Page 25 of After the Spy Seduces

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.”