Sweet Deception by Heather Snow Page B

regurgitated a rather complex theorem precisely. So he began to test me. No matter how detailed of an equation he’d write out, I could study it for a few moments and duplicate it exactly.”
    It hadn’t been long before she could expound logically on what he’d given her. It’s what finally convinced Emma’s father to deign to teach her, even though she was female.
    Emma swallowed against an unpleasant tightness. Her father had been dead nearly nine years now, yet anytime she thought of those years spent at his side, she was left with a sad, sort of anxious knot lodged in her chest. She’d always known that while her father sometimes seemed reluctantly pleased with her abilities, he’d resented her at the same time for not being a man. A son. Much as he’d reviled George for not having her abilities.
    But that wasn’t relative now, was it? “I’ve found I can do the same with spoken words. They have a certain lyrical cadence, a pattern, which my memory seems to inherently latch on to.”
    Derick stiffened. Emma glanced over to find him looking fixedly at her. “You can remember anything said to you?” he asked.
    “Yes, as well as anything I’ve read or written.”
    Derick shot her a disbelieving glance. “What were the first words I spoke to you?”
    Emma closed her eyes and focused her attention, rubbing the thumb of her right hand in circles against the pad of her middle finger. What
had
he said? She opened her eyes. “‘You look like a deerfly.’”
    “I never said—”
    “You most certainly did. The first time we met. You were seven and I, five. The very next thing you said, by the way, as your mother reprimanded you, was, ‘But she does! Her eyes are too big for her face. And they’re
yellow
,’” she repeated, perfectly mimicking the sneering tone of a young boy.
    She rather enjoyed the combination of awe and embarrassment on his face.
    “I can dredge up any conversation we’ve ever had. But perhaps you were thinking the first words out of your mouth the other night? They were ‘What the devil are you doing?’” she intoned, trying to sound as ridiculously pompous as he had, “and ‘Do you mind telling me just who you are and why you are vandalizing
my
property?’”
    If she weren’t mistaken, didn’t his eyes narrow a fraction, almost as if in speculation? But just as she was certain they had, the impression vanished, so quickly that she might have imagined it.
    “That’s one hell of a gift, Emma,” he mused.
    She huffed. “Sometimes. Other times it’s a curse.” At that thought, hurtful words assaulted her, in the voicesand spiteful titters of her past: her father.
“Why would God squander such talent on a damnable female?”
The not-so-subtle whispers of London society.
“How gauche she is. Simple. Country. Unsophisticated. Odd.”
Her onetime affianced, Mr. Smith-Barton.
“I only asked you to marry me because your brother pressed me to. I thought I’d solidify his friendship by taking you off his hands and that there would be money in it for me, but now? His friendship isn’t what it used to be and I’ve found someone who will be a proper wife to me, not one who thinks and acts more like a man than I do.”
    She took a deep breath. “There are many things that have been said to me that I wish I could forget.”
    Her voice trailed off at the pitying look Derick gave her and she wished she could bite back the words. Why did she always blurt such intimate thoughts? It was as if her brain could contain only so much, and therefore couldn’t hang on to her actual words once she formed them. Emma pressed her lips into a thin line, as if by exerting enough force she could seal them in a way that could never be breached.
    “Can you remember only conversations you’ve had?” he asked, gratefully letting the moment slide. “Or do you think if you’d overheard things, you might recall them?”
    Emma frowned. “It depends on how closely I paid attention. I’ve also noticed