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nerves as her skin tingled and her breath strangled in her throat.
    Derick tensed beneath her hands, sinewy muscle rippling beneath fine linen. He tried to pull back, presumably to bring them both to their feet, but their angle was too acute. Instead, he toppled.
    Emma squeezed her eyes shut as momentum carried them over the arm of the settee, expecting to be crushed beneath Derick’s superior weight.
    But it never came. She lifted one eyelid to see Derick above her, holding his arms stiff on either side of her chest in an awkward, crooked position to avoid smashing her. Emma slowly became aware of where the rest of his weight had settled. Almost as if it were a natural thing, her legs had spread to accommodate him and he was pressed most intimately against her. Her blood spiked, then seemed to pool precisely where his body met hers. Her thoughts scattered as sensation flooded her mind.
    “What do you mean you are the magistrate?” Derick’svoice had gone raspy, but the man had at least retained his faculties. Unlike her.
    Emma grunted. She wriggled, trying to dislodge him. But it was a mistake. A groan ripped from his throat, and that scratchy, vulnerable sound sent shivers through her, chills that tightened her nipples painfully and that froze the breath in her chest.
    Derick clenched his jaw, but made no move to get off of her. Indeed, he lowered his chest, settling himself onto his elbows. “Emma,” he said, his voice gravel, “you can either tell me what I want to know, or we can stay here like this until your brother comes looking for you. Then I can ask him myself.”
    Flames licked her as her traitorous body screamed to let him stay all day. How could she be of two minds like this? “Let me up,” she whispered. “Now,” she said more loudly. “Let me up, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
    Several heartbeats pounded past. Emma felt pinned. Pinned by Derick’s strength, pinned by his penetrating gaze. And yet while her insides squirmed, the feeling wasn’t necessarily unpleasant. Discomfiting, yes, but also hot, inquisitive, curious…almost desperate to know where these sensations might lead.
    “As you wish…” he murmured.
    The breath whooshed out of her as Derick lifted himself. Though he did so gingerly, Emma felt every excruciatingly titillating press, shift, slide of his body. At last he extended a hand and helped her to her feet.
    Emma pushed out of Derick’s arms and took a deep breath, desperate to clear her mind. But his scent lingered in her nose like a cherished memory. “I am the magistrate,” she repeated, trying to pick up the strains of the conversation they’d been having. “
Acting
magistrate,” she corrected.
    Derick’s brows dipped into a midnight vee. “Why?”
    Emma wrapped her arms around her waist to quell herstill rioting senses. She had more important issues to worry about than how Derick affected her. She well knew that the men who appointed the county magistrates would never allow a woman to hold such an important position. One word from Derick to the Commission of the Peace and her brother would be stripped of his position and she of the duties that had given her life meaning these past years. Not to mention the access to all of the magistratorial records she needed to complete her moral statistics project. If she could prove that a high percentage of criminal behavior was not a result of bad blood, but instead was due mainly to learned, environmental factors—and if she could get someone in Parliament to take notice—it could change the face of England for the better. “My brother no longer has the competence.”
    The vee deepened as he looked off to his right. The corners of his lips turned down. “I think you should explain.”
    It wouldn’t take him long to find out the whole truth now that he was looking for it.
    Emma released a resigned sigh. “George had some sort of apoplectic fit a few years back, brought on, we think, by a fall from his