by Heather Snow
His voice was tight and low. “Hire a competent steward, as I have.”
Emma scoffed, jerking her hands from his. She spun away from him to stare at the fire, grateful for any spot to focus aside from him. “The people here deserve better than that. They deserve landowners who are involved, who care about their prosperity. Besides, I have my work—”
“Which you could still do from America.” Derick stood behind her now. His voice held a pleading quality that shook her resolve. His breath brushed against the side of her neck, sending shivers of longing that pricked through her despair. “The correspondence might take longer, but it could be done. My friend the Earl of Stratford could easily be persuaded to present your ideas to Parliament here. He’s a crusader. This is just the sort of thing that would appeal to him.”
He placed his hands on her shoulders, turning her slowly back to face him. “Or better yet, do your work for America. Think about it—she’s a young country, not yet so set in her ways. Less civilized. Imagine if you used your findings about crimes and criminals there and helped shape the laws rather than spending your life fighting to change laws here that have been in place for centuries.”
Emma damned him for tempting her, for using her tactics against her, for trying to appeal to her logic when, for once, this wasn’t about logic. But it wasn’t about logic for him, either, was it? Still, “No,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “No,” she said more firmly. “I know my place, and it’s here.”
His grip tightened on her shoulders. “Then I envy you, Emma.” His green gaze bored into her. “I don’t know my place. But I do know that it’s not here. I can’t live another day pretending to be something, someone, that I’m not. Can’t you see that?”
“No,” she cried. “What I see is a man who can’t live another day pretending not to be something that you are! I don’t care what the makeup of your blood is, Derick. You’re an Englishman, through and through. You belong here, just as I do.”
She knew the look of frustrated longing that twisted his features must be reflected in her own. She’d never felt such desperation, such an inability to affect her world. This was not some equation she could manipulate. She couldn’t add or subtract, couldn’t multiply or divide from either side of the equal sign and make things come out right. The truth of that pierced her.
When the light faded from his jewel-toned eyes, Emma knew that she’d failed. “No, Emma.” He dropped his hands from her and turned away. “I don’t.”
Chapter Twenty-two
The late Viscountess Scarsdale’s loopy, flowing handwriting—so different from her own neat, efficient scrawl—blurred in front of Emma’s eyes.
Ensconced on a chaise in the study at Aveline Castle, it seemed as if she had been reading for hours. She’d been summoned just after dawn to find Derick waiting for her in her downstairs parlor, anxious to drop her at the castle and take up the search for Harding.
She’d taken perverse pleasure in his haggard appearance, as it seemed he had spent the last awful hours of the night as she had—alone, sleepless and suffering. But then, of course, she’d felt guilty. She didn’t truly wish upon Derick the soul-deep ache that gnawed at her, even if it was his fault that they both hurt so.
Emma sighed, tucking her legs more tightly beneath her, one of Lady Scarsdale’s leather-bound journals forgotten upon her lap. Was it his fault any more than it was hers? Was his stubborn insistence to leave England any more to blame than her own to stay?
Yes, blast it all. It was. He had no ties to America, whereas her entire life was here in Derbyshire. He had lived all over the Continent these past fourteen years, whereas she’d never lived anywhere else. He was the adaptable one, whereas she…
She was afraid to leave. She controlled her life here in her little sphere. It was ordered just the way she liked it. Even her disorder, like her messy cloakroom and the careful chaos of her study, was that way because she chose it to be. Here, she knew exactly who she was. Here, everything made sense in an Emma sort of way that made her comfortable, content.
There was nothing wrong with that, was there? Should she toss everything she knew aside just because Derick was determined to run from who he was?
Emma forced her mind back to the book in her lap. The viscountess’ writings were much like the woman herself had been—flighty and shallow with an interesting mix of wit and biting sarcasm. But there were also glimpses of a woman Emma hadn’t known. A lonely woman. A sad woman. An angry woman.
Some journal entries were filled with Lady Scarsdale’s observations of the small-town society around her. Those were the sardonically funny bits. The viscountess had had a flair for description. While Derick was correct that his mother had not named people in her journals, Emma had easily picked out various friends and neighbors throughout, including herself. And every one of their suspects. She’d jotted down names and dates next to each, to look for a pattern later against dates that were important to their investigation.
Other entries were filled with mourning and sorrow, rage and resentment. The sentiments on the page alternated between pining for a lost love and cursing fate and Scarsdale and everything else that stood between the woman and her lover.
Emma’s chest grew tight. Is that how she would feel after a few years of being separated from Derick? Knowing her love was a country away, out of her reach? Not even in a neighboring country, close as France, but an entire ocean away. Would it turn her bitter and cold to be without him?
And would it make it better that their separation was not forced by a furious husband, but because both she and Derick were too afraid to be together? Or would that sad truth make it infinitely worse?
A drop of moisture splashed on the page, smearing the ink, joining older, long-dried tears that Lady Scarsdale must have cried years ago. Emma swiped at it with her thumb, which only served to blur part of a sentence.
