Page 77 of After the Spy Seduces

Or did. Until a few weeks ago, when he vanished.

“Only recently,” Morgan explained, “when it became clear that Paxton’s access to information was drying up. Since the general’s retirement, the major was becoming less and less valuable to the Foreign Office, and they needed another way to funnel false information to the Continent. So I agreed to work with the French. I let them believe that I was so angry at my father that I was willing to sell out my country for personal revenge. They believed it.”

So did everyone else. All of society believed that Garrett Morgan had been at odds with the general for years. Including the general himself.

Morgan nodded at the diary. “And then that surfaced.”

Without invitation, Kit picked up the little book and flipped through it. It was the original, right down to the scratch marks where the leather cover had caught on the wooden splinters when the general had twisted it out of the mangled cabinet. No one would have known to forge those.

“The French suspect that one of the men in King Louis’s court is working with the British, but they have no evidence of whom. So they turned to their British operatives, hoping someone would be able to provide it. And Paxton did just that.” He stepped back to lean against the wall, but even that casual pose signified a man who was never completely at ease. Another trait that Kit recognized in himself. “I went into deep hiding three weeks ago to travel to France, to find out what exactly the French wanted with the diary. I let everyone believe that I was visiting an old friend in the North.”

“Because you couldn’t pass along false information until you knew what the real secret was, the secret that you needed to keep hidden.” Not a guess. A part of normal Whitehall operations.

He nodded. “Paxton was desperate and acted before we were ready. He knew what was in the diary and convinced the French that it contained the information they needed. But Paxton never had access to the diary itself and so had no idea where the general kept it, except that he kept it under lock and key in his study.”

“But he thought Diana did,” Kit murmured. “And convinced her that you were being held for ransom.”

Which was why the Frenchman had refused to take the memoir pages at the tavern when she’d so adamantly offered them, and why the man had come after her a second time at the party. Paxton had no idea that she knew nothing about the diary.

“The major set up the meeting between Diana and the French, then undoubtedly helped them slip into the house.” His eyes narrowed. “But you were there to stop them. Both times.”

“Three times,” he corrected grimly. “I was also there when Meri was taken.” But that time, he’d been too late.

“I know where Meri is, and she’s unharmed. Unfortunately, we can’t yet bring her home for fear that Paxton will hear of it and know that we’re watching him. For now she’s safer where she is.”

Morgan was right, damn him. “And the diary? What’s in it,exactly, that makes the French want it so badly?”

He didn’t answer.

“You brought me here,” Kit reminded him, looking down at the map on the board that the men had been arguing over. A drawing of the bay and harbor, the village, the roads that spread out beyond the town toward London and Dover… What were Morgan and his men planning? “You need me, or you would have just ignored me. So answer my question.”

“I brought you here because you’re the only man right now whom Diana trusts.”

That pounded through him like a hammer strike.

“She told you about me and our meeting last night.”

That wasn’t a question, yet Kit answered, “Yes.”

“And she told you the truth about Meri and Captain Meredith.”

Kit remained silent. He wouldn’t betray Diana’s trust by answering.

Morgan nodded slowly, visibly pleased to be proven right by Kit’s silence. “And we’ll need that trust if anything goes wrong when we rescue her.”

In frustration, Kit tapped his finger against the diary’s cover. “What do the French want with this? Tell me, or I’ll leave and find a way to rescue Diana on my own.”

Morgan’s jaw tightened, but sitting back on the windowsill, he grudgingly explained, “The general was present at the windmill at Brye for a meeting between Wellington and the Prussians, two days before the battle at Waterloo. Also in attendance was a French general named Pierre LeFavre who didn’t want Boney back in power and was there to hand over Napoleon’s battle plans. LeFavre is now a highly regarded counselor in King Louis’s government who still keeps the British informed of French maneuverings. If they discover that, they’ll assassinate him, and England will lose our best informant in the French court.” He pushed himself away from the window and stepped forward. “Without that diary, they know nothing for certain. When I found out that the French were attempting to use Diana to get it, I left France immediately and arrived in England just after Meri was taken.”

“It isn’t like the French to come after a child.”

“Because it’s not the French. It’s Paxton himself.”

Which was why Paxton had been the one to find the ransom note, how Meri had disappeared without struggle or shouts…because he had been the one to take her.

“That’s why I came here, to place myself between the diary and Paxton,” Morgan explained. “He had to believe that he was being given the true diary, or the French would never stop looking for information against LeFavre or leave my family alone.”

Morgan’s involvement was more self-serving than that. “They would also know that they had a double agent in their midst.”