Page 36 of After the Spy Seduces

Used to Kit’s barbs, Blythe shot back, “Go to hell!” He paused and gestured at the room around them. “Oh, wait—we’re already there.”

More laughs went up, followed this time by calls for both of them to shut up and let the men get back to their cards, booze, and women. Blythe clamped a cheroot between his teeth, nodded to the other players as he excused himself from the table, and headed toward the fireplace to stretch his legs and light his cigar.

“All kidding aside, Blythe,” Kit called out to him, much more reserved this time, “I know what you can do to improve your chances at winning the races.” He reached for the bottle of port that he’d spent a small fortune to purchase and refilled his glass. “But by all means, don’t listen to me. After all, I’m just someone who wins every race he enters.”

Unable to resist that bait, Blythe gestured at him. “Get your bragging arse over here then,” he ordered. “And make it worth my time by bringing that port with you.”

Grinning, Kit snatched up the bottle and a spare glass, then left the table in mid-hand, to insults and curses from the men playing with him. He sauntered up to the fireplace where Blythe was standing and set the two glasses onto the mantelpiece. No one else stood nearby who might overhear their conversation.

Blythe lit his cigar and tossed the used spill into the fire. “So you think you can tell me how to win at Ealing, do you? I doubt you’ve ever—”

“I don’t give a damn about racing.” Kit’s grin belied his icy bluntness. He kept up the pretense of two old chums sharing nothing more than casual conversation by pouring the man a glass of port. “You work for the Foreign Office.”

Blythe froze. Only for a beat, but it was enough to prove true the rumors about Blythe’s connection to Whitehall. Recovering himself, he laughed. “You’re mad!”

“You work for the Foreign Office,” Kit repeated in a hard voice, one that said he would brook no dissembling. He raised his glass in a friendly toast, as if reminiscing about schoolboy adventures, but there was nothing at all friendly about the accusation he leveled. “You talk about things that you should never mention, things that only a Foreign Office operative would know.” He held out the glass. “Take it and pretend to drink with me.”

Blythe stared at him over the port, his jaw working so fiercely as the man contemplated what to say that the veins in his neck stood out.

Thatwas why Blythe would never be more than what he was—simply an observer asked to report unusual activity among the aristocracy. A paid snitch. He would never move up in the ranks, never be trusted with important missions or information, because he could never keep his thoughts from his face. Or from his tongue.

But tonight, Kit didn’t really give a damn about his old schoolmate’s espionage career—or lack of it. Blythe was positioned far enough inside the Foreign Office to provide answers, however limited, that would send Kit in the next direction. That was all that mattered.

“Take the glass,” Kit ordered again, his grin still in place. “And it would help if you laughed.”

Blythe didn’t. Instead, his face remained serious as he accepted the port. “What kind of game are you playing at, Carlisle?”

A deadly one.“What have you heard about a French initiative to learn about military meetings in the early days of the Waterloo campaign?”

No point in asking directly about Morgan. Morgan was no more than a go-between. If Kit were to learn where the man was hiding—and why—he first needed to discover why the French wanted the diary. Then he could flush out the Frenchmen involved, and Morgan right along with them.

“Waterloo?” Blythe blinked. “Christ, man! That was seven years ago.”

“Along with one dead English king and a dead French emperor. Yet here we are.” Time made no difference among the ranks of kings and generals. “What do you know?”

“Nothing.” He pointedly arched a brow in an attempt to intimidate him but which came off as merely juvenile. “Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

Kit smiled down at the port in his glass as he swirled it. “You’re a low-level operative—”

“No need to be rude,” Blythe countered dryly, forcefully flicking his cigar ash onto Kit’s boots.

“—with zero chance of moving up in Whitehall.” Especially if Blythe kept implying with inside humor to his chums about his activities. The Foreign Office didn’t like people it couldn’t trust. Particularly within its own ranks. “You have no way to prove your worth unless they assign you to a real mission, but they won’t give you that assignment because you have no worth to them. Damned if you do…”

Blythe’s jaw was clenched so tightly now that Kit didn’t know how the man managed to take a swallow of port when he silently raised the glass to his lips. Amazing trick, that.

“I’m assuming that you want more from your career than simply reporting back what Baroness Habersham did on her recent trip to Italy or which Prussian prince is sleeping with Lady Godfrey…or Lord Godfrey.” He tapped Blythe on the chest with his glass to emphasize his point. “But if you went to them with important information—say the name of a certain society widow who’s been sending secret messages to the Habsburgs—then Whitehall would have no choice but to pay attention to you and give you the due you deserve.”

Blythe’s eyes gleamed at that offer for a trade. The name of a treasonous widow for information about what the Foreign Office was up to with the French. “Why do you care anything for the Foreign Office, or the French for that matter?”

“I have a personal interest.” That was all the explanation he would give.

Blythe silently considered his offer for a long while. Then, making his decision, he tossed back his port and reached for the bottle to top off his glass. “I don’t know specifics—as you said, I’m the lowest of the low.”

“But not for long.”

His lips curled at that blatantly mercenary assurance. “There are whispers floating around Whitehall regarding the French.”

Not what he wanted to hear. “There are always whispers floating around Whitehall about the French,” he muttered irritably against the rim of his glass as he took another sip.