Page 73 of After the Spy Seduces

She pointed behind him toward shore. But when Kit turned around, his heart stopped. The man was gone.

And so was Diana.

Steely fingers yankedat the ties cinched so tightly around her wrists that the bindings cut into her skin. They ripped the straps off her hands, painfully scraping them over her thumbs and fingers. A fierce shove to the middle of her back—

Diana stumbled forward and fell, landing so hard on her hands and knees that skin scraped across the rough boards beneath her.

With her freed hands, she pulled at the burlap sack that had been flung over her head and shoulders to keep her from seeing where they were taking her. Or who. She’d been grabbed from the rowboat so quickly that she hadn’t had the chance to scream before the cloth gag was forced between her teeth and the bag dropped over her head, all from behind.

But she had the chance now.

Tearing the gag from her mouth, she let out a scream so loud that it echoed off the wooden walls of the tiny room around her. No—not walls, not a room. Finely fitted boards forming the sides of a ship’s cabin. She could barely see them as her eyes adjusted to the bright light pouring in through the row of tiny windows lining the top of the cabin wall.

“Shut up!”

Her gaze darted to a man in the doorway, and she sucked in a deeper breath to scream again.

“Let the bitch scream her bloody ’ead off,” a second man reasoned as he came up behind the first and peered over his shoulder at her. “No one can ’ear her out ’ere on the water. No one’d bother checkin’ out no screamin’ woman i’ th’ first place, not on a ship wi’ sailors.”

As her eyes adjusted and she could finally make out their faces, the memory struck her like a blow. The two men who yanked her out of the rowboat and brought her here were the same two sailors who had chased her through the fairgrounds last night, the same men to whom she’d given her copy of the diary.

Her heart froze. Had they discovered that Garrett had switched out the real diary for a fake? Oh God—Meri!

The first man spat on the floor at her feet. “Demmed shame if the bitch found that gag shoved into ’er mouth again.”

Flexing his hands into fists at his sides, a malicious gleam shined in his eyes as he stepped into the room. Her hand strayed toward her skirt and the knife strapped to her calf. If that man dared to come after her, she’d make him regret it.

The second man grabbed his arm and stopped him. “Redcoat said not t’ touch ’er.”

Redcoat?

“I ain’t risking me skin fer ’er.” The second man pulled the first back out of the cabin and into the gangway. “Ye’d not either, if ye had a speck o’ brains ’bout ye.”

Stifling a wince of pain, she climbed to her feet. Her hands had been scraped raw from the bindings and from the splinters on the floor. “I demand that you release me this instant.”

Both men cackled loudly at that, but now she knew. Whoever Redcoat was, he’d hired them to come after her. And with a name like that, the man wasn’t French. Had Kit been wrong? Had the Foreign Office arrived early in Bradwell and come after her for passing secrets to the enemy?

“Who are you?” She stood her ground, refusing to let the two men think they’d cowed her, even though they actually terrified her. “Who hired you to kidnap me?”

She took a step forward, just to see how they’d react. As she predicted, the two men stepped deeper into the gangway outside the cabin. They didn’t like her, but they liked Redcoat even less.

So they had orders not to harm her. But given by whom?

“Was it the Foreign Office?” she pressed. “Or the people who took Meri?”

Her questions only gained her the same hostile stares as before. They had no idea what she was asking about.

“Redcoat’ll be speakin’ to you soon enough, I ’spect.”

“Who is he?”

He answered the question silently with a grin that showed missing teeth.

“He hired you to bring me here.” She fought to keep her voice calm and swallowed down her fear. “But I’ll pay you more if you let me go—twice whatever he’s paying you. My father’s a wealthy general. You can take the money he’ll give you and disappear.”

“Just what we need, eh?” The second man slapped the first on the back. “ ’Nother redcoat after us!”

“An’ this one a general, no less. Guessin’ we be climbin’ the ranks, eh?”