by Heather Snow
“Because the cold would have slowed his decomposition…”
“Just so.” Emma sighed. “Look, I understand now why you were so interested in who spent time with George, but even though Lady Scarsdale was his closest…confidante,” she said tactfully, “you can’t really think she was the traitor.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, his own feelings threatening. He’d have thought she would be happy to know that someone other than her own blood was his primary suspect. He knew he would be—the idea that his mother was likely the traitor gnawed at him. Not that it surprised him, given what he’d made of himself. Deceit was apparently in his blood. “I have my reasons.”
“Well, explain them to me, because in all of the time I knew her, I can’t remember her discussing much outside of herself. Certainly not anything remotely related to the war. No patriotic statements toward France, or even disparaging remarks about England, for that matter.”
“No good traitor would draw attention to themselves, Emma. Not if they wanted to stay alive.”
“But do you really think she was capable of—”
“Is it really so hard to believe? My mother seduced secrets out of your brother just as I did to scores of women,” he snapped. “It must run in my family.”
Derick immediately regretted his outburst, but damn it all—couldn’t she see this was hard enough for him to discuss without her stubbornly defending his mother? That he didn’t enjoy admitting his family’s shame? His shame? He heaved a deep breath.
Emma stared at him, wide-eyed. Then her shoulders slumped. “Is no one around here what they seemed?”
Only you, he wanted to say, but didn’t.
Instead he said wearily, “I’ve found evidence to corroborate this scenario. You can look it all over yourself later if you want, but it would appear that my mother was growing very paranoid in the weeks before her death. I also had reports that an unknown man, who must have been Farnsworth, had been asking questions about her—investigating her. I think she may have known that she was close to being discovered, and that’s why she threw herself from that cliff.”
Emma winced. Her eyebrows dipped, as if heavy with the weight of compassionate sorrow. “She must have hated it here, to do such a thing,” she whispered. “To do either of those things. How could I not have seen—”
“There was nothing you could have done, Emma.” He could see he was going to have to tell her all. He hadn’t intended to share the rest—the awful secret he’d carried since that long-ago day when his mother had hurled the truth at him in a fit of tears and rage. The last day he’d set foot in Aveline Castle before his duty to England brought him back here. But it was only fair that he lay it all out in the open, not just so that Emma understood this but so that one day she might understand everything else. Why he became what he had. Why he would walk away when all of this was through.
“Mother did hate it here. She was a very bitter woman who viewed England as a prison,” Derick said. “And to her it was. She longed to return to France, particularly after she was banished here to the castle, but Scarsdale would never allow it.”
“Why not? It’s not as if he cared about her, and I never got the sense that she cared for him either. As far as I know, they hadn’t seen each other or spoken for over twenty years.”
“They hadn’t. But you see, as much as my mother hated England, Scarsdale hated her. He wanted her to rot away here, to punish her.”
“Like locking her in a tower? That’s barbaric,” Emma said. “What could she have possibly done to merit such treatment?”
What she and I are both best at. “She deceived him. At her family’s insistence, she agreed to marry Scarsdale to escape the deteriorating political scene in France. It was advantageous to both families. Scarsdale’s coffers needed filling and my mother’s family needed refuge, but at the same time wanted their aristocratic blood to mix with other nobility, even if it had to be English. But unbeknownst to Scarsdale, my mother brought her French lover with her when she married, and she carried on with him behind Scarsdale’s back for years.”
Emma’s amber eyes had gone wide, but he could see she had not reached the obvious conclusion yet—which was just as well. He needed to tell her the worst himself.
He’d never spoken of it to anyone, and it seemed right that if he ever would, it should be to Emma. Emma, who knew him better than anyone else, and after this, always would. He couldn’t see himself ever uttering the truth again. Still, knots formed in his middle, twisting his insides from his stomach to his throat. “Perhaps her adultery could have been forgiven if she had done her duty to Scarsdale first, but instead Mother bore him an heir that wasn’t his…an heir that wasn’t even English.” He swallowed, his gazed fixed on hers. “Me.”
“Oh.” The whispered word fell quietly from Emma’s lips. Despite the whirling thoughts he could see in her eyes, no other words followed, as if shock had stunned her mind out of the ability of forming more than a two-letter response.
Just as he’d lost the ability to breathe. He turned away from her. He didn’t want to know what she was thinking, after all. Didn’t want to see her work through the implications, to hear polite placations or assurances that she didn’t view him any differently, or that his blood didn’t matter. He just wanted this to be over, to move on to a place where no one knew even his name.
“I’ve uncovered dozens of traitors over the years,” he said, feeling more tired than perhaps he ever had. “I’ve found that people commit treason for as many different reasons as there are traitors, but they usually fall in one of four categories: allegiance to another country, ideological convictions, money and, very rarely, revenge. But I think my mother just hated being forced to live in England against her will. Maybe she thought that if she helped France to win the war, she could go home.”
