Garrett shouted orders to his men, two of whom nodded and raced from the boathouse into the dark night.
“I’m going to be all right,” Kit assured her, reaching to cover her hand with his and unwittingly smearing blood across the backs of her fingers. “Might have ruined my jacket, though.”
“That’s not funny,” she scolded, the worry inside her growing more intense with every passing second that no surgeon arrived to help. Of all the times to joke— So much blood! She grabbed her skirt and ripped off the hem, then wrapped the fabric around his arm to staunch the bleeding. “Christopher…” Hot tears formed on her lashes, yet she choked them back as she cradled him in her arms. “It’s all my fault… I’m so sorry.”
“Shh,” he whispered, reaching up to touch her face. Even now, his thoughts were focused on reassuring her and not on his own pain. “You couldn’t have stopped any of this.” He sucked in a deep but ragged breath. “I’m so glad…”
Glad? How on God’s earth could he be glad about this? She wanted to scream!
“That you found me. You saved me, Diana…more than you’ll ever know.”
Dear God! Why was he talking like this? “I’m not going anywhere,” she insisted. “Neither are you.”
His lips twisted into a grim smile. “You did it.” His voice grew softer, more breathless. “You stopped Paxton…before he got away…with the diary.”
“We stopped him,” she corrected, agonizingly aware of how long it was taking the surgeon to arrive, of how Garrett lingered nearby but didn’t come closer. As if giving them time alone to say goodbye.
No. This wasn’t goodbye—it wasn’t!
“You used the knife.” His smile widened slightly with pride. “Good girl.”
“You did say that if a man ever tried to reach beneath my skirt that I should use it.” Despite the teasing, her eyes grew so full of unshed tears that his face blurred, and she couldn’t blink them away fast enough.
“I did,” he murmured, his smile fading as he struggled to remain conscious. “But that…wasn’t what…I had in mind.”
“Then next time you need to be clearer.”
“I will…”
Please, God—please let there be a next time! “Christopher…”
“Tell her,” he ordered softly, his words now slurring. “Tell Meri…who you really are…”
“Christopher!” Panic rose inside her as she felt him slipping into unconsciousness. She clutched him tightly to her, terrified of losing him. He couldn’t leave her now. He couldn’t die! Not when she’d finally found him and allowed him into her heart.
She kissed him, but the warmth and life she tasted on his lips only made her fear that it was slipping away. So much left to be said, not enough words in the world, and all of them coming too late. Except—
“I love you,” she whispered, her trembling lips barely able to form the words as tears dripped down her cheeks.
He whispered back, his voice little more than a gravelly breath, “You’d better…”
Then his eyes closed, and he went limp in her arms.
Chapter 27
Kit’s eyes fluttered open, then slammed shut as a sharp pain slammed through his forehead. Good God, the sunlight was bright! Who’d opened the damned curtains? His head pounded, but he didn’t remember getting foxed last night.
The fog of sleep slowly cleared, and what he finally remembered… Dear God. He wished he’d been dreaming.
He eased open his eyes again, and this time, with much blinking, they slowly adjusted to the light. But as he looked around, he had no idea where he was or what the hour…until he recognized the room that he and Diana had taken at the hotel. He was back at the Mermaid and waking up in the morning sunlight, as if none of the past few days had happened.
But they had happened. The pain and aching soreness that gripped his entire body proved it.
His eyes landed on Garrett Morgan standing near the window. Not the person he wanted to set eyes on the morning after he’d nearly died. Or the other man standing with him, the two of them speaking quietly—
Nathaniel Grey.
Well. Perhaps he wasn’t going to survive the day after all.
He shifted to sit up. A piercing pain shot up his arm and into his chest, and he sucked in a mouthful of air through clenched teeth, freezing in place to keep the pain at bay. When the hammer had stopped beating on the top of his head and the lightning ceased flashing in front of his eyes, he panted down the pain and rubbed his hand over his shoulder where a large white bandage wrapped around his bicep. Beneath the sharp pain lay a dull ache that would take weeks—if not months—to heal.
