Page 66 of After the Spy Seduces

She sat up behind him, her hand touching his bare back. “What did you do?”

“I went on the hunt.” His eyes still scanned the darkness of the bay, but what he saw were flashes of Fitch’s dead body, so badly beaten that his face was almost unrecognizable, his left shoulder dislocated and his right arm broken, his kneecaps smashed. The cut at his throat so deep and vicious that it had nearly severed completely through his neck. He’d died neither easily nor quickly, in an act of unchecked brutality and viciousness that Kit hadn’t seen since Peterloo, when defenseless men, women, and children had been sliced open with sabers and trampled beneath horses. “I tracked down every clue, every lead. That’s all I’ve been doing since then. Hunting down the man who did it.”

Leaving carnage and scorched earth in his wake, destroying relationships and contacts that took years to establish, turning his back completely on the Crown and its offices. Until it all brought him here.

“And I won’t stop until Fitch has justice.” Or until he drew his last breath.

“That’s why you’re after Garrett,” she whispered. Not a question, but a confirmation. “You think he’s the man who murdered your friend.”

He looked over his shoulder at her, and his dark expression made her gasp. “I know he did.”

The haunted lookin his eyes chilled her down to her soul, and she shuddered. “No,” she breathed out, stunned. “That’s…that’s not possible. Garrett would never—couldnever…”

But his gaze didn’t soften. A gleam of certainty remained in his eyes.

When he didn’t reply, she admitted painfully, “My brother has been a failure his entire life. He has been successful at nothing. Not the army, not university, not any kind of business venture.Nothing.” Her voice rose with mounting alarm. Garrett was nearby in Bradwell. If Kit was this determined to find him, to hang him for treason and murder, if she couldn’t find a way to convince him— “For God’s sake! He’s never won a single fight in his life. He’s lost every bout of fisticuffs, every fencing match, every race. Youknowmy brother. You truly think he has the wherewithal to be able to physically overpower a trained agent and murder him?”

“Morgan was there that night. A witness saw him go into the alley and come out with blood on his hands. Footprints in the mud matched your brother’s. So did a footprint on the stone. One imprinted in Fitch’s blood.”

“That means nothing.” Yet doubt began to gnaw at her belly. “Lots of men have the same size foot.”

“But men don’t wear down their boots in the same way. That’s what showed up in the footprints. That’s what matched your brother’s boots.”

“You—you had Garrett’s boots?” Her mouth fell open as her mind whirled to fathom what he was telling her. “How?”

“I bribed one of your servants to bring them to me. I had them resoled and kept the originals, and within two hours, the servant put them back right where he’d found them. Your brother didn’t know they were ever gone.” When the blood drained from her face, he lifted a brow. “You said you wanted the truth. Here it is, Diana, warts and all.”

“I did. I just—”Good God.

“So I had his soles, the imprint in blood that I’d pressed onto a sheet of paper, and the drawings I took of the other footprints in the alley, right down to how deep each place on the shoe pressed into the dirt. I matched the wear of Morgan’s boot soles to the prints. A perfect match. That, and the witness’s physical description of the man he saw enter the alley conclusively put him there.”

“But that doesn’t mean Garrett murdered Fitch.” She clung to straws now.Anythingto convince him! “People are murdered in London at night all the time, straying someplace they shouldn’t. Just because Garrett was in that same alley doesn’t mean that he was responsible.”

“I investigated your brother and learned that he’d been in contact with the French, through those same communication channels that Fitch and I were sent to confirm. Most likely, he waited until Fitch met with our asset, then followed him until the right moment presented itself. Better to silence Fitch than let Morgan’s name get back to the Home Office as a traitor.”

No—no, this was all wrong! She slapped her hand on the mattress in fear and frustration. “My brother doesn’t possess that kind of cunning!”

“Your brother had a copy of your father’s diary made and then switched it out tonight when you handed it to him. What you gave to the French tonight was a fake.” His eyes softened then, not with understanding but pity. “He possessesexactlythat kind of cunning.”

She pressed her fist against her squeezing chest as she replayed that moment from tonight in her mind. How Garrett had demanded the diary and flipped through it, to make certain that it was the original and still contained the information the French wanted. How he had angered her on purpose, then turned his back, to distract her while the diary was temporarily out of her sight in the shadows, so he could switch books and hand her the copy.Oh good Lord.

“Why?” she forced out breathlessly, her mind spinning. “Whywould he do that?”

“I don’t know. And to be honest, I don’t care.” With a bleak expression, he reached up to stroke her cheek, but for once she found little comfort in his touch. “You and Meri are safe. That’s all that matters now, not who has the diary or why.”

“But it does.” She grabbed his hand and held it tightly. “If Garrett kept the real diary from going to the French, then he’s not a traitor. The exact opposite, in fact.”

She eagerly searched his face for any traces of the same conclusion that she’d made, any signs that he could give up his hunt for her brother. But the grim expression never lifted from his face, and sheknew—

“You don’t care.” Icy dread flared out to her fingertips, turning all of her numb. “You don’t care that he’s not a traitor. You still think him a murderer. That’s why you’re still planning on chasing after him, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

That single word reverberated through her like cannon fire. “My brother didn’t murder your friend. But whoever did—”

“Diana—”

She repeated forcefully, “Whoeverdid is also capable of doing the same to you. You know that, yet you’re risking your life anyway.”