Sweet Deception by Heather Snow

Derick pause regarding his views on women. Views he’d developed first from his abominable relationship with his mother and then from his experiences with the women he’d come across in the world of back alleys, back ballrooms and back bedrooms of the espionage game.
    Emma, however, stared at him as if he’d said something particularly out of character.
    Well, maybe he had. Out of character, at least, for the man he’d projected to her. Whether or not it was out of character for the man he actually was, he couldn’t say. After spending nearly half his life intentionally being someone else, Derick could no longer say who or what he was with any clarity. That was one of the many reasons he was anxious to make contact with Farnsworth, finish up this mission and leave England behind him for good. He would never be able to find himself if he stayed here.
    Still, until that day he needed to do a better job of playing his part, even if every day the caricature grew more and more tiresome.
    “Then what are you about?” she demanded, a deep vee forming between her eyes. “You can’t possibly care about Molly. If you’d ever even met her, she would have been but a babe.”
    Derick opened his mouth to speak. “Tru—”
    “And don’t start that rubbish about her being a member of your household,” Emma said, pointing an accusatory finger in his direction. “You have nothing at stake here. If you truly think I am capable, that I should remain as magistrate, why this farce of assisting me?”
    It took years of discipline not to grimace. God save him from intelligent women. They
thought
about things. They asked
questions
.
    He couldn’t very well tell her that she was now the only viable source available to him regarding George Wallingford and his activities over the years.
    Wallingford may look less likely to be the traitor Derick was hunting, but with the man’s military experience and access to sensitive information, there was just too much smoke for there not to be fire—or at least kindling. If the man wasn’t a traitor, Derick needed to uncover who else might have taken advantage of Wallingford’s state of mind to wheedle sellable tidbits from him.
    It would be much quicker to parlay Emma’s trusted position with the villagers than to take the time to establish his own contacts and inroads as he searched for a new suspect. At least until Farnsworth made contact,
if
he was even still here in Derbyshire.
    Derick cocked his head just so, lifting one cheek in a half smile that he knew displayed a deep dimple to his best advantage. He lowered his voice charmingly. “Come now, Emma. We had great adventures as children, you and I. It will be quite a lark.”
    Her frown deepened.
    He raised the brilliance of his smile accordingly. “Just think. This time it will be me following
you
around.”
    The overt eye roll told him he’d missed his mark.
    Damned woman. He knew she wasn’t immune to him. So if sentimental charm didn’t appeal, what did? Logic, he decided. “Have you ever investigated a murder before?” he asked, thinking to use the two-heads-being-better-than-one argument again.
    “Not exactly,” she said.
    “What do you mean by that?”
    “The only murders I’ve dealt with have been drunken disputes, with the killer easily identified. There
have
been a few suspicious deaths over the years. Nothing that could be called outright murder, but certainly deaths that no one was able to explain.”
    Derick’s ears perked up at this. “Suspicious deaths” could often be laid at the feet of people like him, people who’d been trained to dispatch others without leaving a trace as to how or why. Though he hadn’t been specifically fishing for information, he intended to reel it in.
    “How many of these ‘suspicious deaths’ would you say you’ve encountered, and over how long?” His heart sped up. Finally, he was getting somewhere. He’d bet anything she meant the Crown’s missing couriers. After