The two men turned toward him, but otherwise remained where they were on the other side of the room.
“By all means,” Kit ground out as he eased back against the pillow, giving up on the idea of getting out of bed, “don’t rush to help.”
In response, Morgan leaned back against the wall, and Grey crossed his arms over his chest.
“So you didn’t die after all,” Morgan mused, the smile on his face revealing how much he was enjoying seeing Kit incapacitated like this.
Grey added, “Looks like I lost that bet at White’s.”
“Not for long.” Kit’s voice was rusty with sleep. And pain. What he wouldn’t have given to be able to dive into a large glass of laudanum or to the bottom of a whisky bottle. Or both. “I’m sure your men will see to that.”
“My men have nothing to do with Home Office agents who have turned rogue.” He knowingly lifted a brow. “Or been saved by women.”
Well, that stung his manly pride. But speaking of women… “Where’s Diana? Is she all right?” His chest tightened with concern as his gaze darted to the door. “And what about Meri?”
The two men exchanged glances. Morgan answered, “They’re both fine. Meri was taken home last evening.”
“Last evening?” Last evening, he still had the diary, and Paxton still had Diana. “For Christ’s sake—what time is it?”
“Ten in the morning.”
“Two days later,” Grey added solemnly. “You’ve been unconscious for the past two nights.”
Morgan shook his head. “Damnable shame you didn’t sleep longer.”
Kit clenched his teeth. One of them alone was barely tolerable. The two of them together was sheer torture. “Shouldn’t you two be off somewhere, rescuing kittens up trees or whatever it is that the Foreign Office does these days?”
He clucked his tongue with mock offense at the idea. “When we could be right here, showing you our support?”
“Well,” Grey corrected with a sideways glance at Morgan, “let’s not get carried away.”
Gritting his teeth, he swung his legs over the side of the bed. He took a deep breath to hold down the pain and shoved himself to his feet. He grumbled, “I think I’d rather be dead than suffer your support.”
His mutter drew amused grins from the two men at his expense. Despite their teasing, though, Kit could see concern darken their gazes as they watched him sway on his feet. But they also knew not to offend him by rushing to his side, thus pointing out how weak he was. How close to death he’d actually come.
Neither man said it, but he could see that in their eyes, too.
“Meri’s safe,” Morgan assured him. The teasing amusement that had been in his voice earlier was completely gone. “While the surgeon was still digging that ball out of your arm, I sent a message to the men who were guarding her, to take the general to her and escort them both home. She should have been tucked safe and sound into her own bed last night.”
Thank God. Relief rushed through him. That news was better at easing his pain than any spoonful of laudanum ever could have been. “And Diana?”
“Asleep in the room across the hall.” Morgan looked tired and older than Kit had ever seen him. He wasn’t certain how he felt about Morgan’s role with the Foreign Office, but the man loved his sister and niece. “She was awake for the last two nights. Never left your
side. I finally convinced her at dawn that she needed to get some rest.”
“Thank you.”
Morgan shrugged a shoulder. “After all, what good would she have been at planning your funeral if she were at the point of exhaustion?”
Kit grimaced. “Thank you.”
“That’s what friends are for.”
“Well,” Grey repeated his earlier words with another glance at Morgan, “let’s not get carried away.”
Kit rolled his eyes in aggravation. “And the diary?”
Morgan pulled it out of his waistcoat and tossed it onto the foot of the bed. “Safe and sound. And, unlike you, free of bullet holes.”
But dark brown splotches stained the cover. Paxton’s blood.
“What will you do with it now?” he asked Grey.
“You’re no longer considered a rogue agent,” he answered, dodging the question. “I sent word to Sir Robert Peel at the Home Office in London yesterday morning, explaining that you were working on an extended assignment that involved the War Department, by special request of the Secretary of State for War. I also sent one to the Foreign Secretary that I have no intention of declaring you a traitor.”
