Page 44 of After the Spy Seduces

In the hours since Meri went missing, while everyone in the household had split into pairs and taken a different section of the property to search, the afternoon sun had slowly drifted toward the horizon. Now, it was sinking below, and darkness was coming. They would have to call a halt to the search soon, and Kit dreaded the anguished expression he’d see on Diana’s face when he told her that they had to stop for the night.

The countryside around the old manor house seemed alive as the servants moved slowly over the property, looking for any trace of Meri. Kit had quickly organized them, after taking a distraught Diana back to the house and putting her into the housekeeper’s care. In her upset state, the last thing he wanted was her running frantically across the property, putting herself in danger. Each servant had strict orders about what to do if they found anything—to stop right where they were, immediately send up a hue and cry, and not touch anything. He wanted to see everything for himself, to discover any clues that might be there about who took Diana’s sister.

Only the general and Major Paxton insisted on riding out on horseback to the far edges of the property. She wouldn’t be there, Kit knew. She would either still be close to the house or completely gone from the property by now. But he didn’t stop the two men, wanting them as far out of his hair as possible while he searched the more likely places she would be. His attention had been glued to the ground, and his eyes had never stopped moving, never lifting from the first two feet of undergrowth where a child of Meri’s height would have disturbed it.

Nothing.

And now, unable to see clearly because of the falling dusk, he had no choice but to stop. He bit out a viscous curse and turned back toward the house.

With every step he took, he became more convinced that whoever had taken Meri was the same person who had tricked Diana into believing that her brother had been kidnapped. And that person worked inside the general’s household. Which was why Kit had insisted that the servants search in pairs.

True, someone could have sneaked onto the estate by foot without being seen. He or she could have gotten close enough to the house to wait within the cover of the woods for the right moment to take the little girl. But there was no sign of a struggle, and at three years old, Meri was big enough to have put up a fight if a stranger approached her, would have known to scream for help.

That meant whoever took her wasn’t a stranger and had simply been waiting for the right opportunity.

Guilt ate at his gut.He’dbeen the reason that Diana hadn’t been watching over her sister as she should have been.

He raked a furious hand through his hair.Bad enough that his pursuit of Morgan was interfering with his Home Office duties, but he was letting himself be distracted by Diana, in all kinds of ways. Now a little girl’s life hung in the balance. If anything happened to her, Diana would never forgive him.

He’d never be able to forgive himself.

What the hell had he been thinking? The worst woman in the world for him to have an assignation with, for many,manyreasons. Not the least of which was that her brother was a traitor and murderer, the same man he was determined to hunt down and watch swing. Or that her father was General Thaddeus Morgan, a deadly shot and not at all a man Kit wanted to face across a dueling field. Or that she’d been courted by his cousin Robert—whyon God’s earth had Robert let her get away? His wife, Mariah, was a wonderful woman, Kit would admit, but Diana…

She was right. She wasn’t an angel.

“The blasted woman’s a goddess,” he muttered.

Whathad he been thinking? He hadn’t. He’d temporarily lost his mind. When she’d been in his arms, he’d completely forgotten the reason he’d come to Idlewild in the first place. There’d been no revenge, no treason, no duty to fulfill. There had been only her, with the softness of her flesh beneath his hands, her lavender scent engulfing him, her wit making him laugh even as he wanted to ravish her.

For one delicious moment, he hadn’t cared about justice for Fitch. He’d simply wanted to make love to her.

“Carlisle!”

As he approached the front portico, General Morgan hurried across the lawn toward him from the stables, tugging off his gloves as he approached. He appeared haggard, with worry putting a crease between his brows and deepening the lines around his mouth and eyes.

“Any word?”

Kit grimly shook his head. After hours of searching, with no sign of the man’s daughter yet found and most likely none now to be uncovered, he couldn’t bring himself to say what he knew in his gut—that they would hear of her only when the kidnapper contacted them.

“They took her because of the diary, didn’t they?” Despite keeping his nerve through some of the bloodiest battles in English history, the general now couldn’t keep his voice from shaking.

“I believe so. Which means they won’t harm her.” To reassure him, Kit explained, keeping his voice low to prevent being overheard by any of the servants, “Most likely she’s still within a five-mile radius of the estate, and they’ll turn her over when we give them the diary.”

The general looked away to keep Kit from seeing any stray emotion on his face. “I’ll give them whatever they want to keep my family safe, and the bastards know it, too.” He looked at the ground, then voiced the thought that had surely been eating at him all afternoon. “Garrett told the French where to find the diary in my study. Did he tell them to come after Meri, as well?”

“No.” That much Kit was certain about. He quietly admitted the nagging suspicion that had been plaguing him since the night at the tavern, “I don’t think your son has anything to do with the diary.”

“But you said he was working with the French.”

“He is.” Nothing about how the French were attempting to gain possession of the diary implicated Garrett Morgan. Especially taking the child. “But if he wanted the French to have the diary, he could have simply given it to them. He wouldn’t have had to fake his own kidnapping to convince Diana to hand it over, or encourage the French to take Meri hostage for it.”

But that information brought the man little comfort. “If anything happens to—”

A shout went up from the dark field to the south. A horse galloped at breakneck speed through the shadows toward the house. As it drew nearer, its rider shouted again.

Paxton.

At the commotion, Diana rushed outside. She ran down the steps and stopped beside them in the glow of the oil lamp hanging over the door.