Sweet Deception (28 page)

Then she sighed, the bottom edge of her scarf fluttering with her breath.

“Thn-in-th—” came her muffled voice. She reached up and pulled the scarf down past her chin. “This isn’t the first dead person I’ve encountered, you know.” She pulled a leather work glove onto one hand, flexing her fingers before repeating with the other hand. “Besides, I got the idea to keep a bag like this at the ready from one of the magistrates that I correspond with. Although, I
think I am going to have to write back and recommend he add some sort of ointment laced with peppermint or menthol to block the nose.”

Derick thought that would be a fine idea indeed.

She pulled her scarf back up and stepped closer to the body, squatting down beside it. Derick hung back, letting Emma take the lead. She gingerly used her stick to prod and poke or lift as she made her examination. He wasn’t certain what she thought she’d be able to tell, given what little she had to work with.

She stood after a few moments, stretching her back and shoulders. She tugged the scarf back down. “I see nothing that indicates how the man died,” she said, apparently deciding that since Derick had insisted upon coming, she may as well include him. “Of course, even without so much of him carried off by animals, it would be hard to tell. But I would guess he’s been out here around three weeks.”

Derick glanced at the body dubiously. While he had more experience in death than he would like to admit, he’d never seen this part of it. “How can you be certain? It looks more like months’ worth of decay.” And if it
were
months’ worth, the body couldn’t be that of Farnsworth.

“Yes, well, it’s been very wet of late, which would accelerate the process. Not to mention the insect and animal activity,” she said. “But, his teeth and nails on the one hand we have are just beginning to loosen, which indicates three to four weeks.”

He didn’t even want to know how she knew that. His expression must have indicated he did, however, because Emma said, “I read a lot.”

And retains it all, he remembered. Still. “What on earth have you been reading where you would learn something like
that
?”

She shrugged. “There are several volumes that detail what coroners should look for when investigating murders
and otherwise suspicious deaths. Farr’s
Elements of Medical Jurisprudence
comes to mind. Although I must say I’ve found it largely imperfect and in some places, not even logical.” She wiped her stick clean with a cloth and placed it back into her bag. “However, George Edward Male’s
Epitome of Juridical or Forensic Medicine
was published just last year, and it’s fascinatingly helpful.”

“As are you,” he murmured before he even thought about the words. Emma’s eyes flew to his and she frowned. Derick cleared his throat and sought to cover his gaffe. “You know, Emma, your gifts are wasted here in the country. Have you ever considered moving? Say to”—
New York
—“London, or some other large city, where your knowledge could be put to better use solving crimes?”

Good Christ, where had
that
thought sprung from? Had a little sex after two years of celibacy addled his brain?

“I don’t want to leave Derbyshire,” she said. “My brother needs me and it’s peaceful and lovely here. It’s my home. Besides, I don’t want to solve crimes, though I do so out of necessity on occasion. I want to prevent them. The best way I, as a woman, can do
that
is to complete my study of moral statistics and find a peer willing to present it to Parliament in my stead.”

“Of course,” Derick said, still shaken by the radical leap his mind had made and feeling guilty that he couldn’t be that man for her when he knew she’d been hoping he would. He couldn’t stay in England, pretending to be a nobleman when he knew he was not.

Nor could he ask Emma to come to America with him. Even if she would, it wouldn’t change who he was. What he’d done. He still wouldn’t be worthy of her. Nor would he want to take her from her work. “It’s a very admirable project, Emma.”

She just gave him a short nod and turned away, and he knew he’d disappointed her greatly. Again.

Derick scrubbed a hand over his face.
Get your mind back on the business at hand.
Right. Emma said the body had been out here three to four weeks—the timing certainly fit for this body to be that of Farnsworth, then.

Emma strode back to the cart, returning with a stable blanket and a handful of burlap sacks. “Leave two lanterns here with me,” she ordered the men. “Take the rest and spread out, looking for the rest of this poor unfortunate. Clothing, belongings, bones—whatever animals may have scattered. Perhaps we’ll find out who he is yet.”

