Sweet Deception (42 page)

Memories screamed in. “Derick!” she gasped, reaching blindly for him.

“Shhh…shhh. I’m here.”

His voice rumbled from her left and she turned her head toward him. His warm hand stole over hers and she gripped him tight. For a moment, she saw three of him, a trio of dark angels backlit by a dim glow that gave the impression of tarnished halos. But a few more blinks merged them into one. One glorious, handsome, perfectly
flawed man, sitting—she glanced around, noting the familiar furnishings—at her bedside in her darkened room. How had she gotten here?

Derick’s green gaze devoured her in the low light, his face lined with worry. Emma tried to speak, but her tongue felt dry as limestone dust and as if it had quadrupled in size. She raised her hand to soothe the vicious burning in her head and winced as she encountered scratchy linen that covered a horribly tender spot. She ached terribly, but she lived. Her calculated risk must have worked.

Emma sucked in a breath. “George!” she croaked. “Where is my brother?” How could she have forgotten him? Her thoughts swam through her mind slower than a slug through molasses.

Derick’s grip tightened on her hand. “He’s…sequestered in his room.”

“But he’s all right?”

“He was when I saw him last,” Derick said.

Alarm gripped her, knowing when Derick gave nuanced answers, they could mean many things. She tried to sit up, but the sudden movement sent her head spinning one direction and her stomach circling her insides in the other. She moaned piteously.

“When,
exactly
, did you see him?” she insisted, though how she got the words through the roiling tumult in her body, she wasn’t sure.

“Hush, love.” Derick pressed his hand against her chest, trying to ease her back into the pillows. “The doctor said you would be weak for some time after you woke. You must rest.”

But Emma struggled against him. “When?”

Derick stilled, and expelled a long breath. “Not an hour ago. I went to check on him, and asked him a few questions.”

Emma took shallow breaths as she fought to quell
her nausea, which must have been caused when she tried to move too quickly. But it worsened as she listened to Derick explain that George had confessed to killing not only Farnsworth but Derick’s mother and poor Molly Simms, too. Tears leaked unchecked from her eyes as she considered all of the pain her brother had caused.

And yet he was her brother, in spite of everything. “I must see him.”

Derick nodded, as if he’d expected that. He slipped his hands beneath her shoulders and gently helped her to sit.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

They didn’t speak as he helped her down the hall and down the stairs to her brother’s chamber. It took all of Emma’s strength, even leaning heavily on Derick, to make it that far—there was none left for conversation.

At any rate, they didn’t need to speak. Emma could sense Derick’s growing tension and his building worry for her as they approached George’s door. It intensified her own until she trembled with it.

What would she say to her brother? That she understood? She didn’t, couldn’t. That she forgave him? She did, even though she was fairly certain she didn’t yet know the extent of what he’d done. She couldn’t fathom where they went from here, what awful things were in store for George, and for her, when he was brought to justice. How life would change irrevocably. But she couldn’t think about that now. All she really wanted to say to him, she realized, was that she loved him.

Perkins and John Coachman stood guard on either side of George’s door. Her longtime servants blanched when they saw her. Emma automatically brushed at the linen bandage circling her head. She must look a fright. The thought brought an unlikely smile. It quickly faded, however, when she wondered if everyone already knew what George had done.

Emma looked up at Derick. His face was solemn, closed…but his eyes told her he was here to be whatever she needed. She interlaced her fingers with his, grateful, not caring if the servants saw. Derick was her support, her strength, and she needed him right now. She delivered three raps to the door.

Her heart sped with every moment that passed with no answering call from George. “Perhaps he’s asleep?”

Derick didn’t reply, only squeezed her hand tightly and opened the door.

A dying fire lit the room, just barely. Emma scanned the space for George. There he was, lying abed as she’d thought. And yet…the room was swathed in an eerie stillness that raised gooseflesh on her skin. Emma hurried over to George’s bedside with Derick’s assistance, but she knew long before she reached him that her brother was gone.

His face, which had been etched with strain most of their lives—the strain of never living up to their father’s expectations, the strain of his stroke, and the strain that must have come from hiding his traitorous activities for so long, had smoothed in death. George looked…peaceful, in a way she couldn’t remember him looking since their mother had been alive. He probably didn’t deserve such peace after all he’d done, but Emma still fiercely wished it for him in whatever life he went to next.

Emotion stung her nose, curled her lungs, squeezed her heart. She turned to Derick with tear-filled eyes. He didn’t look surprised, and that squeezed her heart exponentially more. “Did you do this?”

Derick turned to her, taking her other hand in his. “No, Emma. I left your brother alive and well. I swear it.”

She couldn’t speak, only nodded as she felt her face crumple. She couldn’t have blamed Derick if he had taken her brother’s life, any more than she prayed Derick didn’t blame her that her brother took his mother’s. But she was glad he hadn’t.

Emma pulled away from him and approached the bed. George’s hands rested on his stomach, each curled around something. She reached out and touched his cooling skin, easily prying his fingers open—rigor mortis hadn’t set in yet, of course. The smooth kiss of glass met her skin as she plucked a small empty vial from his left hand. “Poison,” she whispered.

In his right he held a letter, addressed to her. She opened it with trembling fingers, and bit her lip at George’s familiar handwriting.

Emma brought the letter to her forehead, which she’d dropped to meet it, as sobs wracked her.

She felt Derick’s arms settle around her shoulders. “Come, Emma,” he murmured.

She covered her face with her hands, but allowed him to lead her away from the bed, through an interior doorway into a small sitting room. Once inside, Derick opened his arms to her. He said nothing, only folded her into his embrace, cocooned her in bergamot and bay, in him, and held her while she wept.

She wept for poor Molly Simms and her parents. She wept for Lady Scarsdale and for Moreau. And she wept
for herself, for the loss of her brother—regardless of what he’d done, he had been her only family.

