by Heather Snow
Emma gradually became aware of Derick’s heavy weight upon her. He’d released her other hand, his head had dropped atop her shoulder, and his hot breath rushed against the side of her neck. She brought her other arm around him now, cradling him to her much as she still cradled him between her thighs.
She opened her eyes, almost surprised by the blue sky above her. Sounds and sights of the forest gradually filtered back into her consciousness—birds chirping, the creek gurgling, the bursts of color that stood out from the greenery. “Dear me,” she mused with a sudden bit of humor, “deflowered amidst the wildflowers. For shame.”
But rather than shame, she was filled with a peace and happiness unlike any she’d ever known. A euphoria almost. Derick loved her. Oh, he hadn’t said the words, but he’d shown her with other words, with his body.
Emma hugged him tighter to her. How many times had she sat in this very spot, dreaming of this moment? Well, not this moment exactly, because she hadn’t had the worldly knowledge to imagine anything close to what had just happened between them. But dreaming of Derick and herself, together. In love.
Emma idly stroked her fingers through his hair. He stirred. He lay against her for a moment, then shifted his weight, moving his hands to brace himself above her. Emma smiled as his face rose above hers, but it froze upon her lips as she registered his pale complexion, his features twisted with regret.
“Oh, hell. That was a mistake.”
Chapter Sixteen
Emma flinched, her head falling back and her eyes widening with shock, much as if he’d slapped her. And damnation, he may as well have.
“Oh, Emma.” His voice sounded raw to his ears, yet slurred with the languid satiation that battled with his self-disgust and with a bone-deep fear he could not name. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
Hell. She was the one who blurted her deepest thoughts, not he. He was supposed to be in control of himself—his actions, his emotions, his words. And yet, lying here with Emma, still buried between her sweet thighs with her satiny skin surrounding him, with her lavender scent mixed with the heady smell of sex and woman still arousing him, he was in control of nothing.
A tremor passed through him. Damnation, he was shaken to his core. Sex had never been like that for him. Never once had he so completely lost himself in another person. He wondered vaguely if he’d ever find his way back—if he even wanted to.
Her hands left him slowly. She slid her arms under his where he’d propped himself above her, and crossed them over her breasts, putting a barrier between them that squeezed something within him.
“Didn’t mean the words, Derick?” Emma’s voice sounded small, yet surprisingly strong. “Or didn’t mean to make love to me?”
Gooseflesh popped over his skin, cold now in the absence of her warmth. He felt her withdrawing from him, even though they were still intimately joined. With one slip of the tongue, he threatened to undo every bit of the self-worth he’d been trying to build up in her. Well, that and one monumentally foolish slip of control.
“Emma…” He didn’t want to answer her. Didn’t want to see the pain his words would cause, whether he told the whole truth or just part of it.
Her lower lip trembled, that lip which he’d so recently praised. Had taken between his teeth and nipped, suckled, and soothed. Looking down at her now, his chest ached. He’d known Emma was vulnerable to him—and by joining with her, he’d made her even more so, heartless cad that he was. All because he’d lost his damned head, because he’d been unable to resist her, been unable to stop himself—a reality he couldn’t fathom, yet it was there just the same, looming with unknown consequences he wasn’t prepared to face.
Still, he owed her the truth, even if it wouldn’t make things better for her. In the short run, that was. In the long run, it was for the best. He heaved a great breath.
“Neither. I didn’t mean the words, but I shouldn’t have…” Derick swallowed. He couldn’t bring himself to say “used you so.” That was too callous and cold for what had flared between them. In his many years as a spy, he had used countless women—mostly for the secrets they possessed, though sometimes there was pleasure in it, too. He had been used for the same just as many times. But Emma was as different from those women as he was from a blue-blooded Englishman.
However, neither could he utter the words “made love to you,” the idea too foreign and disturbing for him to countenance. “I shouldn’t have touched you,” he finally said.
Emma’s chest hitched and then she shoved him, hard, successfully dislodging him. She scrambled from beneath him, coming to her feet while he was still catching his balance. He rose to his knees as Emma snatched her chemise and dress from the blanket where he’d tossed them. She yanked them over her head in harsh, jerky motions, forgoing the stays.
“That doesn’t add up, Derick,” she said as her head popped through the neckline of her bodice. She shoved her arms through the armholes next. “If you believe you shouldn’t have touched me, then you did mean the words.” She smoothed out her skirts, her amber glare turning watery. “You just didn’t mean for me to hear them.”
Her voice broke on that last, and a single tear slipped from her eye. That silent trail of moisture cleaved him in two. Derick dropped his head, unable to look at her pain. His eyes sought the blanket, the green, blue and yellow plaid blurring as he knelt naked before her, unsure what to say, unable to move, damning himself for a coward.
In all of his encounters over the years, he’d never stayed to see this part. He’d always left women happy, departing their beds with glib lies upon his lips—whatever he’d known they wanted to hear. Had he hurt any of the women he’d screwed for king and country? He must have, at least a few of them. But he had been gone long before he’d have known it.
