After the Spy Seduces Read online

  So where in the hell was he?

  Forcing back his frustration, Kit dropped to the ground, then reached up to clasp her around the waist to help her down. He bit back a curse. Everything about this personal mission had just grown ten times more complicated.

  Diana lost her balance and fell forward as she slipped down into his arms. His hands tightened on her hips, but not in time to stop the press of her body against his as she stumbled into him, or the flattening of her breasts against his chest as she threw her arms around his neck to catch herself.

  Kit sucked in a mouthful of air at the contact, all of him stiffening as a jolt of pleasure-pain sped through him.

  “Apologies,” she murmured.

  “None necessary.” But his gut twisted when he looked down at her as she regained her balance.

  Her blonde hair lay around her shoulders like a silver curtain in the moonlight, and her full lips were parted temptingly in a look of befuddled surprise to find herself once more in his arms. Soft and warm against him, with a faint scent of lavender surrounding her… What would she do if he dared to kiss her?

  He bit back a groan and set her away from him. Ten times? He nearly laughed. His mission had just gotten a helluva lot more complicated than that.

  Mumbling her goodbyes, she began to slip past him for the house.

  “Not so fast.” He grabbed her arm and stopped her.

  She wasn’t leaving until he had answers, or at least until he knew in what direction to head next. Simply tracking down Morgan wasn’t enough. Kit also had to find irrefutable proof that he’d committed crimes against England and murdered Fitch. That’s what tonight should have been—Morgan caught with the papers in his hand, and the door of the trap finally swinging closed.

  Instead, Kit found himself in the thick of a new mess, with Diana as the only path out.

  “When was the last time you saw your brother?” he demanded.

  “A fortnight ago.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes dulled as the moon slid behind a thick cloud. “When he’d told me goodbye.”

  “And everyone in the household knew that he’d planned to visit friends?”

  “Yes.” Her mouth turned down grimly. She was sharp enough to realize the suspicion lingering behind his question. “You think that one of the servants was involved?”

  “Very likely.”

  She slid an icy glance down to his hand on her arm. “Our staff has worked for us for years. Many of them served with my father in the army. They’re loyal and would never do as you’re implying.”

  In his experience, people did all kinds of unlikely things, especially when desperate. Whether the servants had anything to do with Morgan’s disappearance, he had no idea. But someone inside the house had contacted the French, of that he was certain. “Those pages they asked for—they’re from your father’s memoirs?”

  Her brows drew together, wary of where he was leading her. “Yes.”

  “How many pages has the general completed so far, do you estimate?”

  Confusion visibly stiffened her limbs. “A few hundred. But I don’t see—”

  “Tell me this then.” He leaned toward her, bringing his face level with hers. “How did the kidnappers know which pages to ask for out of all those hundreds if no one inside your household told them?”

  If her face wasn’t awash in shadows, he was certain he would have seen her pale. “You think—” The words choked off. She cleared her throat and tried again. “You think someone inside our house kidnapped my brother?”

  He thought it might be much worse than that. If he had to place odds in the book at White’s, he’d venture that Garrett Morgan might already be dead. That was why the French had to coerce Diana into handing over the pages rather than receiving them from Morgan himself, whom Kit’s contacts had assured him was already working with the French. And that was most likely why Morgan wasn’t in the tavern for the trade, waiting to be freed.

  But upsetting her by telling her that would do no good. So he asked instead, “What does the general know about tonight?”

  “Nothing. It was all my own doing.”

  That he easily believed. “Good,” he bit out, releasing her arm. Then warned, “Keep it that way. Tell no one about your missing brother or what you did tonight. You can’t trust anyone.”

  “Not even you?”

  His mouth twisted as he leaned in to murmur, “Especially not me.”

  A threat lingered behind his words, one he didn’t bother attempting to hide.

  But instead of keeping her distance, the frustrating woman stepped closer. Every inch of him tingled with an awareness of her that crackled on the rain-scented air around them.

  She studied him in the shadows. “Why are you looking for Garrett?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Because you don’t trust me?”

  “I don’t trust anyone.” More truth existed behind that quiet comment than he wanted to admit.

  “Not even me?”

  Responding to her challenge, he raked a slow, languid look over her, letting his gaze linger on all those tell-tale places that marked her for a woman beneath boy’s clothing. Good Lord, how could he have ever confused her for a lad? Long legs accentuated by breeches that rounded into full hips and a narrow waist. Full, ripe lips that were now pressed into an irritated line, which he was certain she’d meant as a chastisement but which only had him wanting to kiss them until they softened beneath his.

  “Especially not a beautiful woman,” he murmured. The night was full of confessions, apparently.

  Despite the darkness, he saw her cheeks flush. Damnation if that didn’t make him want to kiss her even more.

  He’d known Diana for years—from a distance. As two people living on the fringes of society, they’d attended several of the same events since the general and his family had returned from India three years ago. Kit’s cousin Robert had courted Diana, before they’d mutually broken off. Kit himself had once served under her father’s command during the last skirmish with the Americans, in the early days of his commission.

  And always, Kit had avoided Diana. Like the plague.