The men stared at her, gaping with horror, but Emma didn’t notice. Instead, she spread the stable blanket on the ground beside the body and began to gently transfer what was left of one to the other.

Derick grabbed a lantern and a sack, glaring the others into doing the same. Maybe one of them would find something of use. They fanned out.

Derick, however, considered for a moment before setting off. If the body
was
that of Farnsworth, whoever killed the man had likely taken his bag and anything else the agent was carrying, but they may have overlooked his boots. And those were exactly what Derick hoped to find.

It would have taken a largish animal to make off with legs still encased in heavy boots. Derick spotted a promising set of animal tracks that led off to the south. He decided to follow those.

He held the lantern out in front of him, swinging it left and right, arcing the light to see as much as he could in his path. It had gone full dark now, so that wasn’t much.

After following the tracks for several yards, his toe kicked something hard in the tall weeds. Derick halted, lowering the lantern to get a closer look. Brown leather peeked through the greenery, surrounded by scratching claw marks and an area of smashed-down grass, as if the
animal had extracted its feast and then rolled around for a bit before carrying off its spoils and leaving the boot behind.

Derick reached down and pulled up the empty boot. It was the left foot, too—a stroke of luck, for that was precisely the one he needed. He turned the footwear upside down, trying very hard not to think about how it had gotten here. He ran a gloved finger along the base of the heel…searching…feeling for—there! He tripped a small catch and twisted the heel, revealing a hidden compartment—standard issue for the agents and couriers who worked in his department.

He squeezed his index finger and thumb into the small space and pulled out the tiny rolled paper. A tiny glass vial also rolled out into his palm. Farnsworth’s vial of last resort, a fast-acting poison that all of the agents carried just in case. He pinched it between his fingers so as not to drop it while he very carefully placed the boot in his burlap sack.

Anticipation buzzed through him, the thrill of the hunt still as strong as ever, even after all his years as a spy. Maybe even more so because he knew once this job was complete, he could leave. Could start his new life. He unrolled the message.

Derick exhaled a harsh breath and the tops of his shoulders twinged as he forced muscles that had tensed in expectation to relax. Damnation. All he’d learned was that the body they’d found was indeed Farnsworth. The paper had been nothing more than identification and a listing of common ciphers to aid with deciphering or encoding messages. It seemed the man had taken the traitor’s identity with him to the next life.

Hell. He was no better off than he’d been the first night he’d arrived. Actually, he was worse off, now that he’d so thoroughly alienated Emma.

A vision of her horrified face when it had finally dawned on her how exactly he’d served her country
raked him over the coals once again. But then he snorted with sudden amusement. The look that had come next when she’d multiplied out what a woman a night would be over ten years…It had been priceless, and so like Emma.

God, he found her adorable. Whereas she must find him revolting now. His amusement fled.

Well, whether or not she wanted to spend time in his company after what she’d learned today, she’d have to. Now that he knew Farnsworth had been killed in Derbyshire, he’d have to work even more closely with her. Someone had murdered a man to keep their secret hidden. Derick needed to find out more about Emma’s other “suspicious deaths.” Perhaps she could account for the missing couriers, and give him insight into who in this area had the best opportunity to silence them.

Just how he was going to do that and keep his hands off of Emma, he didn’t know.

He was tucking away the paper he’d found when her voice came out of the darkness, somewhere in front of him.

“So, who is the man, Derick?”

He jerked his head up, searching for her. A moment later, she stepped into the circle of light cast by his lantern.

Damn. “How did you—”

She wiggled her bootless toes. “I don’t have your superior stealthy spying skills, so I took off my boots to move more quietly and picked my way without a lantern so you wouldn’t see me coming,” she said.

“Ah. But why would you—”

“Because those lessons you gave me on how to read people paid dividends. I wondered why you held back from the others. Watched as you searched for something, noticed how you straightened
ever
so slightly when you spotted whatever you were looking for, saw how determinedly you set off after it.”

