by Heather Snow
Good Christ, when had that happened?
The object of his newly discovered realization squared her shoulders and lowered her head just enough so that their eyes were of a level with each other.
Anger blazed from hers. But behind it he saw her desire. To be with him. To have him for her own. Derick stopped breathing.
“I may have been easily taken in by you. I may have allowed myself to see only what I wanted to see…” Her voice cracked just a little, but he felt it as if it were something within him that split. Because he knew her pain came not from what he’d done, but from her knowledge that in spite of it, she still wanted him. “But if you think I’ll let anything keep me from solving this case now, you know me even less than I know the real you. Which is not at all.”
She turned her back on him then and ascended the stairs in purposeful strides. Derick stood where he was, unable to move, unable to do anything but watch her go. With every step that pulled her away from him, it was as if she pulled away the last vestiges of his facade without even intending to, leaving him standing at the bottom of the stairs unable to hide from the truth.
Emma, of all people, knew the real him. Better than any other person, maybe better than he did himself.
And she might have loved him anyway.
Knowing what he could have had, if only things had been different, broke his heart.
Emma wiped a rag over one of her chalkboards, erasing formulas and scribbles until only black slate remained. She’d fixed an unmarked map of the area onto the wall beside it, as well. She wanted to look at everything with fresh eyes.
Preferably ones that didn’t sting with unshed tears.
Derick had followed her up the stairs. She’d been afraid when she heard him behind her that she would break. For a moment there out in the courtyard, and then again at the bottom of the stairs, she’d seen something in Derick’s eyes that made her want to throw open her arms to him and make a blessed fool of herself. But after searching her study to make certain that no one lurked in it, he’d left to search the rest of the house. She was grateful for the respite. She would just have to use the time he was away to shore up her defenses.
She’d done an admirable job of keeping her inner turmoil from him, but not without paying a price. Every part of her ached, from either strain or just a deep-down pain that she knew wasn’t actually physical. It only manifested itself that way.
The only way to keep it all at bay was to get to work.
Think, Emma. If mathematics could answer every question in the universe—which she was certain it could—how could she manipulate it to find a killer? She had precious little to go on at the moment. She’d have to get Derick to fill her in on everything he knew, but perhaps once he did, she’d see a pattern that would point them to the man. In the meantime, she would revisit her reports on the three suspicious deaths that she’d discerned might be germane, which now lay spread across her desk.
Twenty minutes later, as she was placing a mark on the map where Farnsworth’s body had been found, Derick slipped into the room. Emma didn’t hear him so much as sense him, her nerves suddenly alert and tingly. It was as if her body, now so intimately familiar with his, simply knew he was near.
“The house is clear,” he murmured from behind her. “With the help of Perkins and your staff, every door and window is locked up tight. Not that that would deter someone with a modicum of skill if he was intent on getting in, but it’s better than doing nothing at all.”
“Mmmm,” she acknowledged absently. There. Four locations where bodies had been found were now dotted on the map. She stepped back and stared at the seemingly random markers. They had to mean something. If only she could figure out the language that would tell her what.
Derick came up beside her, obviously interested in what she was doing. The hairs on her arms raised, as if he was a magnet and they tiny filaments of metal. Drawn to him. Like she was.
Oh, do quit being ridiculous. She turned to look at him, certain that seeing his deceptive face would remind her why she should feel nothing for him but scorn. But it was a mistake.
A lock of his black hair had fallen across his forehead. It made him look younger, and somehow vulnerable—and yet devastatingly handsome in a tousled sort of way, as if he’d been thoroughly tumbled out-of-doors and had enjoyed every moment of it. She flushed with heat as her traitorous body reminded her that indeed, he had. As had she.
And despite everything, she wanted to be again. Emma pursed her lips. So much for shoring up her defenses.
“What is this?” he asked, eyeing her map and the equations she was tinkering with on the chalkboard.
“I’m not going to tell you,” she answered. “Not until you explain exactly what is going on. Every bit of it, from the beginning.” She turned back to look at her equations. “Not that I will be able to tell if you lie to me,” she grumbled, for once not caring if he heard.
Derick moved in front of her in one fluid step, his large body blocking her view of everything but him. “Damn it, Emma,” he said, his voice low, pitched somewhere between frustration and earnestness. “I haven’t lied to you. I was not forthcoming, but I was not openly dishonest, either.”
“Oh.” She tossed her head back, spoiling for the fight. This was what she needed to remind her heart why he was so wrong for her. Because apparently the foolish organ hadn’t caught on yet. “That’s rich. A rather fine line to walk, don’t you think?”
“When you’re in my position, sometimes a fine line is all you have,” he shot back. “I will admit that I’ve crossed it many times over the years. I wouldn’t have survived if I hadn’t. But whether you believe me or not, Emma, I need you to know—I never crossed it with you. And I won’t.”
She scoffed, angry at the seeming sincerity in his glittering gaze. She stepped back from him. “You expect me to believe that I can trust you? That you’ll answer me honestly, no matter what I want to know?”
