try to win her trust anew. And yet, here she was, attempting to draw him further in.
“It would be perfect,” she said with a growing enthusiasm that stabbed him with guilt. “If you were the official magistrate, I would no longer have to worry about my and my brother’s secret being discovered.”
Ah. He supposed that particular fear was a burden for her to carry.
“I won’t be able to hide it forever,” she said simply, confirming his thought. “At least you would be the demon I know.”
“Demon?” Derick protested, even as he lifted one corner of his mouth in a wicked half-grin. “I do believe you mean ‘the devil you know.’ Though I can’t say I care for being likened to the Prince of Darknes
s any more than I do one of his minions.”
She shrugged, as if to say “if the sock fits.”
He snorted to himself. He’d been around Emma too much—he was now mangling her metaphors for her.
“Besides”—Emma reached across the table and grabbed him again, not in comfort but in her bid to persuade him. A sizzle of heat shot through Derick as he imagined myriad ways he would rather have her try to persuade him, despite his best intentions—“we’ve proven we work well together. You have skills that I desire to learn, and I have superior knowledge of the people and the area. We would make a formidable team.”
“A team, eh?” In the terms of his mission, he’d be a fool not to take advantage of what she was offering, for as long as necessary. Of course, he would never make his home in Derbyshire. But Emma didn’t have to know that. He could accept her “partnership” as a trial. The more closely they worked together, the more natural his other questions would seem. And the less obvious his nosing around would appear.
But what of the other concern? Well, it wouldn’t be breaking his personal vow, he decided, to go along to a point—it wasn’t as if he was going to sleep with Emma to get what he needed, and he would be extra-careful with her tender feelings now that he was fully aware of them.
He would also do what he could to help her. He could try to leverage what connections he had to make sure she didn’t have to worry about being replaced as magistrate. The government owed him much. He could also talk to his friend Geoffrey, Lord Stratford, about Emma’s situation, see what the influential earl could do for her—if any peer understood how capable a brilliant woman could be, it was Stratford, who was married to a lady chemist. And, the earl’s political star was rising fast.
Derick nodded to himself. Yes, that could work. Once he’d done what he’d come to do and departed England, Emma would be no worse off than she was right now—she might even be in a better position. That would make up for any small heartache she might feel upon his departure.
