Sweet Deception (30 page)

Well, it would be back with a vengeance now, wouldn’t it? Emma heaved a weary sigh. It normally came out in times that she was anxious or tired and this day’s events had left her both. Her body ached in all sorts of places. Some of the twinges were from bending and crouching all evening as they meticulously collected Mr. Farnsworth’s remains. But shame swamped her when she realized the soreness in unusual places must be a result of making love with Derick.

Making love.
Could she really call it that? It had just been government-condoned sex for him, hadn’t it? Or had it? He had made the painful point that he hadn’t needed to seduce her to get what he needed from her.

Emma didn’t know what to believe. But she decided one thing. She would always remember her time in Derick’s arms as making love, because for
her
that’s what it had been.

A shard of anguish sliced through her numbness and she let it. The sooner the hurt ran its course, the sooner she could forget. Then she snorted. No, she would never forget, not a single word, not a single moment. It was her gift and her curse.

Tired as she was, she didn’t think she would be able
to sleep. Maybe a glass or two of sherry would help. She lit an oil lamp from the fire in the kitchen. Padding down the hallway in her stockinged feet, she made her way to the parlor.

A loud creak reached her ear just before she reached the open parlor door. She frowned. That sounded like the French doors. Was Derick sneaking into the house to finish their conversation? The dark look he’d given her when she’d left the cellars without saying a word to him promised that their conversation was far from over. Perhaps he’d decided not to wait until morning to have it out.

Fig! From inside the darkened parlor, he’d have to have seen the advancing ring of light from her lamp coming toward the doorway, which meant there’d be no sneaking off and hiding now.

“I hardly think this is the time or place for this discussion,” she snapped as she fully entered the room, her eyes searching for him. A cold breeze swirled around her ankles and the flickering reflection of her oil lamp in the glass door panes shone back at her from odd angles in the still-open French doors. But Derick wasn’t there. No one was. Her brow knitted as she cautiously started toward the doors.

A light snore startled Emma so much that she shrieked.

The snore turned into a harsh snort.

Emma jerked toward the sound, holding her lamp out in front of her as if its feeble flame offered protection as well as light. Within three steps, the shadowy image of someone seated near the fireplace came into focus against the negligible embers of a dying fire. But there were no chairs there. They always left that area open as it was a favorite spot of— “George!” Emma exclaimed, rushing over to where her brother was indeed ensconced in his rolling chair.

“Wh-what? Who?” came his sleep-groggy reply. He blinked up at her. “Em?”

“What are you doing here in the dark?” she asked,
placing the lamp on a nearby table. “And at this hour?” Emma grabbed a spill from the jar atop the mantel and returned to the lamp. She removed the glass chimney and turned the knob on the brass burner to give it more wick. The ring of light grew. She held her spill in the flame and then used it to light the wall sconces on either side of the fireplace.

When she got a look at George in the light, he was rubbing the sleep from his eyes with one hand and clutching the lap blanket tightly around him with the other. She hurried over and placed a hand on his face. “Oh, George, you’re freezing. Why are you sitting here alone with no fire?”

Emma grabbed a heavy poker, the brass chill to the touch. She stoked the embers until they glowed red before placing another log on the fire.

“I’d heard whispers from the staff that a dead man had been found in the woods,” George said, his voice still gravelly from sleep. “I decided to wait up for you to find out if it was true. I must have fallen asleep and let the fire die out.”

Emma added one more log as the first caught fire. “Yes, well, Perkins will answer for this. Why didn’t one of the servants check on you?”

“You’ll not say a word to Perkins, or any of the other servants, little sister, for none of them knew I was here
to
check on me.” George frowned at her, reminding her more of a sullen youth than a man in his middle years. “I’m not a complete invalid. I
am
capable of rolling myself to the parlor after the staff is abed.” His lips flattened as he added, “At least on days I’m feeling well.”

Emma moved behind George to position him even closer to the now roaring fire. “Well, I don’t like the idea of you moving about without someone knowing. What if you’d have fallen?”

“I’m fine, Emma, so quit your worrying,” he grumbled
petulantly. “Now, who was the dead man you went after, then?”

