Page 20 of After the Spy Seduces

To deny it would be an insult to both men’s intelligence, so Kit said nothing. And better, too, to find out exactly what Grey wanted with him.

“My men have been watching Ivanov since he arrived in London last year. As a foreign diplomat, he falls under the purview of the Foreign Office.” Grey’s deep voice was calm and controlled, but a cold admonishment laced through it. “The Home Office has no authority to interact with him.”

“We’re on English soil.” Kit resisted the urge to clench his jaw and kept his face carefully inscrutable. “That puts him under Home Office jurisdiction.”

“Not when it interferes with Foreign Office operations.” He paused and fixed a hard stare on him. “And not when it has nothing do with official Home Office business.”

An electric jolt skittered through him. Grey knew why he’d questioned Ivanov. Which meant he knew about Fitch’s death. And didn’t care.

“A personal vendetta brought you here tonight. One you need to give up.”

Like hell I will.“A good agent was murdered.” He paused to let that settle over Grey, just like the damp drizzle of rain seeping over the sleeping city. “Do you really expect me to believe that if one of your operatives or friends were killed that you wouldn’t seek justice?”

“Of course I would. And doing so would be just as pointless as what you’re attempting.” Grey’s eyes narrowed as they swept through the shadows around them, to make certain that they were still alone and speaking privately. “As someone who shares your allegiance to England, I’m here to warn you—stop looking into Fitch-Batten’s murder. If you don’t, Whitehall will notice what you’ve been doing, and it won’t be a quiet conversation like this that they’ll have with you. Your career will be over, and everything you’ve worked so hard to build will be destroyed.”

Kit had known that from the beginning and had been willing to risk it. Still was. “He wasn’t just killed,” he dared to correct. “He was murdered in cold blood by a man he thought he could trust.”

“Fitch-Batten was caught off-guard, and he paid the price.” Grey’s face was grim, with the fog and shadows only adding to the severity of his countenance. “It happens to agents, even to the good ones. That’s always the risk, and we all accept it. But what you’re doing now by pursuing this is causing problems for the rest of us.” He looked away into the thickening fog as the icy drizzle increased to a light rain. “God only knows how much more damage you’ll do if you keep chasing after a dead man like this.”

His heart skipped. “Garrett Morgan’s dead—you know that for a fact?”

Grey gave a quick, hard nod as his gaze swung back to Kit and pinned him with a look of cold anger. “And so did you, even before you set foot into that brothel tonight. You knew it in your gut, yet you approached Ivanov anyway and ruined months of surveillance work by my men. If I’m lucky, I can salvage most of my contacts within the Russian embassy. And ifyou’relucky”—he punctuated that with an arch of his brow—“then Whitehall won’t discover what you’ve done.”

Kit had never been that lucky. Nor did he care.

“You spoke to Ivanov,” Grey continued, “and he confirmed your suspicions about Morgan.

“He told me Morgan was dead. But he didn’t say why he killed Fitch.”

“Let it go.”

He bristled at the quiet threat disguised as a friendly warning. “Or what?”

“I can’t have you interfering in Foreign Office operations.” Grey straightened, his spine rigid and his presence a commanding one deserving of the rank of lieutenant-general. “I’ll go to the Home Secretary myself, and he’ll have no choice but to remove you from duty.”

A long moment of uncomfortable silence stretched between the two men, both deadly serious as they stared at each other in the darkness. Not as friends or distant family, not as patriots in service to England, but as adversaries.

There, in the cold and darkness, with the icy rain falling over him and soaking him through to the bone, Kit made his decision—

“Then have me removed.”

He strode past Grey and down the puddle-strewn street.

“Whitehall will declare that you’ve gone rogue,” Grey called out after him. “You know what that means, what they’ll do to you.”

Kit halted mid-step, his heart jarring with a brutal thud in his chest.Yes. A death sentence.

“So be it.” He walked on. He didn’t look back. Didn’t have to in order to know that Grey still stood there on the wet cobblestones, staring after him as he faded into the shadows and fog.

When he reached the main avenue, he waved down one of the old hackneys for hire that prowled the late-night streets and barked directions at the driver as he climbed inside. The carriage jerked to a rough start, then shook and shuddered as it rolled over the cobblestones, the springs so worn that every dip rattled his bones. He looked out the window. What he wouldn’t have given to be on his way home to his rented rooms in Albany, or even to take advantage of his brother’s hospitality and drop into Spalding House for the night, uninvited.

But he headed east, past the Temple and Blackfriars. To the White Horse Inn.

Grey was right, he considered, as he stared out at the city but saw only fog and darkness. Hehadgotten his confirmation tonight, because there was only one reason why Nathaniel Grey would seek him out, why he would warn Kit like that to stop his investigation.

Garrett Morgan was still alive.

Chapter 6