He followed, a slow, deliberate step with a lean that brought his face close to hers. “Yes, you can trust me.”
If only she could believe him. It was so tempting…until—
“Aha!” She spun away from him, turning back only when she’d put some much-needed space between them. “But you won’t answer me honestly.” She wagged a finger at him. “I’m onto your tricks. You just avoided my second question by only answering the first, so you can tell yourself you’re not a liar.”
A long, irritated breath escaped him. “I’ll always answer you honestly, Emma,” he said. “Just be certain you really want to know the truth of what you ask.”
Something charged hung between them, something she didn’t quite understand. She knew that some kind of emotion seethed beneath Derick’s skin—she’d seen it when they’d been standing on the stairs. Whatever it was, it seemed even stronger now.
The question she’d asked him just before John Coachman interrupted them at the cave hovered on her tongue. Had their lovemaking meant anything to him or had she been just another woman seduced for duty?
She opened her mouth, hesitated. She didn’t want to know the answer, did she? She didn’t think she could take knowing the truth, either way. Because if he said she was just like all the rest, it would devastate her. But if he admitted any kind of feelings for her, that might be even worse…
In the end, she lost her nerve. “Fine. Right now, I just want to know what exactly is going on.”
He looked disappointed somehow, but he simply nodded. “All right.” He started a slow pace in front of her boards—a sleek, banked sort of prowl that reminded her of a caged lion she’d seen once in the menagerie at the Tower of London. “You already know I hunted traitors during the war. I’m sure you’ve now deduced that my work continued even after hostilities ended. Understandably, the War Department doesn’t take kindly to those who betrayed England, and has no intention of letting them live to do it again.”
His voice had gone dark and was tinged with just a hint of danger—but eno
ugh to make her shiver.
“Understandably,” she said, simply because it seemed as though she should say something, and really…what did one say to that?
“For the past two years,” he continued, “I, along with a select other few agents, have been tracking down the last bits of intelligence we’ve been able to gather about potential traitors who operated during the war. Rumors, mainly. Farnsworth was attempting to back-trace the trail of some sensitive military information that had been fed to the French over a period of years. About two months ago, he sent word from France that he was closing in on the source. With some cooperation from the French and a bit of interrogation, Farnsworth concluded the most likely source of the leak was somewhere near upper Derbyshire.”
“So he’s the one who accused my brother?”
“No. He didn’t name any one suspect. When at all possible,” he said with a raised eyebrow, letting her know her crack about probabilities had struck home, “we are very careful not to implicate a person without absolute proof. Farnsworth would have been chasing that proof. But then my commanders didn’t hear from him again. Since last they knew he’d been headed here, they decided this should be the first place we should look for him.”
“So you volunteered to come.”
“No.” He huffed once. “I had just retired not three days earlier. But since I had property here, and therefore a legitimate reason to show up unquestioned, I was the logical choice. I could be here very visibly and be established quickly. No matter what guise Farnsworth was hiding behind, he would undoubtedly hear of my arrival, since it was bound to be gossiped about, given I hadn’t been here in so very long. If Farnsworth were here, and able, it was assumed he would make contact. Then I could assist him if needed.”
So it was just an awful coincidence that had brought Derick back? “Would you have ever returned were it not for this mission?”
His eyes shuttered. “No.”
Further proof that theirs was not a relationship that was meant to be. As if she needed more. She wanted to curse fickle fate, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Because despite everything, a part of her was fiercely glad that Derick had come back into her life. However briefly. However painful it turned out to be. Oh for goodness’ sake, Emma. You are one sick individual.
Still, she wanted to understand. And he had promised to answer any question she put to him. “Why not?”
His lips firmed and he shot her a glare, as if accusing her of exploiting his promise. Perhaps she was. She didn’t care. He at least owed her that. She raised both of her brows in expectation.
Derick closed his eyes. “The day I left Derbyshire, I had an awful row with my mother. I swore then that I would never set foot here again. I—” A ripple of some repressed emotion passed over his face, bringing his eyes open again.
Emma was dying to ask what the fight had been about. She’d always wondered, but that truly would be taking advantage right now. Something told her just to let him speak.
“I don’t know if I would have tried to make peace with her before I le—” He coughed. “I mean after my work for England was complete.”
What had he been going to say?
“As it was, I never got the chance,” he went on before she could think of a way to press him on the matter. “I was in France, on what was supposed to have been my last assignment, when my mother took her life,” he said quietly. “She’d been interred for weeks before I even heard the news.”
Her thoughts were forgotten as she flushed with guilt, remembering how she’d accused him of missing his mother’s funeral when he’d first arrived. He hadn’t defended himself, but now she could see why. She was never supposed to find out he’d been a spy—among other things. And even though she still didn’t know what was behind his anger at his mother, she could clearly see now that it pained him greatly.
“It’s just as well,” he said. “No matter what grudge I’ve borne her all these years, I would not have relished turning her in as a traitor.”