“How kind of you,” he muttered wryly and rubbed at his shoulder. “After I got shot in service to England.”
Instead of smiling in amusement at that, as Kit expected, Grey’s expression remained somber. “Peel returned the message. You’re not considered a rogue agent, but you still broke the rules. So you’ve been expelled from the Home Office. He’s discharged you and asked the War Secretary to strip you of your army commission as punishment.”
The news hit like a punch to his gut, and he took a long moment to recover. When he did, the bitterness consumed him. “Because I’m worthless to them now, you mean. Because I’m too visible.” After ten years of loyalty to them, of putting his life on hold and risking his very existence—for this. For nothing. Discarded without a second thought, when he could no longer be of service to them.
“Because you defied orders and burned too many bridges,” Grey corrected. Then he admitted grudgingly, “And yes, because there’s no such thing as loyalty inside the Home Office these days.”
Being right didn’t ease his resentment.
“You’ll need a different future for yourself now.” Grey stepped toward him. “So unless you truly do want to become a vicar, you should consider the offer I’m about to give you.”
Kit leveled his eyes on Grey. The two men were of the same height and build, just as tall and broad shouldered, and now, just as world-weary and experienced about the ways Whitehall mercilessly double-crossed the men who dedicated their lives to it. They respected each other, even if no trust lived between them.
Grey pulled out a note from his breast pocket and held it up. “A message from the Foreign Secretary. I told George Canning what you did tracing Fitch-Batten’s murder to Paxton, how you protected General Morgan and his family. He’s offering you a position within the Foreign Office.”
Kit’s heart skipped. He didn’t know whether to jump for joy or run away. Hadn’t he just left a life of secrecy and lies? No—hadn’t he just been kicked out of that life? The question now…did he want to go back to that same hollow existence, living at the pleasure of Whitehall over his own wants and needs?
“No,” he bit out.
“You wouldn’t be an operative. They’d never allow that. Everyone in both offices will be keeping a very close eye on you in the future.” He held out the note. “But he’s offering a position in London equal in rank.” Grey pressed, “Consider it.”
“Hell no.”
But a knowing grin quirked up at the corners of Grey’s mouth. He laid the unwanted note on the bed and picked up the diary.
“I’ll be going then.” He slid a parting look between the two men as he headed toward the door. “Send word when you’ve returned to London. I’m certain the Foreign Office will want to question both of you.”
Oh no. Grey wasn’t leaving here that easily. Kit had traveled halfway across England and risked his life, the life of the woman he loved, and that of her daughter because of that damnable diary. No way in hell was Grey simply waltzing out of here with it. Not without the final answers he needed to put the last of the puzzle pieces into place.
“And the diary?” Kit pressed.
“It will be taken care of, be assured of it.”
“Forgive me if I doubt you,” Kit drawled in challenge. “And while you’re at it, tell me this—why you? Of all the men in Whitehall, why send someone of your rank after the decade-old notes of a retired general?”
That stopped Grey just as he reached the door. He turned to face Kit, but his face gave away no answers.
“Even if it contained the names of half the French counselors in Paris, someone at your level in the Foreign Office should never have been put into the field after it.” He eyes narrowed. “Why send you?”
Grey held his gaze for a moment, as if considering how much he could divulge. “I sent myself. Out of personal interest, you might say.”
Weighing the diary in his hand, he turned toward the fireplace and tossed it into the fire.
None of the three men moved. All of them stood still and watched the little book burn, watched the flames eat it up and flare brightly in gratitude for being fed.
Grey stared down at the fire and said quietly, “Paxton had been slipping secrets out of the War Department for years and selling them for his own gain. Sometimes to France or Spain.” His brow drew down into a troubled frown as he added quietly, “Sometimes to other bidders within Britain.”