Emma cleared her throat, as if coming out of a daze. “Well, she did grouse all the time about how much she detested the food here.”
Derick couldn’t help a snort of amusement at that, whether Emma had meant it as levity, or in her own adorable way, had taken him quite literally. It didn’t matter. The pall around them had broken, and for that he was grateful. “Well, after several years on the Continent, I must agree with her in that. Traditional English fare is rather lacking in flavor and imagination.”
“Do be serious, Derick,” she said sternly, but the lines around her mouth eased and threatened to turn up.
“Oh, but I am,” he replied, enjoying the bit of humor and the ease that could almost pass as camaraderie between them—a small miracle after everything else that had passed between them today. “Never once in my years abroad was I forced to endure blood pudding.” He affected a shudder for good measure, just to see if he could bring a smile. “Even French prison food is better than that…”
“Hmmph.” He could see her trying to hold on to her severe expression, and then she said rather loftily, “Well, I find it quite tasty.” She lifted her nose in the air, but humor glinted in her eyes and lifted Derick’s spirit.
“Oh, Emma.” He affectionately tipped her chin up with the crook of his finger. “You have got to get out of Derbyshire.”
He almost snatched his hand back when he realized what he’d done, but she didn’t flinch from his casual touch. Indeed, if he read the brief hesitation, the way she held her eyes closed just a bit longer than a blink called for, he would say that she savored it.
His heart thumped hard in his chest as he slowly lowered his hand. Could it be that all of the horrid things she’d learned about him today didn’t revolt her? His deception, how he’d carried out his duties as an agent, his parentage?
“Oh yes?” she murmured, her amber eyes turned smoky, like the color of expensive brandy warmed over a flame. “Where would you have me go?”
A completely misplaced feeling akin to hope burst inside his chest as the insane thought he’d had in the forest returned, resounding in his mind. Would she come with him?
No. No. It w
as madness to even think it. He was a tainted soul, by blood, by deed. Even if she would settle for a bastard like him, in every meaning of the word, someone of Emma’s innocence and grace deserved so much more.
“A good French restaurant would be a start,” he said lightly, though he had to force the carefree tone. He stepped away from her then, walking over to the map on the wall that she’d been marking up when he’d come back from securing the house.
“Now I’ve told you what I know,” he said. “It’s your turn to explain all of this.” He moved his arm in an arc, nodding toward the board and map.
Emma couldn’t move for a long moment. He’d told her much more than “what he knew,” hadn’t he? The barrage of today’s revelations was almost too much for her to bear. So many pieces, memories, and thoughts seemed to make a new kind of sense now and yet make no sense at all. It was as if she’d been looking at Derick through a kaleidoscope that blurred his edges, but it hadn’t mattered because he’d been such a beautiful, dazzling thing. But now, with a turn of the wrist, the lenses had aligned and he’d come suddenly into sharp, stark view with all of his faults on display.
And she found him even more beautiful.
Dear God, she was a crazy woman. Her emotions had careened from one end of the map to the other today and back again. Not that she could trust them, anyway, especially not where Derick was concerned.
No. She needed to push them out entirely and focus on what he asked of her. She could analyze what might or might not still lie between her and Derick later.
“Um…This,” she said as she moved to the map, “is the location where each of the bodies was found. Three of the suspicious deaths, though we’ll need to remove one of the markers once we determine which body was least likely to be one of your couriers, and Farnsworth.”
“I see,” he said in that way people did when they really had no idea what she meant. “But what exactly is it that you are hoping to see?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking…what if we can use the locations of the murders to pinpoint where the killer lives?”
He stared harder at her map. “If you could do that, I don’t think you’d have to worry about losing your position as magistrate because you’re a woman. They’d probably promote you to head of Bow Street.” He laughed as he glanced over at her, and then his eyes tightened. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” She tried to think of a simple way to explain what she had in mind. “Let’s say I told you to take a mouthful of water and spit it out all around after I left the room. When I came back, if I measured the location of where every droplet fell and put it into a formula, I could then prove the point of origin, or in this case precisely where you were standing when you spit it.”
“That makes some sense, but it’s not as if a killer stands in one spot and tosses bodies as far as he can throw them,” he pointed out.
“Of course not. But I do think that a person who kills more than once would leave behind some sort of pattern. We can argue until someone adequately defines the concept of infinity about whether humans truly are a blank slate at birth or whether personality traits are inborn. But it is thought that once our personalities are set, we are creatures of habit. Do you agree, at least, with that premise?”
“Absolutely. Many times that is how a traitor is eventually caught. He reverts to form, repeats an action or behavior I’ve previously observed.”
Excitement charged her blood. She might really be onto something. In her research she had learned that motivations for crimes were often very similar. Could the way they are carried out be, too?
“Well, perhaps killers do the same. Perhaps a man will kill the same way each time, because it worked for him and he’s comfortable with it. Or perhaps he only kills in a certain area, because it is within easy walking distance of his home—I don’t know. I would need to compile a lot more statistical data from actual killers themselves, much as I’m doing in regards to the crime statistics maps I’m working on now, to be able to set the kind of rules that would allow for a true analysis—”
“You are not going to personally interview murderers.”
