Page 1 of After the Spy Seduces

Chapter 1

May 1824

Surrey, England

“Come here, m’ lovely!” Christopher Carlisle grabbed the barmaid around the waist as she sashayed past and yanked her down onto his lap. He whispered a dirty joke into her ear about drivers and the length of their whips that made her laugh loudly enough to attract the attention of the men sitting around him in the crowded tavern.

She smiled and looped her arm around his neck, pressing her bosom into his chest. Not that he minded. She was lively and pretty, and clearly hoping to snag him for an evening’s pleasure in one of the rooms upstairs. “Ye tell that story as if ye have firsthand experience, sir.”

“I do.” He took the opportunity to glance around the tavern’s taproom at all the people who had crowded inside in the past two hours since he’d been sitting here. “I’m a fierce driver myself.”

She laughed at his bawdy entendre, just as he’d hoped, and he rewarded her with a bounce on his knee. Tonight, he wanted the kind of attention her loud laughter would bring.

With a satisfied smile, he raised the tankard to his lips and took another look around the barroom. His focus never strayed far from the door.

The tavern was filled with people seeking shelter from the foggy and damp weather, which promised to unleash even more rain by dawn. Mostly local men crowded into the room, gathered for a few hours of drink, cards, and escape from their wives. A handful of lightskirts looking to make rent and a few travelers who had no place else to spend the night in this part of Surrey mixed into the lot of them.

Always, Kit kept his attention on the men. He could dismiss the women, likewise the local villagers and the handful of hostlers who’d come inside after tending to the last of the coaches for the night. Those two groups of men were easy to spot by the familiar way they strode through the door without hesitation and warmly greeted the barkeeper, by how they ordered their food and drink with a wave and a wink to the serving wenches.

No, the men he watched for tonight would be outsiders. Their unfamiliarity with the place would require a hesitation at the door that would mark them as strangers. So would the length of time it would take for the barmaids to serve them, because the women’s attentions would be on those men who returned night after night, who’d paid in the past to tup them and would most likely do so again. They wouldn’t waste much effort on men who weren’t important to their continuing ability to buy bread and pay rent.

His own bar wench, whom he’d spent the past hour slipping coins to and flirting with so he could disguise himself as a local, teased at his waistcoat buttons. “Yer not from ’round here.”

“No, indeed.” He grimaced into his ale. Good to know that a decade of training as a Home Office agent had brought his skills on par with a barmaid’s.

Ten years.Good God.

How could he have known when the Home Office came looking for new agents among the army’s ranks that he’d still be working for them a decade later? But then, he’d been damned surprised that they’d wanted him in the first place. After all, he was the worst possible sort to be an officer in His Majesty’s army. A man who chafed at regulations and who’d repeatedly escaped punishment by the skin of his teeth. The same man whom the generals recommended to the Home Office most likely just to be rid of him.

But to everyone’s surprise—and his most of all—he’d thrived as an operative, all the while keeping his work secret. To the rest of the world he was simply a shiftless younger son, wasting his allowance on cards, drink, and women, without ambition or prospects. Only his brother, Ross, and new sister-in-law, the Home Secretary himself, and the undersecretary who directly gave him his orders knew that beneath his scapegrace exterior he was completely dedicated to England.

He claimed to all who’d listen that he was waiting for a living in the Church to open so he could make his future there. But the truth was that his life had to be lived in suspension—no wife, no family, no commitments of any kind. No future path. Couldn’t have those, not when he had to be free to be sent on a mission at a moment’s notice. Not when he didn’t know whom to trust, and since Peterloo, that included the Crown and its administrators. Hell, he couldn’t even follow the lead of other gentlemen and take a mistress because he couldn’t risk her learning the truth about him. Too high a chance to be blackmailed or simply handed over to his enemies. God knew he’d certainly made enough of them on both sides of the Channel.

All of that meant he had to lead a life that others mistook for rakish impropriety and laziness, because limited relationships and broken commitments were all that he could offer as long as the Home Office owned his loyalty.

Or was it his soul they possessed?

After ten years, all the suspicions, false identities, secrets, and lies had festered into a churning blackness inside him that made it nearly impossible to trust anyone, save for his brother. Not the people he interacted with at society events and clubs. Not the women he bedded. Certainly not the other men at the Home Office. He couldn’t even trust his cousins on the Trent side of the family with the true work he’d been doing for fear that they might accidentally divulge how he’d been spending his time. After all, he’d already learned the hard way that real lives hung in the balance behind all the lies.

His existence had become nothing but doubt and mistrust, detachment and dispassion. But since that night six months ago, the relentless hell of it had become intolerable. His singular focus was now set on revenge.

But if he wasn’t careful, if he couldn’t extricate himself from the web ensnaring him, the dark place would completely claim his soul.

“What’s yer name?” the barmaid asked with a friendly smile as she tangled her fingers in his jacket lapels.

“Christopher.” He gave her a grin. “But my friends all call me Kit.”

“Why’re ye here tonight?”

He took a long look around the tavern, coolly assessing the crowd. “I’m here to meet someone.”

“Foundsomeone already, looks like.” She artfully wiggled her bottom against his lap with such enthusiasm that he couldn’t stifle a genuine laugh of amusement.

Had this been any other night, he might very well have taken her up on her offer to provide sexual pleasure. She was vivacious and spirited. Full of life. Exactly the kind of woman he could easily lose himself in for a few hours of precious distraction.

But not tonight. “I’m waiting for a man.”

“A friend?”