Damned smart woman
. And looking quite proud of herself, wasn’t she, with her raised eyebrow and the confident tilt of her head. Hell, he was proud of her himself, if annoyed as well. He’d thought she’d been thoroughly engrossed in collecting Farnsworth.

Emma stepped closer, more into the light, and the glow of the lantern flickered over her face, shadowing the brackets around her mouth that were deepening by the second. “You didn’t hesitate when you picked up that boot. You knew exactly what you were looking for, as if you expected to find it. And that there would be something hidden in its heel.”

Damned, damned smart woman.
If she’d reasoned that much out already, it was only a matter of time before she—

“You’re still working for the government, aren’t you?” A wrinkle of consternation formed on her brow before her eyes widened. “You’re on an assignment here in Derbyshire.
That’s
why you came back.” She narrowed her gaze on him.

“That’s why you’re still here.”

“I
should have known it,” Emma muttered. And she should have, too! She paced around Derick in a fluid circle—as if together they were one of Galileo’s ingenious geometry compasses she used on her maps, with Derick the sharp pointer in the middle and she the pencil. And a dull one, at that.

“I thought it odd when your missive arrived at Aveline Castle saying to expect you after all of these years.” She scanned her memory, trying to look at everything with fresh eyes—rather than ones blinded with girlish infatuation. “Especially when you hadn’t bothered to return only two months earlier when your mother died. But then I, like everyone else, just assumed you’d finally gotten around to inspecting this part of your new inheritance.”

Derick stood still as stone in the wavering light from the lantern, not bothering to deny her accusations—for which Emma was grateful. She felt stupid enough without him trying to patronize her. Her mind was awhirl, struggling to recalculate all she’d thought she knew.

“Then when you arrived, you were acting so self-absorbed and pompous…” She remembered how relieved
and delighted she had been when she’d learned he wasn’t some feckless wastrel but instead had been a spy for England.

And then she recalled the night his secretive past had come to light. She spun on her heel and glared at him, pointing a finger. “I
asked
you why you kept up the pretense of being a fop,” she reminded him, “as I was taking my leave after our dinner at the castle. And you
lied
to me!”

“I didn’t lie to you, Emma.” Derick pinned her with his emerald gaze, which seemed such a murky green in the weak light of the lantern—or maybe it just seemed that way because she was rapidly learning that everything she knew about
him
was murky.

“I told you that I’d been pretending to be someone else for so long that I didn’t know who I was anymore,” he continued, his face and bearing solemn. “That is true.”

The same tender pity she’d felt when she’d first heard those words threatened to undermine her pique. Emma wanted to tug at her hair. After all she’d learned today and she still wished to take the blasted man into her arms and comfort him? “Well, it certainly wasn’t the whole truth, was it?”

Derick had the good sense not to answer her rhetorical question.

Emma sighed. She supposed he couldn’t have told her the whole truth, could he? Not without giving away his cover. The question was why did he need a cover here, now?

“But the war’s been over for more than two years, and it isn’t as if upper Derbyshire is a hotbed of international secrets. What assignment could you possibly be on here?”

Tiny lines appeared along the outsides of his eyes and mouth, as if he were suppressing the answer, dreading giving it to her.

His words from earlier today came back to her.
It became my primary mission to uncover traitors, and other double agents like myself.
Shock drained the blood from her face.

“You think there’s a traitor living in Derbyshire?” In less than two weeks, her peaceful village had had to contend with a murderer and now a traitor, too?

Derick’s jaw clenched, and his eyes became hooded. “Not anymore.”

Not anymore?
Emma glanced at the burlap sack that held the dead man’s boot. “Do you mean to say the body we found is that of the traitor you’re hunting?” Relief lightened the weight on her chest. She had asked if there was a traitor
living
in Derbyshire, after all. This man was most certainly dead. Nor was he from around here. She’d have known if a local man were missing.