Blessedly, Emma was the one to walk away. When he looked up, she had turned her back on him and seemed to be struggling with her boots. Though he heard no sobs, her shoulders were shaking and he was certain that not all of it was due to her efforts to dress.
He rose to his feet and gathered his own clothing, slipping his trousers, shirt and boots on as he’d done a hundred times after sex. And yet, even after every stitch of clothing was perfectly righted, he still felt naked. Exposed. Bare as he had never been before in his life.
When he looked again to Emma, she had straightened, though her back was still to him. She looked so stiff and so…small. Smaller than her usual compact stature, as if she’d withdrawn into herself. Damn it, this wasn’t her fault. He crossed the distance between them, stopping silently behind her. He couldn’t let her think…What? He didn’t know, he only knew he couldn’t allow her to blame herself. To think it was she who was lacking. “Emma, I—”
She turned to face him then, her cheeks dry now, though her eyes were lined with red and her nose had gone puffy. “You didn’t mean any of it, did you?” Her voice held a flat, resigned note that ripped at him.
Then her face crumpled and she fisted her hand. “Why would you say all those things?” she cried, striking him in the chest. He welcomed the sharp pain, would gladly stand and let her whale upon him until her strength gave out. “Why would you try to make me believe I was beautiful? That you cared for me?”
Each word flayed him worse than the lashes he’d received in the early days of his imprisonment by the French. He knew they flayed her, too.
“Ah, Emma,” he groaned and reached for her. He crushed her to him, perhaps meaning to comfort her, perhaps meaning to alleviate his own guilt and pain. He buried his nose in her hair, breathing in her scent—breathing in his own scent upon her, and a primitive longing like he’d never experienced permeated every inch of him. “I meant all of it,” he whispered.
The truth of those words pierced Derick. He couldn’t deny them. He could blame his lack of control until Napoleon stopped lusting to rule the world—even from exile—but he would be lying to himself. He wouldn’t have taken her if deep down, some part of him hadn’t wanted Emma
more than he’d wanted anything in his life. He couldn’t let her believe otherwise, even if there was no hope of a future for them.
He pulled back and cupped her face. “Every word, every kiss, every touch.”
Emma’s eyebrows dipped, the corners of her lips quivered, as if they couldn’t decide whether to frown or tip up in a tremulous smile.
“Which is why you should hate me.” He might be able to admit to himself that he wanted her, but if she knew who he truly was, what he’d done, what he might yet still have to do…
“Hate you?”
“You have every right,” he pointed out, absently rubbing a thumb along her cheekbone. “I took your innocence, Emma. It can’t be undone. And I can offer you nothing in return.” She needed to hear at least that much of the truth, mission be damned. “Nothing that you’d want.”
Emma stilled and pulled away from his embrace. And though he’d expected that reaction, hoped for it and worse, the loss still ached. She didn’t look at him, instead stared at some point behind his shoulder, rubbing her thumb against her fingers.
She looked him directly in the eye. “You didn’t take my innocence, Derick. I gave it to you.”
“Gave it to me…” he repeated.
“Planned it, even. Warm pastries…” She winced, followed that with an endearingly wry grin. “Though admittedly, those didn’t have the effect I’d hoped. Two bottles of wine,” she added, holding up the corresponding number of fingers. “A secluded picnic…”
Derick gaped. Planned it, even. He knew she’d been trying to entice him, but he hadn’t expected such aggressive pursuit. He should have, though—after all, Emma was nothing if not tenacious. Still, he should have stopped her. He wouldn’t have her believing the fault lay with anyone but him.
“Well, if that’s true, you gave it under false pretenses,” he said. “I know you’d hoped I’d come to live in Derbyshire, that we’d become partners initially, more eventually.”
Her lip quivered again…just minutely, but he saw. She didn’t deny it.
“But that will never happen, Emma,” he informed her gently. “It can’t. Therefore I never should have taken…something of such value from you. Something that wasn’t mine to take. That is why I said what I did, not because I regretted one second in your arms. That is why you should hate me. Because even though I can give you nothing, I took you anyway.”
Her chest rose and fell on a deep sigh. “I’m not a child, Derick. I’m nine and twenty—my virginity a long ago devalued commodity, worth nothing save to the man I chose to give it to.” She stepped toward him, laying her open palm against his chest, where it seemed to burn his skin, even through the cambric. “And that man is you. It has always been you.”
Derick stopped breathing. He clapped his hand over hers, pressing it harder to his chest. “Emma.” He swallowed, struck by a fierce possessiveness that wasn’t his right to feel. He wished to hell he were worthy of her, but he was so far from it. “You undo me,” he whispered.
She placed her other hand upon their joined ones, her skin warm and soft on either side of his hand now. Her eyes locked with his. “You undo me, as well.” She shifted on her feet, her tongue coming out to wet her lips. “You say you can offer me nothing that I want. But what if all I want is you?”
Derick pulled his hand from between hers. “Emma, you don’t want me.” He turned from her. “You want the boy I once was. The man you think I am. You know nothing of the man I truly am—if you did…”
She wouldn’t let him turn away. She followed, placing herself squarely in front of him. “If I did, I would still want you.” She reached out and grabbed his hand, pulling it to her own heart this time.