When only blackened pages remained, he picked up the iron poker leaning against the mantelpiece and jabbed it into the diary, destroying the charred clump until nothing remained but glowing ashes. Until there was nothing for the French to ever ask for again.
“Do you remember what happened to the Earl Royston?” Grey asked. “You should. It involved the Carlisles.”
“Yes.” That was how his cousin Richard Carlisle had so unexpectedly become Duke of Trent. Because his neighbor, the Earl Royston, had been found guilty of espionage and hanged.
“Royston had obtained a list of secret War Department operatives, men whose names he was selling off to the enemy, one by one. The same list that Thomas Matteson uncovered during a house party at Blackwood Hall. A list that contained his own name.”
Thomas Matteson…the Marquess of Chesney, and the man who had married Kit’s cousin Josephine. Kit had heard stories that the man had once worked in secret for the War Office, but always, he’d dismissed them as apocryphal. The creation of bored society gossips. But now he knew them to be real.
“No one knew how Royston had gotten those names, and he went to the gallows protecting the man who sold them to him.” He returned the poker to its place. “It took me five years, but I finally tracked that list back to Paxton. And two months ago, I set the trap.”
“What trap?”
He grimly lifted his gaze from the fire and locked eyes with Kit. “There is no French official at the Court of King Louis sending information back to the British. That was all an orchestrated lie to bring Paxton out of hiding.”
The room tilted around Kit as Grey’s admission sank over him. Good God. “That’s why you didn’t want me hunting down Morgan.”
Grey acknowledged that with a nod. “I couldn’t let you interfere, but I also couldn’t tell you why.”
Kit’s gaze darted to Diana’s brother, who registered absolutely no surprise on his face. Morgan had known all along yet given nothing away. Downright lied to him about it, in fact. The man was a good agent, Kit had to give him that. Even if he wanted nothing more at that moment than to plough his fist into Morgan’s face.
“But why make a copy of the diary, then?” Kit asked. “Why not just let Paxton hand over the original and arrest him for it?”
“While men like Pierre LeFavre aren’t giving information to the British any longer,” Grey answered for Morgan,
“they once did. We owe it to them to protect them. We couldn’t risk that the original would end up in French hands and reveal a past now best left to history.”
After all these months, the last pieces of the puzzle finally snapped into place. The feeling of resolution that swept over him like a wave stung at his eyes and throat, and he sucked in a deep breath to steady himself.
“In the end, I went after Paxton for the same reason you pursued Fitch-Batten’s murderer,” Grey stated deliberately as he moved toward the door. “For justice. He sold Thomas Matteson’s name to the enemy—my best friend and a man I consider a brother.” His eyes gleamed with dark resolve as he glanced back. “No one threatens my family and gets away with it.”
Grey walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.
“You knew,” Kit drawled to Morgan, yet kept his gaze on the closed door. “All this time…”
“Yes,” Morgan answered impassively.
“And you lied to me that day in the cottage.”
“Partially.” He paused. “But so did you.”
Kit swung his gaze sideways and narrowed it murderously on the man. His life was in upheaval, his future uncertain, and his damned shoulder throbbed with pain. He was in no mood for this.
Morgan sat down casually on the window sill and crossed his legs at his ankles, and arched an accusing brow. “You didn’t tell me that you’d been intimate with my sister.”
Christ. He was in no mood for that either.
“That’s none of your damned business,” Kit growled and stalked over to the washstand. With his good arm, he poured water into the basin.
“She’s in love with you, you know.”
Kit glared over his shoulder at him, then splashed water onto his face with one hand.
“Which is good. Because you’re certainly in love with her.”
He missed, and the water spilled down his chest. With a curse, he snatched up the hand towel.
“Are you going to tell me that’s none of my business, too?”
His gaze shot angrily to Morgan’s in the mirror as he wiped his chest. “If I thought it would do any good.”
After the Spy Seduces Page 26