Chapter Twenty
Emma gasped. “Your mother?” She shook her head in denial, more of her burnished chestnut hair coming loose from its knot. Despite all that he should be focused on, Derick found himself imagining it all down, spread around her as it had been this afternoon—wishing to see it that way again. For a moment, he thought she must have heard his unspoken desire because she tugged at the knot irritably, letting her hair fall in waves around her. But she quickly gathered and twisted it, tying it all back up again.
“Let’s back up a bit,” she said as she pulled the knot tight. Efficient Emma had returned. “Someone passed military secrets to the French.” She held out her thumb, as if ticking off a point. “After Farnsworth traced them back to upper Derbyshire, he went missing.” Out popped her index finger. “You came looking for Farnsworth,” she said as her middle finger joined the others, “even though you weren’t certain he’d made it here. Am I right thus far?”
Derick blinked away his Godiva-esque fantasy. “Yes. We hadn’t actually heard from him since just before he was supposed to have left France, but that’s not unusual when an agent is on the hunt. However, when Farnsworth’s silence dragged on, I was sent here to find him.”
“Why here? Why not France? That was his last known location.”
“True. Another agent was assigned there, just to be certain, but there were other things that pointed here.”
“Such as?”
While securing the house, he’d made the decision to tell Emma everything he knew about his mission. She’d pieced together much of it already anyway. If he wanted to put her great mind to work fitting the rest together, she would need all the pieces of the puzzle.
“Once we turned our eyes to upper Derbyshire, we realized that two couriers, both of whom were thought to have traveled through this area, never made it to their destinations. Unfortunately, no one in the War Department had made that connection before. The couriers’ deaths were years apart, for one, and it is a sad reality that many a good man was lost over the course of the wars. And like Farnsworth, they could have been killed anywhere between where they’d started and where they should have ended up. But to suddenly have three possible missing men who worked for the War Department, all tied to an out-of-the-way area like Derbyshire?”
Emma had crossed her arms and was tapping an index finger against her lips as she listened. “That does sound significant—statistically speaking.” She dropped her hand and turned to him. “Wait. That’s why you were so interested when I first mentioned the deaths I’d classified as ‘suspicious.’ And I’d thought you were just challenging my capabilities.”
“I was doing that, too,” he admitted. “But I should have remembered better than to doubt a brilliant woman like you.”
A sad smile flitted over her face, when only yesterday she would have beamed at his praise. Now she didn’t trust even a compliment from him.
Perhaps he had made a mistake in not asking for Emma’s help earlier on. It had seemed prudent to keep the Crown’s business to himself when he wasn’t even sure that Farnsworth had made it to Derbyshire. But now…could some of the heartache he’d foisted on her today have been avoided if he’d just enlisted her aid once he’d decided she wasn’t at all connected to the treason? Or had he been right not to take the risk that she would alert her brother?
He didn’t know. Nor could he change the past. He could only move forward. “I think your unsolved deaths might be our missing couriers.”
Emma nodded. “I’ve pulled out three files that might fit.” She waved her arm toward her desk. “Now that I know more of what I’m looking for, I will see if I can determine anything that might link two of them together.”
“Good.” That was exactly what he’d been hoping for.
“You said other things pointed you to Derbyshire. Plural,” she reminded him.
“So I did,” he answered, bracing himself. She wouldn’t like this next part. “There was also the matter of your brother li
ving here. His reputation as a war hero was well known, of course. He was also one of the few who would have the experience and type of knowledge that the French had received. Naturally, when we learned that military secrets had been passed to the enemy, he was an obvious suspect. When the Derbyshire angle came in…”
“I see,” she said, only a bit tightly. “And exactly when were these secrets allegedly passed?” He could see she was struggling to keep her own emotional bias out of the situation, and instead trying to apply her logic—a trait he found he appreciated more and more in her.
“As best we can tell, the first in 1808, not long after your brother arrived home. The stream of information continued right up until the end of the war. And before you ask, one of the couriers went missing in 1809, but the other not until 1813.”
“Then how could you have suspected George?” Her voice and her color rose a bit as she lost, if not the battle with her emotions, at least a skirmish. “His accident would have made it impossible—”
He raised a hand to halt her protest. “We didn’t know any of that, Emma. There was no reason for the department to look into your brother’s life outside of the military before now. I’m sure if he was given any thought at all, it was assumed that he preferred rusticating in the country since inheriting his baronetcy.”
She nodded, seemingly satisfied by that explanation.
“Once I got here, it only took me observing him for a short time to realize he hadn’t the faculties to perpetrate such a long deception given his condition, nor physically could he have been the one to dispose of the second courier.”
“Well, neither could your mother have! If she weighed eight stone, then I’m ten feet tall.” Emma had risen to her tiptoes as she spoke.
“I don’t think she did any of it alone. And I think whoever helped her is now trying to protect his own arse. If your estimations are correct, Mother was already dead when Farnsworth was killed.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Emma said. “When I mapped where we found Farnsworth’s body, I realized it is very near the cold spring that feeds St. William’s Creek. I’m not sure we can assume anything. If his remains had been in the spring and were only washed to where we found them by the recent flood, he may have been dead longer than I estimated.”