She sniffed, disgusted with herself. This wasn’t about her. She was reading these journals only to look for evidence that the viscountess had been a traitor and for insight into who might have been her accomplice.
She dug back into the journals, taking special note of dates when Lady Scarsdale had been with her brother. Perhaps Derick might have dates of when information was passed that corresponded.
All the while, Emma tried very hard to pretend the viscountess’ steamy recollections of lovemaking were written about someone other than George. Still, it was easy to see that Derick’s mother had felt no love for Emma’s brother, although there was certainly affection. But then, how could Lady Scarsdale have ever loved George when she had apparently pined for the Frenchman who’d sired her son until her dying day?
Emma couldn’t imagine taking another lover after Derick left for America.
Oh, why was she thinking of him again?
After a couple more hours, Emma closed the cover on the last journal and rose to her feet. She stretched her arms above her head, restoring blood to her tingling muscles. She hadn’t been able to put Derick out of her mind, so the reading had taken much longer than it should have. Surely Derick would be back soon with news of how his searches had gone.
She gathered the volumes and stacked them neatly on Derick’s desk, then picked up the pages of her notes that would need to be cross-checked.
Even as she looked through them once more, something just didn’t balance in her mind.
Through all her reading Emma never got the sense that Lady Scarsdale had been contemplating taking her own life. No explanations, no red flags that her melancholy was any more or less intense toward the end than it had always been.
If anything, these journal entries made Emma question Lady Scarsdale’s suicide all the more. Derick’s theory that his mother was afraid she was close to being discovered and chose to take her life rather than be captured would at least explain it, but it still didn’t feel right to Emma.
So what if…
What if she hadn’t?
Emma couldn’t dispute Derick’s th
eory that Lady Scarsdale had had the best access to George, through either herself or Harding. Nor could she deny that the viscountess would be the most likely person in the area to have the French connections necessary to perpetrate a long deception. She’d certainly had enough pull to learn what had become of her son during wartime. And Derick had said that the staff at Aveline Castle claimed his mother had become very anxious and jumpy during the last days of her life.
So what could all of that mean? Well, what if Lady Scarsdale hadn’t been the traitor, but the traitor’s accomplice…maybe even unwittingly? And what if she’d come to suspect something was wrong, and that was why she’d gotten anxious…maybe she’d even confronted the real traitor. What if her death wasn’t what it seemed either?
After all, nothing else in this whole twisted tale was what it seemed.
Emma looked behind her, to the wall. The map Derick had taken such offense at her marking up the first night he’d come back had been re-hung. She snagged it and pulled it from its frame once again. From memory, she marked the four bodies she knew—two couriers, Farnsworth and Molly.
After she’d included Molly’s murder in her calculations, Emma had discovered that four points of data still weren’t enough to make her equation work. But perhaps five would be sufficient to point to the villain’s residence. It wouldn’t be the first time she couldn’t get an equation to work without enough data points. And if her instincts were right…
She drew a mark where Lady Scarsdale’s body had been found.
Her hand started to shake. When this is over, Derick will leave again.
Emma closed her eyes. And he won’t come back this time.
Be that as it may, a killer needed to be caught and as magistrate, she ultimately had the responsibility to catch him. This was her home, after all.
It took much snooping to find a ruler to make her distance measurements, but once she had them for five bodies now, she plugged the information into the formula she’d tweaked.
She stared at the new coordinates that should point to where the killer lived.
Then she plotted them on the map.
Derick handed his reins to a stable boy at the Swan and Stag. “Just water,” he told the groom. “I won’t be long.”
The youth nodded and led the horse away.
Derick’s shadow followed him as he made his way toward the entrance of the inn and pub. The sun had long passed the midpoint in the sky and now arced farther west with every passing hour.
It had been a day of confirmations and frustrations. This morning’s exhumations had proven Emma’s guess correct, and the two missing couriers had now officially been found. In both boot compartments had been the men’s identification, as well as both of their vials of last resort, still full.
But there had been no word about Harding’s whereabouts. No one, it seemed, had seen or heard from the man. Interviews with the village’s ostlers told Derick the footman hadn’t taken a coach from town unless he had stowed away, and no one had reported any stolen horseflesh. Harding either traveled on foot, or more likely, was hiding out somewhere in the area. If that were the case, Derick knew very well it could take days or perhaps even weeks to run the man to ground.
Days or weeks of strained cooperation between him and Emma. Days or weeks of awkward, tormented silences like this morning’s, each desperately wanting the other but needing something neither was willing to give. Days or weeks of torture.
And what if Harding didn’t surface? How long would it be before Derick felt safe that the man was gone for good? Safe enough to leave Emma without his protection, that was. Their mutual suffering could go on for bloody ever.
Unless you decide to stay…
Derick stomped his boots on the ground, kicking away the clumping Derbyshire mud before entering the tap. If he stomped harder than necessary, no one seemed to notice.
Hell, he didn’t blame Emma for not understanding why he had to leave. How could she when her security, her sense of self lay here, in England? In Derbyshire. He’d meant it when he’d said he envied her. These days spent with her had unlocked enough of his childhood memories that he could almost recall how it had been to feel the same. Enough to realize he’d be cruel to ask her to give that up for him.
