Page 34 of After the Spy Seduces

“That you’re working for the Home Office.”

Kit froze, the glass halfway to his mouth. Every muscle in his body tightened. A jarring thud of his heartbeat counted off the long seconds while he returned the general’s gaze over the rim of the crystal tumbler before he finished bringing it to his lips.

“No.” He took a long swallow. “But apparently, you do.”

“Of course I do.” The general reached into the table’s center drawer to remove two cigars from a specially made box of untreated Spanish cedar and offered one to Kit. “I was the one who recommended you to them.”

Kit squelched his surprise as the general crossed to the fireplace. “Because you thought I was a good soldier?”

“Hell no.” He removed a wood splinter from the spill vase on the mantel shelf, then crouched down to light it on the coals. Rising to his feet, he leveled a no-nonsense stare at him. “You were one of the worst soldiers who ever served beneath me. I recommended you to put you out of the ranks and away from me.”

Well,thatstung.

“You had the intelligence to be a general, but being a soldier wasn’t in your character.” He clamped the cigar between his teeth and lit it from the little flame dancing at the end of the spill. “You lacked all discipline and regard for the command chain.”

True.

“But I’ve never known another man who could commit as much trouble as you yet somehow escape all punishment, who could talk a man out of all his blunt and convince him that it was his idea to give it to you.”

So was that.

“You were wasting your talents by being in uniform.” He tossed the splinter into the fire and puffed at the cigar until a trail of smoke curled toward the ceiling. “Especially when the Home Office could put them to better use. And did, from all I’ve heard.”

The backs of his knees tingled. “You’ve been keeping watch on me?”

“Someone had to, once your father died and your brother went overseas.”

That should have rankled, yet oddly enough, it didn’t.

“After all, I recommended you. My reputation was as much at stake as yours.” The grisly old man didn’t fool him with that comment, especially when he didn’t look at him as he said it, keeping the truth hidden behind a frown at his cigar as he rolled it between his fingertips. He’d kept watch because he’d been concerned.

“You have nothing to fear in that regard,” Kit assured him.

“Yet you let the world believe you’re nothing more than a wastrel who wants an easy living as a vicar.”

When the general put it like that, one of the men he’d respected most in his life…Damnation.He admitted with chagrin, “It’s easier that way.”

“You are one of His Majesty’s most decorated men.”

Definitely easier than having to admit publicly tothat.“I have to work in secret. If anyone outside the Home Office discovers what I’ve been doing, my career is over.”

Most likely his life, right along with it. Which made his pursuit of Fitch’s murderer even riskier. But he owed it to his partner for all the times that Fitch had rescued him from trouble. And because it should have been him who had his throat slit in the alleyway that night.

Pushing those grim thoughts from his head, he lit his cigar, then followed the general’s lead of sinking into a leather chair positioned in front of the fire. Both men kicked out their long legs to rest their boots on the fireplace fender and quietly watched the smoke drift upward from their cigars. In the soft light of the fire and lamps, the house finally quiet around them, Kit could almost imagine that the two men often spent time together like this.

Until General Morgan studied the glowing tip of his cigar and demanded, “Is my son truly a traitor, Carlisle?”

Harsh reality came crashing back. “He’s working with the French,” he replied carefully, not wanting to upset the man any more than possible. “He must have a good reason.”

“Revenge on me.” The general grimaced into the fire. “As payment in kind for all the chiding I’ve done of him over the years, all the criticizing that he wasn’t living up to expectations.Myexpectations for him.”

“I don’t believe so.” Life as General Morgan’s son couldn’t have been easy. But sons criticized by their fathers ran away to join the navy, pursued racing or boxing, spent their days in drunken stupors in gambling hells and their nights passed out in brothels. They didn’t commit treason.

“When you catch him, you’ll arrest him.” Not a question.

“Yes,” Kit confirmed quietly.

There was no point in lying, and nothing that Kit could say to ease the general’s pain at knowing his son betrayed his country and all that he’d worked so hard to defend. Nor would he insultthe man by spewing any kind of placating platitudes.