He shook his head. “I traced him to the White Horse Inn. The hostlers remembered him and that he hired a post-chaise for Dover.” So Kit had followed on horseback, traveling hard across the miles to arrive at the coast by the next day, only to discover that Morgan had once more vanished. The last anyone could remember of him, Morgan had purchased a ticket for the steam packet to Calais five days before, boarded the ship, and left. “He’s in France.”
She searched his face, but she wouldn’t find any answers there, because he had no more answers to give. And he wouldn’t dare share the details of how he knew even that much. Doing so would only put her into more danger than what she’d already stumbled into on her own.
“I don’t understand…Calais?” Her pink lips parted slightly, drawing his attention to her mouth. “But why would he go there? Unless the French…”
Unable to make the connections, she let her voice trail off in confusion. Her fingers tightened their hold on his arm, silently pleading for his help in understanding.
He took her elbow in his hand to soften the news. “I have no idea why he’s gone to France or why he lied to you about where he was going, but your brother was never kidnapped. The French made you believe it in order to obtain the general’s memoirs. I don’t think he knows that they even made contact with you.”
“But the pages—the man at the tavern didn’t want them.” She shook her head, bewildered. “He refused them. You were there, you saw. Why go through all that trouble, only to refuse them?”
A damnably fine question. One he had no answer to. “Are you certain those were the pages he wanted?”
In answer, she reached a hand into the bodice of her dress. He watched, delightfully dumbstruck, as she fished out a tiny, folded note that she’d tucked there.
“Here’s the ransom note.” She held it out to him. “It lists the exact dates of the pages I was to provide.”
Taking the note, he lifted a brow as he shamelessly contemplated her bosom. “That’s an ingenious place to file your correspondence.” He murmured appreciatively, “I suddenly have a newfound admiration for the Royal Mail.”
“Drat you, Carlisle!” He suspected that if her face wasn’t awash in a silver sheen from the moonlight he would have seen a most delicious blush pinking her cheeks. “It isn’t like that, and you know it.”
Ignoring her rebuke, he trailed a slow look over her from head to toe and couldn’t resist baiting her by adding, “Now I’m wondering where you keep your ink set.”
In aggravation, she crossed her arms over her chest, hiding her bosom from view. “After what you said the other night—about how someone inside the household might have helped the French—I didn’t want to take any chances and kept that note with me at all times. I knew that eventually you would want to see it.”
So he did. He read the note, the black ink legible in the moonlight.
He lifted his gaze to meet hers. “They wanted the pages about the lead-up to the Waterloo campaign.”
“And that’s what I brought them.” But she paused, adding hesitantly, “Unless…”
“Unless?”
With a shake of her head, she took back the note and read it herself, although Kit suspected that she’d read it so many times already that she had it memorized. “I assumed they wanted the pages from the general’s memoirs, because those were the pages he’d most recently been writing. But what if…” She bit her bottom lip. “What if they wanted pages of another sort?”
“What sort?”
“Diary pages.” She lifted her gaze from the note, and in the silver moonlight, her blue eyes shined with otherworldly intensity. As if she could see right through him. An unsettling chill gripped him that she might be able to see who he truly was, and he simply wasn’t prepared for that. “The ones he’s been using to construct his memoirs. They hold all of his original notes from that time.”
“But how would the French have known about the diary?”
Hope vanished visibly from her, and her hand with the note dropped to her side in defeat. “I don’t know.”
Kit wasn’t ready to surrender just yet. Morgan’s disappearance was tied to those pages somehow, he knew it. But how?
“Where is the diary now?” he pressed.
“The general keeps his memoirs in a locked cabinet in his study. I suppose the diary is in the study with them.” She smiled ruefully. “I always tease him that he’s afraid Wellington will break in and steal them out of jealousy because his memoirs are more interesting than the duke’s.”
Kit half-smiled. That was exactly how she’d tease her father, he was certain.
In that pause in the conversation, he saw the brightness fade from her countenance, replaced by a distrust that he detested seeing in her. Yet one he was certain mirrored his own. “It’s all over then, isn’t it? What do those pages matter now, if Garrett’s alive and safe?”
“I never said safe,” he corrected grimly. “I’ll tell you more as soon as I discover it.”
In order to make that happen, though, he needed to drive Morgan out from hiding.
“What are you going to do?” Her hand returned to his arm, as if she needed his solidity to reassure herself. The thought warmed through him.
“I’m going fishing.” Which meant that he’d need the right bait. When she frowned at him, bewildered, he pressed, “How did you contact the French before, to tell them that you would bring the papers they wanted?”
“The ransom note said to leave a message at the inn, for a Mr. Overton.”
Well then. Mr. Overton was about to receive another message, and through him Garrett Morgan, who would surely be in touch with his French contacts, wherever he was. “I think I can make your brother contact you, but I need the diary.”
“Why?”
“Because I plan on offering it to the French.”
Confusion darkened her face. “But you said Garrett hadn’t been kidnapped. Why offer it to the French when they’ve lied to us?”