When she felt strong enough to pull back, she held the letter out before her with a hand that shook. “But…but he doesn’t say
why…”
She took a shuddering breath, trying to regain her composure. “How can I ever quantify it when I don’t understand
why
?”

Derick caressed her face, wiping tears away with his thumbs. “We may never know why, Emma.”

“But I don’t understand,” she cried. “How could George and I be so very different? It doesn’t fit either side of the argument! Our blood was the same
and
we grew up with the same advantages. Yes, maybe his stroke exacerbated some evil part of his personality, but he was committing treason before then. How can that be?”

Derick slowly shook his head as he continued to stroke her skin. “I don’t know.”

The enormity of all that had happened today settled on Emma’s chest with a crushing weight. She struggled to breathe. “Everything is gone, Derick. George. My position as de facto magistrate. Even the work I’ve dedicated years of my life to makes no
sense
to me anymore.” She dropped her chin, resting her head heavily in his palms as she closed her eyes. “Has it all been for naught? Have I just been tilting at pinwheels all of this time?”

Derick’s barking laugh startled her so, she snapped her head back up and opened her eyes to stare at him. “Pinwheels?” A deep chuckle rumbled from his chest and echoed through the room. “I think you mean ‘windmills,’ love.”

Emma huffed, the laugh starting low and haltingly in her stomach. But it quickly bubbled forth until she was gasping with it. “Windmills. Of course,” she said on a hiccup, which made them laugh all the harder.

It felt good to release some of her angst, to dispel a little of the tension that had strangled her. It felt even
better when Derick hugged her to him as their laughter subsided.

“All I know,” Derick said, “is that people are complex, messy…not all of them will fit neatly into your equations, regardless of which argument ultimately proves to be true.” Derick gently tipped her face back to look at him. “But your project? Your passion for it will never be for naught. I believe you
can
make things better, Emma. You can give people opportunities to make good choices—and I believe you should, because
some
of them will.”

Emma pondered his words. Could the answers really be somewhere in the middle? And even if they were, did that make what she was trying to accomplish any less important? Or less effective?

“But some of them won’t, Emma. And you can’t choose for them.”

Any good humor that still lingered in Emma’s heart fled. No, she couldn’t. Just look at her brother. George had had every opportunity and he’d chosen to become a traitor. She dropped her head back to Derick’s chest, defeated. He would have to tell his superiors, of course. There would be an inquest…She couldn’t even imagine how horrible the next few weeks would be. Maybe Derick would stay in England until it was all finished, to see his duty through. Maybe she wouldn’t have to be alone through it all.

She
needed
him. Needed his friendship at least.

She held no illusions that Derick would still want her for his wife, even if she would go to America with him. He might feel some love for her, but look at how he painted himself with his parents’ sins just because he carried their blood. How much more would he hate that she shared blood with a traitor? He would abhor even the thought of having a family with her.

“What happens now?” she murmured against his chest.

“Now,” he said, gently prying the vial she still held from her and dropping it into his pocket, “we inform the staff that your brother has succumbed to another, more massive stroke.”

Emma stepped back so she could see Derick’s face clearly. “What?”

“We bury him in the morning, quietly.”

“But your superiors…”

“It will be enough for them that I assure them the traitor has been neutralized. Only you, me and Moreau know what really happened, Emma. There’s no reason for you to suffer any more than you have.”

Emma considered for a moment, relief washing through her. Until…“Molly Simms’ parents deserve to know the truth of what happened to their daughter.”

Derick nodded. “All right. But there’s no need to name your brother as the traitor. We’ll simply tell them what happened and that the traitor has been caught and executed. Knowing the way gossip spreads in a small town, people will blame Moreau, since he was a stranger here. But he’ll be long gone by then.”

She widened her eyes. “What about Harding?”

“I’ll continue to hunt for the man. If he wants to stay in Derbyshire, the story we’ll tell the Simms family should clear his name. If not, we’ll offer him a job on one of our other estates, let him start fresh.”

“We’ll?” Emma blinked, hope daring to push out the darkness clouding her heart. “Our? Does…does that mean you still want me to come with you to America?”

But Derick shook his head slowly. “No, Emma.”

She hadn’t thought she had any more room for pain inside her tonight, but she’d been wrong. It pushed out even the breath from her lungs.

“I want us to make our home in England.”

Emma sucked air in through her nose. “I—what about my tainted blood?”

Derick gently tucked a finger under her chin. “You don’t believe that nonsense,” he reminded her.

“But
you
do,” she reminded him right back.

“I’m not so sure anymore,” he said. “You’ve given me much to consider in the past weeks, Emma.” And then he told her what he’d learned about his parents today. He finished with a shrug. “Perhaps my blood is not as black as I thought.”

She opened her mouth, but he moved his fingers to her lips to shush her.

“I meant what I said a moment ago. I’m beginning to believe our lives come down to the choices we make.” He dropped his hand back to his side. “I can accept that I chose to become everything that I did. I also think I can make my peace with it, given time,” he finished.

“I’m glad,” she said as a single tear leaked from her eye. If anyone deserved peace, it was Derick.

Emma took a deep breath, then another. Could it be that all would be well? That after everything they had experienced and been—in their pasts, in their presents—she and Derick could choose happiness together? And by choosing it, make it so?

Lightness ballooned inside her, lifting her spirits higher and higher…until a dampening thought popped it. “But what of your feeling that England is not your home? I wouldn’t wish you to be unhappy.” Even if she had to leave behind everything she knew.

“My home is where my heart is, Emma.” Derick took her hand and brought it to his chest, then placed his hand over her heart. “And my heart is here with you. If you want to stay in Derbyshire, we will. If you would rather come to Shropshire, we’ll live there.”