So, he would make this last stop and then he’d go back to the castle and discuss the progress with Emma as if yesterday had never happened. He would listen to whatever she’d found, without giving in to the urge to drop to his knees and beg her, again, to come with him. He would tell her what he’d learned today and what he hadn’t, all the while pretending that his heart wasn’t bleeding inside his chest. And then he would escort her home and lie awake all night in the room across from hers, ignoring his body when it demanded that he march across the hallway and take her over and over again until she agreed to be his wife and leave the country with him.
Derick ducked his head to clear a low-hanging beam as he entered the taproom, his eyes scouring the room for the pub’s owner.
“G’d afternoon, m’lord,” the portly man greeted him from behind the bar, almost affably. That was a change from his last visit. Indeed, as Derick glanced around at the tap’s patrons, he recognized many of the same faces as before, but he also noticed more nods and tentative smiles than distrustful stares.
It was because of Emma, he knew. Since she’d accepted him, the other townspeople had come around—just as he had planned when he’d made his decision to stay close to her. Unfortunately, he hadn’t counted on her ability to steal into his soul, or he would have found another way to complete his mission.
Liar. He would do it all again, he realized. No matter how badly the memories would torment him later. At least with Emma, he’d remembered how to feel, and that was a gift.
“I’m sure you’ve heard that I’m looking for Thomas Harding.” Derick slipped a coin onto the bar. “Have you seen or heard anything of him lately?”
The owner pulled the coin across the bar with one hand and slid a pint to Derick at the same time with the other. “Nope, but I ’ave something else ye might be interested in ’earing, if ye can give me a minute.”
“Of course.”
“Marie!” the man yelled over his shoulder to the equally plump woman drying mugs at the end of the bar. “Go fetch the boy.” Then the owner turned back to Derick and nodded to a table in the corner. “I’ll meet ye over there as soon as I finish up ’ere.”
Intrigued, Derick settled himself in a scuffed wooden chair, his back against the wall so he could survey the whole room. He couldn’t imagine what the barkeep could have to tell him, but he certainly knew that information often came when and from places he’d least expected.
He took a long draw of the ale while he waited, enjoying the simple stout flavor that washed his tongue—different from the lighter brews he’d sampled in France, Belgium and Vienna. He wondered how the ale in America would taste, whether he would like it.
The thought struck him that he had never once before wondered whether or not he would like living in America. Rather, it had just been a place far from Europe where he could make a fresh start. A land of opportunity, where his name would mean nothing, where he could forg—
“Thanks for yer patience, m’lord.” The owner of the Swan and Stag sidled up to the table and pulled out the other chair, his brow raised in question. Derick nodded and the man lowered his girth as the chair groaned. “As I was sayin’, I ’aven’t seen Harding in days, but just yesterday, I did see one of them other fellows I’d told you about.”
Derick straightened in his chair as the hairs on the back of his neck followed suit. “Yesterday?” He’d assumed when the barkeep had first mentioned the stranger that he’d been referring to Farnsworth. Was there another player entirely? Or was the man just a vagabond or a tourist? “Where? When exactly? What was he doing?”
“Don’t know what ’e’d been in town doing,” the man said, “but I saw ’im cutting across the field behind me stable ’ere, ’eading away from the
village. Near dark, I’d say.”
“Which direction?”
“East—southeast, more like.”
The same direction as Aveline Castle and Wallingford Manor. Damnation.
“And you’re absolutely sure it wasn’t Harding you saw?”
The owner pursed his lips. “O’course.”
Who was this stranger? Was he the man that had snuck into Wallingford Manor while they’d been recovering Farnsworth? And how the hell was Derick going to find him, too?
“Seeing ’ow interested ye was in ’earing if I ever saw the man again, I set one of me grooms to follow ’im,” the barkeep said with a sly smile. He raised a beefy hand and flicked his fingers. A young lad shuffled over to the table, head bent. “William ’ere can take you right to ’im.”
Energy buzzed through Derick, as did a multitude of questions. “Excellent, but I’d rather pay a visit to this stranger alone.” If this man were mixed up in any way with treason and murder, Derick wasn’t about to put the groom at any more risk than the barkeep already had. He hoped the boy had been smart enough not to have been seen—not only for his own protection but so he hadn’t scared the man off. “Can you describe exactly where you followed him to?”
The boy nodded. “Yes, sir. He went into one of them caves, north of the creek. Not the big one, but the one what sort of looks like a keyhole. Do you know it?”
“Yes.” Derick drummed his fingers against the scarred tabletop in a slow rhythm, belying how quickly thoughts flew through his mind. Hadn’t Emma’s first attempt at her equation pointed about there? Yes, he remembered making a joke about a cave-dwelling hermit living there for the past decade. But that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? Though hermits were not unusual, they were typically well known to the estate owners and townsfolk—some even making their livelihood in such “hermitages.” Whoever this man was, he was no hermit.
But what if he was a killer, a traitor who’d used the cave as his home base when he was in the area? What if Emma had gotten that part right?