She’d given her promise to Derick to keep his business private. Was breaking your word to a man who lied for a living truly breaking it? Emma released a breath through her nose. Yes, it was. And just because Derick was a dishonest cad didn’t mean she should be.

“Just a poor unfortunate,” she said. “He was so badly decomposed that I can’t even tell what happened to him. Could have been an accident, I suppose.”

She had never before lied to George.
That wasn’t technically a lie,
her conscience whispered.
Farnsworth
was
unfortunate, you don’t know what happened to him precisely, and it could have been an accident. Like, a three percent chance, but still.

Great. Now she sounded like Derick.

“Well, accident or no,” George said, “the maid’s death was no accident, I hear. I don’t want you out in the woods alone.”

She waved a hand. “I wasn’t alone, George. I had three burly servants with me, plus a hunter from the village. And Derick, of course.”

“Aaaah,”
George said with an annoying-older-brother inflection. “The budding partnership. How goes that? You’ve been gone so much lately, I’m left completely in the dark.”

Now that the adrenaline was wearing off from the fright George had given her, Emma suddenly felt very tired. She allowed her shoulders to slump. “There will be no partnership.”

George’s eyebrows came together over the bridge of his nose. “What do you mean?” His eyes narrowed and the fist still holding the blanket tightened, twisting the fabric in his lap. “You look sad, Emma,” he said, his voice growing deep and louder. “Did Aveline do something to upset you?”

Emma placed a calming hand on her brother’s shoulders. The last thing she wanted was to send George into one of his rages. Nor did she have any intention of discussing what lay between her and Derick with her brother. “No, George. Of course not. I just decided we wouldn’t suit as partners. Besides, I don’t think Derick intends to settle in Derbyshire at all, and I have no intentions of leaving here.”

George’s face smoothed, and Emma released a quiet breath.

“Because of me?” he asked quietly.

“What?”

“Do you not want to leave Derbyshire because of me?” George’s frown came back, only darker. “If you’re thinking a match between you and Aveline won’t work because you would have to follow him to his seat or to London…I don’t want you throwing away a chance at happiness because of your loyalty to me.”

“Oh, George, that’s not it at all,” she said, leaning down to hug her brother around his shoulders. She gave him an extra-tight squeeze before she pulled back from him, to convince him that she meant the words. “There are many reasons Derick won’t suit, the least of which would be geography.”

Have you ever considered moving? Say to…London, or some other large city, where your knowledge could be put to better use solving crimes?
Had Derick been hinting that he wanted her to come with him? He’d called her fascinatingly helpful right before he’d said those words, and the way he’d looked at her—

Emma mentally smacked herself. What in the heavens was she doing? Assigning imaginary intentions to his words again?
Ninny.
How quickly she’d forgotten that she meant nothing to him outside of his blasted assignment.

A cool breeze curled around her ankles and snaked beneath her skirts, sending a shiver through her.

And how quickly she’d forgotten the open French doors once she’d been startled by her brother. She started over to shut them, looking over her shoulder to ask, “George, were the French doors open when you came in here?”

“I…I don’t think so.” Her brother’s eyes blinked slowly. “Are they open? I would have noticed…wouldn’t I?”

Emma frowned as she pulled the knobs toward her until the doors clicked. The creaking she heard could very well have been the wind pushing the doors around, but how had they gotten open in the first place? Perkins always did a walk-through of the house before finding his bed.

The wind couldn’t have blown them open because the doors opened outward. How about a faulty latch, then, allowing them to crack just enough that the outside wind could have caught them? Emma pressed against the doors hard. Harder. But the latch held.

Someone had deliberately tried to come into Wallingford Manor through the parlor doors. But who? Derick? Or someone else?

Your brother
is
the most likely source of the kind of military secrets that were passed to the French.

She’d been so upset tonight that she’d never pressed Derick on the identity of the traitor, or indeed much else about his true reason for being here. All he’d really told her was that he believed the traitor to be dead and that he must have had an accomplice.