Us. Nothing but a slip on her part, but he liked the sound of it. They were in this together now, both of them with the same goal: to flush Morgan out from his cover. After that…well, after that, she’d hate him for what he’d do. “Because when word reaches your brother that you’re offering up the real pages, he’ll have no choice but to contact you to find out what’s going on.”
When he did, Kit would arrest him. Then watch him hang.
“The only way for Garrett to learn that would be if he were working with the French,” she said, so quietly that he had to lean in to hear. “That’s what you think, isn’t it? That he’s selling the general’s documents to obtain money to pay off his gambling debts. But you’re wrong.” Yet her voice lacked conviction, as if she were attempting to convince herself of Morgan’s innocence as much as him. “My brother might be a bit of a scapegrace, like you—”
Kit countered that inadvertent insult with a lift of his brow.
“—but he’s no traitor.” She waved a hand in the general direction of the ballroom. “Ask anyone here tonight. Some of them even saw him in London in the days leading up to his disappearance, and they all said the same thing, that he was playing cards and drinking and—”
Whoring. She censored herself, but from the flush of her cheeks, he knew that was what she was going to say.
“Behaving exactly like himself,” she finished instead. “A man who’s selling secrets to the enemy wouldn’t behave like that.”
“Know a lot of spies and traitors, do you?” he drawled in challenge.
“Do you?” she shot back.
Dozens and dozens… “People behave in all kinds of ways when they’re under pressure.” He took a step toward her and saw her breath hitch as he approached. The same way it had when he’d rescued her from the tavern, when she’d wanted him to kiss her. Did she want that now? “Some behave nervously. Others fall back into set routines. Some break down completely.” A troubled thought jumped into his head, and he frowned. “How do you know what
your brother had been up to? You said you hadn’t seen him in over a fortnight.”
“I haven’t. But I’ve been asking people about him.”
“You did what?” Anger flashed through him.
“I asked the guests about him, his friends, and those people who might have seen him at the clubs.”
Damnation. The danger she’d put herself into— “Well, stop it. Let me take care of finding him, all right?”
She put her hands on her hips. “So you can turn him in and claim some sort of reward?”
“Because I don’t want you to be hurt.”
She froze at that honest admission, taken completely off guard by it. Yet the little minx was too proud to retreat and countered softly, “I’m not your concern.”
“The general matters to me, and you matter to the general.” Unable to resist, he reached up to brush a stray curl away from her cheek. In response, her arms fell gently to her sides, her warrior stance vanishing beneath his touch. “So, yes, you are my concern.”
A heated shiver spilled through her at the tender caress, one he felt pulse into him through his fingertips.
“The general defended you, you know.” Her gaze softened, and she looked at him now as if she were suddenly seeing him for the first time. “He said you were a good man. But I’ve heard stories about you, those tales of gambling, fighting, and bedding women…of all sorts.”
Christ. “I am a good man,” he interrupted. “Or at least as good as I can be.” He was so damn tired of living this pretense! “I just wish you’d give me the chance to prove it.”
Her expression melted into one of bafflement, and she bit her bottom lip as she stared at him. As if she simply couldn’t fathom him.
But it was her lingering doubt about him that grated. He should be happy that the profligate reputation he’d built to hide his work was so easily believed. Yet coming from her, it rubbed him raw. He couldn’t have said why it mattered what Diana Morgan thought of him, but it did. A great deal.
“So if for no other reason than that your father would be devastated if anything happened to you, let me help you, Diana. Before you get yourself hurt.”
Her eyes flared with indignation. And with something else just as hot. Instead of having the sense to move away, she poked a fingertip into his chest. “You think me as helpless and fragile as that?”
“Never.”
She leaned in toward him, and the finger that pressed into him softened until her palm rested against his chest. Right over his pounding heart.
“I’m a general’s daughter, remember? I’m not some cake of a silly society miss who faints on a whim, or who goes into hysterics at the slightest danger.”
No. Apparently, she was a woman who couldn’t prevent herself from curling her fingers into his waistcoat, in an attempt to get to the man beneath. Shamelessly, he didn’t try to stop her.
The same attraction from the night of the tavern sparked once more, sizzling the air between them. She was so close to him now that he could feel the heat of her body seeping into his, could lose himself in the scent of lavender that wafted around her.
“I don’t sit around waiting for a man to rescue me.” But that gentle chastisement emerged as a throaty and breathless protest. “Nor do I follow blindly along, passively doing as I’m told.”
“Oh, I realize that,” he murmured. Because there wasn’t a passive bone in her body now as her hand at his chest slipped slowly upward until her fingers tangled in the hair at his nape. “I know exactly what you are, Diana.”
Her gaze dropped to his mouth, and her lips parted in a tantalizing invitation to be kissed. “And what is that?”
“Trouble.”
He slid his arm around her waist and pulled her up against him as his mouth came down over hers.
Her mind swirled beneath the intensity of his kiss—no, all of her swirled as he twirled her in a quick circle, then stepped her backward to press her against the wall. As if he were afraid she might slip away even now. But at that moment, leaving his arms was the last thing she wanted to do.