  Oh, she was beautiful, certainly, possessing soft and ethereal qualities that reminded him of an angel, right down to that golden hair and those deep blue eyes that could beckon a man to his ruin if he wasn’t careful. Intelligent and accomplished, and in far more areas than that drivel of music lessons, watercolors, and drawing room French that society misses believed constituted an education. She was a general’s daughter, after all, disciplined and composed, and she’d already traveled to more places around the world in her father’s wake than most women ever traveled in their entire lives.

  But no good could have come from Kit pursuing her, so he’d never tried. He didn’t seduce unmarried innocents, and anything more serious was simply impossible. Hell, he couldn’t even ask her for a waltz or turn about the garden because he couldn’t risk her seeing right through his façade if he let her get too close. Ironic, given that getting close to Diana Morgan was the goal of half the unmarried gentlemen in England.

  Tonight proved that he’d been right to stay away. Was she playing a role in her brother’s treason? Or was she simply a pawn for the French?

  And why, for God’s sake, did he ache to kiss her? Her. The worst woman in the world to long to taste.

  Like a siren sensing the effect she had on him, she shifted closer, and near enough that her lavender scent wafted over him like a cloud. She placed her palm on his chest. Right over his startled heart.

  “Do you have any idea at all where my brother is?” Her whispered entreaty twined uncomfortably around his spine, because the only answers he could give would wound her. “If he’s safe and unhurt?”

  “No.”

  As if recognizing that for the lie it was, she searched his face, but she wouldn’t find any answers there. He was too good to let his secrets escape so easily. Not even to a beautiful angel wra
pped in the moonlit fog. “Would you tell me if you did?”

  “No.” That was the brutal truth.

  Her frustration flared for one unguarded moment. “But you have to tell me.” Her fingers clutched pleadingly at his waistcoat. “Don’t you see? I’m the only one who can help him.”

  He tightened his jaw. Her pleas of mercy for her brother grated. So did the realization that she was only touching him because of that murderous bastard. “Maybe he doesn’t deserve to be helped.”

  She stiffened. “My brother is an innocent victim.”

  “Your brother is anything but innocent.”

  Her hand dropped away, and the loss of her touch chilled him. “So you think I’m lying?”

  He folded his arms across his chest, to keep from grabbing her and shaking sense into her. Or kissing her. At that moment, given the anger and yearning warring inside him, the result would be a toss-up. “I think you’re in over your head.”

  Her eyes iced over. “Actually, Mr. Carlisle, I don’t really care what you think of me.”

  “You should.” He was deadly serious. Did she really have no idea how much danger she’d put herself into tonight? To sneak off in disguise without telling anyone, to meet foreign operatives and exchange documents— She was damned lucky that he’d been there to save her. “Right now I’m the only thing standing between you and the gallows for treason.”

  Her face turned ghostly white in the shadows. Good.

  Calling what she’d done treason was a grand exaggeration. But if it took that threat to convince her to keep herself from danger, then so be it. God only knew what might happen if she tried to rescue Morgan again. He couldn’t bear to have another death bloodying his hands.

  “I am not a traitor. I would never…” Her voice faded away as softly as the mists lingering around them and ended in a hard swallow. She whispered so breathlessly that he had to lean in to hear, “But I did, didn’t I?” Her hand went to her chest, as if needing a physical reminder to keep breathing. “Dear God…”

  “So what I think, Miss Morgan,” he said, lowering his head until their eyes were even, his mouth so close to hers that he could feel the warmth of her nervous breath skittering across his lips, “is that you love your brother and would go to any lengths to ensure his safety. You even put yourself into danger tonight to save him.” Removing his right glove and letting it drop to the ground, he murmured, “Very brave of you.”

  Also damnably foolish. But he knew better than to utter that thought aloud. After all, if he was going to be slapped, he might as well make it worthwhile. So he audaciously brushed his bare knuckles across her smooth cheek to soothe her fears.

  In truth, though, he simply couldn’t resist touching her.

  “But I wasn’t successful.” She trembled as he dared to stroke his thumb over her bottom lip, yet she didn’t push his hand away. A low thrill of triumph warmed through him when she faintly turned her face to nuzzle his palm. “They still have Garrett.”

  If he had any sense in him, he’d simply walk away right now and return to his work with the Home Office, work he’d been seriously neglecting of late. He’d let her brother’s role in all this play out and let her discover on her own what her brother had really been doing. His head knew it. The instinct in his gut was certain of it.

  Instead, against all reason, he heard himself proposing the exact thing he shouldn’t—“I can help you find out what happened to him.”

  The same expression of stunned disbelief gripped her beautiful face that he was certain was also flitting across his at his momentary lapse of sanity. The lapse that put ten years of secrecy in jeopardy because he’d just offered to let her get close to him. Very close.

  “You said it was dangerous.” She pulled in a ragged breath when he gently angled her face up toward his, anticipating the kiss he so very much wanted to give her. “Why would you help me?”

  His mouth hovered only a hairsbreadth from hers. “Because I think you’re in danger.” The harsh truth followed. “And I couldn’t bear to see you get hurt.”