Emma huffed, caught off guard by his rather authoritarian statement. “I am speaking theoretically, Derick. However, should I decide at some later date to conduct research of that nature, it wouldn’t be your business anyway, would it?”
She’d asked the question rhetorically, but now, seeing the conflicting expressions pass over Derick’s face, she found she really wanted to hear his answer. He looked as if he dearly wanted to assert some authority over her, but the only person who would have that right would be a husband—and he knew it. She watched as stubborn protectiveness turned to contemplation, which turned to longing, which turned to…regret.
“No, I suppose it wouldn’t,” he murmured, and Emma experienced a fierce pang of regret herself.
She blew out a pent-up breath. “Regardless, since this is such a small, isolated area without a huge population to consider, the principles of my theory might hold up without the additional data,” she said. “First, however, I need to determine which two of my three suspicious deaths are most likely to be your couriers.”
She walked over to her desk and settled herself behind it, picking up the three sets of records. It took her less than five minutes to decide which of the three to remove from her map, though she did find it difficult to focus with Derick’s intense gaze on her the whole time. She felt it like a living thing, warming her skin.
“This man had personal belongings on his body.” She rose from her desk and moved to the map, erasing one of the marks. “Nothing that would identify him, but still. Like Farnsworth, the other two had been stripped of everything but their clothing, though neither had been left to the animals as he had. We can, of course, exhume the bodies in the morning to see if they have the same hidden boot compartments, but I feel safe in my assumption that these remaining two are your couriers for our purposes tonight.”
“Makes sense.”
“Now I just need to assess the geographical characteristics of the crimes.” She moved back to her desk and pulled a geometry compass and a measuring stick from the drawer. “The simplest method for what I have in mind would be to draw a circle, being certain that the points of the two most distant crimes are both on the line.” She stuck the compass in her mouth and used the stick to measure the distances between where the bodies were found, calculating the approximate center. Then she placed the point of the compass there and rotated it, letting the pencil flow into a great circle, making adjustments as needed. “By this method, the circle would represent the area within which the killer has killed, making the midpoint the most likely location of his residence.”
When she was done, she pulled the compass and stepped back. Both she and Derick peered at the map. “Hmmm.” The midpoint was directly between Aveline Castle and Wallingford Manor, almost precisely at the cave where they’d played together as children. Well, and as of this afternoon, as adults, too. The heat that accompanied that reminder had nothing to do with embarrassment.
She looked at the map a little more closely. No, not at their cave, but at another, smaller one, not far from it, but still—not where a killer would be expected to live.
“Hmmm,” Derick repeated her assessment. “Unless there’s a traitorous cave-dwelling hermit who has squatted on our lands for the past decade, I would say that didn’t work.”
“Well, that was too simple a method anyway,” she said. She grabbed a piece of chalk and walked over to her board. “I wonder…if I plot the crimes with x and y coordinates…” Chalk clicked against slate in rapid staccato as she quickly drew out a graph and converted the locations on the map into coordinates.
“Perhaps the mean will tell us where the killer lives.”
Emma jotted the equations she would need and got to work.
But strangely, as part of her mind became engaged in the math automatically, it left another part free to think about today—about D
erick, about herself, about them—unfettered by emotion. The highly logical part that allowed her to see past extraneous detail and get to the heart of the matter—if one could get to the heart of a matter without using emotion. A paradox, that.
So what had changed between yesterday, when she’d considered herself so in love with Derick, and today? Well, she’d learned that his role as a spy had been much…different than she had imagined. Pushing aside the natural insecurities that arose at the thought of forever being compared to those many women who had come before her, did it change the fact that Derick was still a hero? And given all else that he’d admitted to her tonight, an even more wounded hero than he was before? Was he any less in need of the love she would give him?
So she’d discovered that his entire reason for being in Derbyshire was a deception. But was deception for a noble purpose necessarily wrong? Or intended personally against her? Didn’t she, in a way, deceive the government herself by pretending that her brother was capable of acting as magistrate because she knew she would do the best job of it?
She also realized that she believed Derick when he said he hadn’t purposely lied to her. Not that it made it right, but to a man who’d lived as he had these past many years, it was at least honorable in its own way. When she put her hurt feelings aside, she could also see that he hadn’t tried to seduce her. He must have known she’d have been perfectly willing. It would have been the easiest course of action for him, in truth, and yet he’d not taken that avenue. Out of respect for her? Because she was different from any other target he’d had?
After long moments of concentration, her answer pointed to yet another area in the middle of nowhere, both literally and figuratively. Literally, her equation still indicated an area between Aveline Castle and Wallingford Manor, though closer to the castle. Figuratively, she still wasn’t sure what she wanted to happen or not happen between her and Derick. She sighed with frustration.
