Sweet Deception by Heather Snow Page B

of the house, none the wiser, before he had the opportunity to make trouble.
    Emma fisted her hands. “No reason,” she said with a shrug that she suspected made her look like a stiff puppet. “I simply expected you’d be relieved not to have to involve yourself in Molly’s murder. I’m certain you had other plans in mind for your visit—”
    “As much as I am enjoying your
delightful
company, Emma, I insist upon seeing your brother. Is he here or not?”
    Emma snapped her mouth shut on a frown. She considered lying, saying George was out in the woods combing the spot where they’d found Molly’s body, as she herself had done this morning, but deceit had never sat well with her…even when she was doing it for good reasons. “Yes. But—”
    “Then I will have this conversation with him.”
    “Oh, for goodness’ sake—” Emma bit her lip as Derick casually brushed nonexistent lint from his finely cut jacket. She couldn’t shake the gnawing sense that he wasn’t quite what he seemed. Something…dangerous lurked just behind his emerald gaze. Emma wondered if other people saw it, or if only she did because they had once been friends of a sort. Or perhaps she only imagined it. It was just…he seemed so different from the boy she’d known. She had learned, as part of her research into the behavior of criminals, that people didn’t change very much once their personalities had developed. Yet her memories of the boy he’d been didn’t match up with the image of a fop that he projected now.
    Well, either way, she couldn’t allow him to see George.She’d just have to delay and hope he lost interest. “My brother can’t see you today. He…isn’t well.”
    A frown shifted the perfect angles of Derick’s face. “Nothing serious, I hope?”
    “Nothing out of the ordinary,” she hedged.
For him
, she added silently to quiet her conscience.
    “I see,” he said, turning toward the door. “Very well.”
    Emma’s stomach unclenched as she took her first deep breath since Perkins had interrupted her with that white linen card. While she regretted that Derick would leave thinking her an awful shrew, at least he
was
leaving.
    “I shall expect to see Lord Wallingford at Aveline Castle in the morning, then,” Derick called over his shoulder.
    ”That will be
quite
out of the question.” She hated how the pitch of her voice rose like an aggrieved peahen’s.
    Derick turned on his heel, seeming every bit the autocratic nobleman she’d feared. “While
I
appreciate
your
assistance last evening,” he said, tossing her earlier words back at her in a thoroughly infuriating way, “investigating murder is a business for men.”
    Emma bristled.
Of all the—
Her worries flew from her mind in her outrage. “I hardly see how one’s gender plays into this. I have handled such matters quite well on my own over the years.” How dare he come to her home,
her
village, and act as though he owned it? “And I’ll have you know that—”
    “You’ve handled
what
such matters quite well on your own?” Derick’s question cut through her bluster and quite nearly knocked her off her feet.
    Cold flowed from her head to her toes as quick and shocking as a spring-fed waterfall.
    She’d just given up the game, hadn’t she?
    Perhaps not.
Her palms turned clammy as she scrambled for a way to recover. “What kind of question isthat?” Emma couldn’t help averting her eyes, focusing on the bust of Archimedes to her left. “I do many things well on my own.” She glanced back at him, pasting what she hoped was a look of confused annoyance on her face, hoping he would let the matter drop.
    “Such as?”
    Emma huffed. “It isn’t relevant.”
    But one black brow cocked expectantly.
    Her eyes strayed back to the bust. “I m-manage the house, assist my brother…” This was getting worse and worse. A pox on all perceptive people, and a pox squared on her foolish tongue.
    “We’ve strayed from the point. A murder—or any