  He lowered his lips to hers—

  “And I think you’re not at all what you seem.”

  His head jerked back. He stared down at her, stunned.

  Impossible. She didn’t know that he worked for the Home Office. Couldn’t possibly have known. Yet surprise electrified him.

  Leaning his forearm against the barn wall beside her, he shifted rakishly closer and forced a grin, to once again slip behind the safety of false facades. “I’m just a man who wants to become a vicar.”

  She lifted a brow, seeing right though him. “You are a liar.”

  “Vicar, liar…” He clucked his tongue and fussed with the man’s neckcloth at her delicate throat, as if contemplating stripping it off her…and what a damnable shame that he couldn’t. “Such insults, Miss Morgan! And to the man who saved your life.”

  “To the man who had his hands where they shouldn’t have been,” she muttered.

  Her scolding comment only earned her a mischievous smile. “To the man who will help you find your brother, if you’re honest with me.” Or what’s left of him.

  He straightened and took a step back from her to demonstrate his sincerity.

  “Yet you still think him a traitor,” she said softly.

  No. A murderer. His eyes fixed on hers. “I think his disappearance might not have had anything to do with the Frenchman you met with tonight.”

  A glimmer of hope flashed in her eyes, chased immediately by a pang of guilt in his chest. He was misleading her, purposefully so, in order to keep her out of harm.

  But if Morgan were still alive, then Diana was the only path to the man. And if Morgan were dead, then Kit damned well wanted proof.

  “We won’t know anything for certain until we find your brother. And the only way to do that is to work together.”

  She bit her bottom lip at the temptation of his proposition and looked warily at him as if he were the devil himself, come to bargain away her soul.

  Perhaps he was. But he would never be able to absolve himself of Fitch’s murder without her help. In that, she might truly be an angel leading him to his salvation, after all.

  “If I agree to help you, you’ll tell me if you discover anything about where he might be?” she asked.

  Not a question, he understood. Terms of negotiation.

  But in the end, any negotiation always included terms of surrender for at least one side, and his heart skipped that she’d so easily relented. “Immediately.”

  The tension eased from her shoulders. “All right. Then we’re in this together.”

  “Together,” he repeated, far more huskily than he’d intended, and stepped forward once more to close the space between them, to once more cup her face and tilt her mouth toward his.

  She arched a brow at his obvious intention. “Sealing our agreement with a kiss, are we?”

  “My favorite way.”

  “The gentlemen at White’s must find that fascinating.”

  He paused for a beat, his mouth so close to hers that the heat of her lips teased at his. Then he grinned at her audacity. “You’d be surprised.”

  Her gaze lowered longingly to his mouth. “Actually, I’ve heard—”

  He brought his mouth over hers, capturing her lips beneath his and finally taking the kiss that he’d ached to claim since he’d discovered her at the tavern.

  Sweet Jesus. He nearly groaned. She tasted of vanilla and cherries, of warm summer afternoons and rose gardens, and of something spicier beneath that he couldn’t quite place but found himself craving. Shoving his fingers into the silky waves of her hair, he traced the tip of his tongue across the seam of her lips, coaxing her to grant him an even deeper taste.

  She hesitated for one heart-stuttering moment when he thought she might stop him, only to relax with a sigh and open her mouth to his. Her arm drifted up to encircle his neck and pull herself closer in silent permission.

  He eagerly accepted and s
lipped his tongue between her lips in a silken glide, to drink in the sweetness hidden inside. Dear Lord, how delicious she tasted! And how hungry he was as he kissed her, open-mouth and feverish… Starving, in fact. Enough to devour her if she’d let him.

  “Who’s there?” A shout broke through the foggy silence surrounding them. “Show yourself! And be warned—I’ve got a gun.”

  Chapter 4

  Startled, Diana opened her eyes just in time to see an annoyed grimace twist Carlisle’s lips as they lingered above hers, their kiss interrupted. Full, sensuous lips…close enough for their warmth to heat hers, their deliciously masculine taste still lingering on her tongue.

  A lightning bolt of realization slammed through her. Christopher Carlisle had been kissing her. Worse, she’d wanted him to do exactly that.

  Good Lord. She’d gone mad!

  She shoved at his shoulder to push him away, horrified at herself. “What are you doing?”

  Not letting her out of his arms, he glanced toward the house as a second warning shout went up. “Apparently, waiting to be shot.”

  “It’s Higgins, our steward.” She dug her fingers into his shoulder and caught her breath at the way the hard muscle flexed invitingly beneath her fingertips. Heavens, but she couldn’t stop herself from squeezing his shoulder again. “He couldn’t hit the side of a barn.”

  “Convenient,” he muttered, “because he doesn’t have to if I’m standing in front of it.”

  When he tried to pull her back into the shadows with him, safely out of Higgins’s sight, panic spilled through her. To be alone with him in the darkness, to risk that he’d kiss her again, that she’d crave another embrace after that, the way she’d so shamelessly craved this first one—

  Lord help her! “You have to go.” Hiding her ruefulness at being so weak as to kiss him, she grabbed his shoulders and turned him toward his horse. “Now.”