He feasted on her mouth as if he were a starving man who needed this kiss to survive. So much so that when he cupped his hand against her jaw to gently lift her head and guide her mouth more openly against his, his fingers trembled against her cheek.
Letting herself surrender to the moment, she wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted herself into his kiss. She wanted this as much as he did—perhaps even more—because the desire she tasted in him was a sweet ambrosia that she didn’t realize she’d been craving so desperately until that moment. His hard body pressed along the length of hers, chest to chest and hips to hips, and the contact made her feel feminine and alive. Electric. And just as beautiful as he’d claimed she was.
“Christopher,” she whispered against his lips, having to say his name in order to make herself believe that this was really happening.
He smiled against her mouth, then pulled back only far enough to break the kiss. When he outlined her lips with his fingertip, she closed her eyes and sighed, only to gasp when he hooked his thumb over her bottom lip and gently tugged it down, opening her lips as he once more captured her mouth beneath his. But this time, he slid his tongue inside, to take sweeping plunges and explore the depths and recesses she willingly offered to him.
When he’d plundered her kiss so thoroughly that she lost her breath, she tore her mouth away from his to gasp for air. Her arms still clutched her tightly to him, so tightly that his hard muscles flexed beneath her fingertips as she splayed her hands over his shoulders in an attempt to feel all of his strength.
His lips went to her neck and placed hot, open-mouthed kisses against her throat, and his hands swept along the sides of her body. She knew he could feel her racing pulse beating against his lips, which sent an answering throb shooting wantonly down between her legs.
From the hallway right outside the door, a woman laughed.
Diana jumped in his arms, startled. The interruption suddenly shocked her back into the reality of what she was doing. And with whom.
“We should…stop,” she panted, desperate to find sense in her kiss-fogged brain. But her voice wasn’t at all convincing, even to her own ears, especially when she moaned out, “Probably.”
He smiled against her throat. “Why?”
Why? She blinked, not at all prepared for that logical question. “Because…because…” Sweet mercy, she couldn’t think of a reason. Except the one she could never utter aloud. “Because it isn’t at all proper.”
“Oh, yes, it is.” His mouth returned to hers, to tease the tip of his tongue at the corner of her lips as his fingertips now traced tantalizingly along her ribs. Goosebumps sprang up everywhere he touched. “It’s a very proper little kiss.”
That was the problem. Little kisses had a way of growing into so much more—especially a proper kiss. And how would she find the strength to resist him then? “Someone might see.”
“Not behind a closed door.” He nipped at her jaw, the act oddly more possessive than passionate, and all the more disorienting because of it. “And not in the darkness.”
Damn him for being logical! And double damn herself that she enjoyed being in his arms and at the center of his masculine attentions, that even now her belly fluttered with excited anticipation for his hand to travel upward to her breast and tease at the nipple that had already grown taut beneath her corset. She craved his touch, the way men in the desert craved rain.
Biting down a groan as she fought the urge to surrender, she forced out, “I’ll know, even in the darkness.”
He stopped and shifted back to look down at her. “You don’t like my kisses?”
Oh, so much more than like! “Your kisses are—” A burst of light caught the corner of her eye. “Fireworks.”
He grinned with a charming arrogance that sent her heart somersaulting. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly say—”
“Not you. The party.” Slapping his shoulder lightly with her open ha
nd to drag his attention away from her, she pointed at the wall of French doors that gave a perfect view of the front lawn and of the fireworks now being set off there to mark midnight. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. “The footmen are lighting the fireworks.”
A predatory gleam lit his eyes. “I don’t give a damn about the party.” He gazed down at her with a look of such intensity and desire that she shivered. “I only want to keep kissing you.”
Her belly fluttered at the sincerity of that rakish admission. Had it been at any other moment, had he held any other expression on his handsome face, she would have accused him of empty flattery. But this…
Oh, this was a grand mistake!
“You’d better care.” She slipped away from him and instantly missed being in his arms. “Because everyone from the ballroom is about to come rushing in here to watch the fireworks through those windows, and we’ll be caught. You have to leave before they find us together.” Before I find myself back in your arms, and this time without the willpower to stop… “Go. Please.”
He stifled a curse and ran a hand through his hair.
“Not that way!” She stopped him with a panicked grab at his arm. “Or through the French doors. Someone on the terrace might see.” She gestured toward the casement window that led out to the side garden, where the light of the torches and lanterns didn’t reach. “Through there.”
He shot her a look of complete aggravation and loss of patience. Yet he blew out a breath as he gave in to her wishes and turned toward the open window.
“I usually sneak in through windows to scandalously embrace women, I’ll have you know,” he muttered half to himself and put his leg out the window. “This is the first time I’ve been forced to leave through one.”
“You’re planning on becoming a vicar.” She refused to feel guilty about his ignominious exit, even as goosebumps still dotted her skin at the heat of his embrace. “So this won’t be the last time you’ll exit through windows after embracing a woman. You’ll need to get used to it. Might as well start now.”
After the Spy Seduces Page 8
