Page 26 of After the Spy Seduces

When he did, Kit would arrest him. Then watch him hang.

“The only way for Garrett to learn that would be if he were working with the French,” she said, so quietly that he had to lean in to hear. “That’s what you think, isn’t it? That he’s selling the general’s documents to obtain money to pay off his gambling debts. But you’re wrong.” Yet her voice lacked conviction, as if she were attempting to convince herself of Morgan’s innocence as much as him. “My brother might be a bit of a scapegrace, like you—”

Kit countered that inadvertent insult with a lift of his brow.

“—but he’s no traitor.” She waved a hand in the general direction of the ballroom. “Ask anyone here tonight. Some of them even saw him in London in the days leading up to his disappearance, and they all said the same thing, that he was playing cards and drinking and—”

Whoring.She censored herself, but from the flush of her cheeks, he knew that was what she was going to say.

“Behaving exactly like himself,” she finished instead. “A man who’s selling secrets to the enemy wouldn’t behave like that.”

“Know a lot of spies and traitors, do you?” he drawled in challenge.

“Do you?” she shot back.

Dozens and dozens…“People behave in all kinds of ways when they’re under pressure.” He took a step toward her and saw her breath hitch as he approached. The same way it had when he’d rescued her from the tavern, when she’d wanted him to kiss her. Did she want that now? “Some behave nervously. Others fall back into set routines. Some break down completely.” A troubled thought jumped into his head, and he frowned. “How do you know what your brother had been up to? You said you hadn’t seen him in over a fortnight.”

“I haven’t. But I’ve been asking people about him.”

“You didwhat?” Anger flashed through him.

“I asked the guests about him, his friends, and those people who might have seen him at the clubs.”

Damnation.The danger she’d put herself into— “Well, stop it. Let me take care of finding him, all right?”

She put her hands on her hips. “So you can turn him in and claim some sort of reward?”

“Because I don’t want you to be hurt.”

She froze at that honest admission, taken completely off guard by it. Yet the little minx was too proud to retreat and countered softly, “I’m not your concern.”

“The general matters to me, and you matter to the general.” Unable to resist, he reached up to brush a stray curl away from her cheek. In response, her arms fell gently to her sides, her warrior stance vanishing beneath his touch. “So, yes, you are my concern.”

A heated shiver spilled through her at the tender caress, one he felt pulse into him through his fingertips.

“The general defended you, you know.” Her gaze softened, and she looked at him now as if she were suddenly seeing him for the first time. “He said you were a good man. But I’ve heard stories about you, those tales of gambling, fighting, and bedding women…of all sorts.”

Christ.“Iama good man,” he interrupted. “Or at least as good as I can be.” He was so damn tired of living this pretense! “I just wish you’d give me the chance to prove it.”

Her expression melted into one of bafflement, and she bit her bottom lip as she stared at him. As if she simply couldn’t fathom him.

But it was her lingering doubt about him that grated. He should be happy that the profligate reputation he’d built to hide his work was so easily believed. Yet coming from her, it rubbed him raw. He couldn’t have said why it mattered what Diana Morgan thought of him, but it did. A great deal.

“So if for no other reason than that your father would be devastated if anything happened to you, let me help you, Diana. Before you get yourself hurt.”

Her eyes flared with indignation. And with something else just as hot. Instead of having the sense to move away, she poked a fingertip into his chest. “You think me as helpless and fragile as that?”

“Never.”

She leaned in toward him, and the finger that pressed into him softened until her palm rested against his chest. Right over his pounding heart.

“I’m a general’s daughter, remember? I’m not some cake of a silly society miss who faints on a whim, or who goes into hysterics at the slightest danger.”

No. Apparently, she was a woman who couldn’t prevent herself from curling her fingers into his waistcoat, in an attempt to get to the man beneath. Shamelessly, he didn’t try to stop her.

The same attraction from the night of the tavern sparked once more, sizzling the air between them. She was so close to him now that he could feel the heat of her body seeping into his, could lose himself in the scent of lavender that wafted around her.

“I don’t sit around waiting for a man to rescue me.” But that gentle chastisement emerged as a throaty and breathless protest. “Nor do I follow blindly along, passively doing as I’m told.”