Page 67 of After the Spy Seduces

His bleak silence answered her.

“Why, Christopher?”

“Because Fitch deserves justice.”

“Not at the cost of your life.”

“If that’s what it takes,” he admitted. Yet something told her that he was answering for far more than her brother. But what?

He shoved himself up from the mattress. But there was no room to pace, with only two feet between the end of the makeshift bed and the short ladder that led up to the deck. He crouched by the ladder, unable to straighten to his full height in the tiny cabin, and stared silently out into the dark night through the open hatch.

“Christopher, you’re wrong.” Fear for his safety swelled inside her. She couldn’t bear to lose him now. “What happened to Fitch was terrible, but nothing you do can ever bring him back.Nothing.”

He stiffened, but didn’t turn to face her or crawl back into bed with her, where he belonged.

“I know what it’s like to lose someone you love to such a senseless act.” Her eyes stung as fresh grief swelled inside her. “I know how wrenching it is, how you would do anything to bring them back, how you would offer anything—including yourself.” She inhaled a long, jagged breath. “When John died, I spent days praying, bargaining, telling God to take me instead and make it all be some kind of terrible mistake, to let—” She choked. “To let me die, too.Anykind of sacrifice I could make to bring him back.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Grief is grief,” she corrected gently. “It’s always hell.”

A grisly laugh strangled in his throat. “Then I’m in a special kind of hell.”

“Yes.” With trembling fingers, she reached for his hand as it dangled at his side. Around the knot of grief in her throat, she whispered, “But you’re not alone.”

Her fingers tightened around his, and he shuddered. Yet he didn’t pull his hand away, and she foolishly took hope in that.

“You didn’t know what was going to happen that night. There was no possible way for you to have stopped…”

The icy realization for why he was so determined to risk his own life froze her blood, and her heart stopped. When it began to beat again a moment later, each beat pounded a brutal thud through her.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” With a tug to his hand, she pulled him around to face her. “That’s why you’ve been hunting Garrett all these months, why you went to the lengths you did—why you’re willing to risk your life.” She rose up onto her knees on the edge of the mattress. “Because you blame yourself. Because you think that you could have stopped it.”

“I don’t think it,” he bit out. “I know it.”

“It’s not your fault that—”

“I should have been there!” He grabbed her by the shoulders. “This wasn’t an accident. He wasmurdered, and I should have been there to stop it. For Christ’s sake!” His fingers dug into her arms. The anguish pulsating from him was palpable, the pain visible on his face. “He was my partner, and I wasn’t there when he needed me.”

“Christopher—”

“Instead of going with Fitch to Covent Garden, I went to Mayfair to spend the night tupping Lady Bellingham.”

He dropped his hands away, as if he couldn’t bare to touch her as he admitted this. As if he didn’t deserve to.

“That’swhy I wasn’t at my partner’s side that night as I should have been. Because I preferred being between the countess’s thighs to doing my duty. And Fitch was murdered because of it.”

The self-recrimination on his face sliced into her like a knife twisting into her belly.

“Sodon’ttell me that we’re all grieving for lost loved ones or that you understand the hell I’ve gone through—the hell I amstillgoing through. That we all want to make deals and sacrifices to bring them back.” A bitter laugh fell darkly from his lips. “Risk my life to get justice for Fitch? I shouldn’t have a life! It should have beenmein that alley,mythroat that was slit.”

He lowered his face until his eyes were level with hers, his mouth so close that she could feel the warmth of his lips shadowing hers. Fear that she was already losing him ripped her breath away.

“So you tell me, Diana. What sacrifice do I offer when I should already be dead?”

Chapter 20

Kit sat at the stern of the little sailboat, leaning against the short cabin wall and resting his forearm over one bent knee. He wore only his trousers, but even otherwise bare to the air, he felt none of the cold. He’d turned numb before he left the cabin, from the way Diana had stared at him when he’d finished confessing everything. As if he were once again no more to her than a stranger.