A horrible thought occurred to her. What if the traitor
had
coaxed information from her brother? His accomplice would surely know that. What if the man saw her brother as a loose end, one that needed tying off?

Her heart pounded furiously, as if it could break free of the grip of her sudden fear.

Get ahold of yourself, Emma. You’re jumping to conclusions.
Besides, Derick had said her brother was the
most
likely
source, not that he actually
had
been the source. She’d learned a hard lesson tonight, and that was that Derick was very specific in his word choices.

Occasionally I was called upon to terminate those who’d divulged England’s secrets.

Emma’s blood ran cold in her veins, chased by a shiver. No. No. No! She refused to believe that Derick had any intention to harm George. After all, hadn’t he said the actual traitor was dead? If her brother was involved, it was because someone else had taken advantage of him, not because of any malfeasance on his part. Surely Derick saw that.

Still, she wasn’t taking any chances with George’s life. She locked the French doors, then hurried back to George, who seemed to be dozing off again. She wheeled him around. “Come, George. Let’s get you back to your room.”

She woke Perkins, who was duly mortified when she explained how she’d found George. She ordered the butler to assign their burliest footman to stand guard outside her brother’s door. Then she asked him to wake the housekeeper and canvass the house to ensure that all doors and windows were secure. She couldn’t give him an explanation, and Perkins—bless the man—didn’t ask for one.

Hopefully the stable master wouldn’t ask for one either when she demanded that her horse be readied at near midnight.

She intended to demand some explanations of her own, from Derick—lateness of the hour be damned.

“W
hat do you mean, Harding’s not here?” Derick glared at Wallingford Manor’s stable master. Sweat glistened on the older man’s prominent brow in the yellow glow of lantern light.

McCandless stood rigid, his forearms and the muscles where his neck met his shoulders bulging defensively. “I said I’d keep watch over him, but this ain’t no jail, m’lord. Only so much I can do. He must’ve slipped past me head groom while I was with you and Miss Wallingford out in the woods. Took ’is belongings and everything.”

“Damnation,” Derick muttered. Harding was looking more and more like the man who’d assisted his mother in her traitorous scheme. After all, his mother had been dead before Farnsworth was killed, so she couldn’t have done it. But if Farnsworth had been onto her trail, he may also have learned of Harding’s involvement and become a threat to the footman. Now Derick had to wonder if the poor maid, Molly, had been his victim not because of jealousy but because of something she might have known, since she had been a maid in his mother’s household in addition to being Harding’s lover.

“Do you think Thomas was the one that killed that
man?” the servant asked. For all his bulk and bluster, McCandless looked pale and shaken. After their gruesome errand in the forest, Derick couldn’t help but sympathize with him.

“I don’t know,” Derick said, but let his voice imply otherwise.

The stable master’s lips thinned into a grim line. Let McCandless think what he would. Word would spread through the town now, probably long before sunrise. Derick needed to question Harding again and that would only happen if the footman was caught and turned in. The villagers would keep a closer eye out for the escaped servant if they truly considered him dangerous—as he very well might be.

Now that Derick knew Farnsworth
was
dead, and had been killed here in Derbyshire, this entire mission took on a sharper edge. Someone had committed murder to protect himself less than a month ago. Whether the killer was an accomplice or the actual traitor, his crimes were no longer in the distant past. The situation had become imminently deadly.

“If Harding shows up, or if anyone sees him, be sure to send word to Miss Wallingford and myself right away,” Derick instructed McCandless as he strode out of the stables and into the night. He headed toward the manor. Harding could be a potential threat and Emma would need to be informed of the danger. Besides, he wanted to get to work solving the rest of this mess. He doubted she’d sleep much anyway, after the day she’d had. He knew he wouldn’t.

God, he’d never forget the way she’d curled into herself and staggered away from him, out of the light, like a wounded animal. He hated that he’d done that to her—hated that he’d probably make things worse for her by disturbing her yet again tonight. She must still be reeling. If only he could give her more time—time to use that remarkable memory of hers to sift through everything
that had happened, every word spoken between them since his return—maybe she’d see that his intentions had never been to hurt her.