A part of Derick longed to believe. Believe that in spite of everything he’d done, people he’d hurt, people he’d sent to their deaths—either by his own hand or by the information he gathered about them—that he deserved the love of someone like Emma. But he didn’t. His soul was black, his blood even blacker, and he could change neither.
And that didn’t even take into consideration the fact that he was leaving England behind as soon as this mission was complete. Emma would never consider leaving her home for the wilds of America. Nor would he wish her to.
“No, Emma,” he said tenderly. “You wouldn’t.” He could see she didn’t believe him. The hope in her eyes, the earnest press of her lips, the tremble in her hand where she still held his against her told him so.
If he wasn’t already going to burn in hell for all he’d done in his life, he surely would now for tainting such an innocent. Such an angel. And for breaking her heart, for disillusioning her—which was what he was about to do. He consoled himself with the knowledge that it was the kindest thing he could do for her.
“All right, Emma. I’ll tell you what kind of man I am, and then we’ll see how you feel.”
A shiver went through Emma at the ominous tone in Derick’s voice. And yet relief coursed through her as well. She’d been shocked when he’d shown such remorse after their lovemaking. Hurt, angry, not to mention rejected.
But then she’d seen the pain in his glittering eyes, had heard it in his broken voice and knew it wasn’t she he was rejecting. There was something else behind his renunciation. So she’d suppressed her own pain and tried to think logically about it.
Sometimes when working with complex equations, it was necessary for her to break the components down, remove them if she had to, solve them one by one and then put them back together again. She’d decided to try that method here.
He’d admitted he wanted her, which had gone a long way toward assuaging her feelings—one part solved. She could see his guilt over the fact that she’d been an innocent, so she’d done her best to remove that from the equation by telling him she’d intended to give herself to him—another part solved. Now, she needed to get at what really held him back from her and see what she could do to solve that.
Derick tugged his hand away and walked over to the spread blanket. He picked it up and shook it out, then carried it a little farther up the hill, away from the creek. He doubled it over, then quartered it before placing it on the ground in front of a massive sessile oak, so large that the span of her arms wouldn’t reach around a quarter of its trunk if she tried to hug it. Derick motioned for her to join him.
When she reached him, he held out a hand. Emma placed hers in his, amazed at the jolt even that simple touch sent through her. She lowered herself to the blanket, using his grip as support until she was settled.
The corner of his lip curled up. “No rocks this time, my little mermaid princess?”
She smiled in return, though she felt her cheeks pinkening as she remembered throwing herself into his lap, and everything that had happened after. But she couldn’t regret it. “No. Nor any peas, for that matter.”
Derick’s mouth spread into a half grin then. But when he was seated beside her, with his back leaned up against the trunk, feet flat on the ground, legs bent with his hands resting on his knees, the smile faded from his face.
Emma scooted herself until she was perpendicular to him, near his thigh. She crossed her own legs, folding them toward her body and hooking them at the ankles tailor style. She leaned toward him, just slightly.
Derick turned his head to look at her then. He seemed to stare at her face for an endless moment. “You must realize, Emma, that I’m no saint. I’ve done things…” He turned his face forward, and his hands stretched out, though his palms remained on his knees. His jaw tightened and his face became hard, wiping away the man she knew and showing her someone else entirely. Emma held her breath.
“As an agent for the government, my superiors found I had a knack for ferreting out secrets. Over the years, it became my primary mission to uncover traitors, and other double agents like myself.” He slid a glance at her. “Occasionally I was called upon to terminate them…and those who’d divulged England’s secrets.”
Emma pressed her lips tightly together, doing her best to sh
ow no reaction. She’d expected something like this—after all, she knew that true spy work would be ugly, not a childlike game of cloak and dagger.
“I’ve taken lives,” he said more loudly, as if she hadn’t understood. When she said nothing, he returned his gaze to his outstretched hands. “By my own hand. Men’s lives, women’s lives. So many that I’ve lost count.”
Emma swallowed. Somehow she knew from the bleak look on his face, from the way he stared at his hands, that his words weren’t completely true. He remembered every one.
She turned her gaze to his hands as well. Lean, elegant, long-fingered. Strong hands. She realized her own palms had gone clammy and her heart had sped up. Even though she’d known he would say something like that, the reality of knowing that the hands that had touched her so tenderly, that had brought her such pleasure, had also snuffed out life—lives—shot a cold shiver through her.
Would she ever be able to look at him the same?
Emma swallowed again, trying to wet her dry throat. “You did what you had to do. It was war, Derick. And those…people were betraying our country. It’s not as if you took innocent lives.”
The ghost of an expression that wasn’t quite a smile flitted over his face, which was still in profile. “Most likely not.”
“M-most likely?” she asked, bewildered.
He looked at her then. “In the majority of cases, the evidence was irrefutable. But there were times, in the field, when things weren’t so clear. When I had to go with only what knowledge I had and with my gut. With instinct and probabilities.”
“But probabilities are just that,” she said, shocked. She wasn’t one to rely on instinct, so she couldn’t speak to that, but as a mathematician she understood probabilities. And knew they weren’t always accurate.
