A cry of frustration tore from her. She pounded her fists against the door, screaming and beating until her throat became raw and pain shot up from her hands into her forearms.
When she was too exhausted and upset to raise another hand to strike the panel, she turned around and sagged against the door, then slid slowly to the floor. She held her head in her bloodied hands and choked back the self-pitying sobs that would do her no good.
Lifting her head and blinking until her stinging vision cleared, she swept her gaze around the cabin.
Small and cramped, at less than eight feet long, six feet wide, and barely big enough to contain two built-in bunk beds and a small side table…clearly an officer’s berth, but not grand enough to belong to the captain. It was the first mate’s. Or one that was booked by wealthy passengers. She and her family had lived in one almost identical to this on the voyage back from India, located just below the aft deck of the ship and tucked away in the stern. Mostly likely, this one was the same, which meant that there was no way out through the tiny row of windows on the far wall. Even if she had been able to fit through one of them, a twenty-foot drop waited for her on the other side, straight into the cold water below. She’d drown within minutes.
The only way out was through this door.
Patience. She would have to bide her time before she could act. But she hadn’t been blindfolded and tied for long, which meant the ship was still anchored at Bradwell, although the rise and fall of it on the waves told her that they were anchored far out in the bay and close to the choppier water of the Channel. Which meant that she was still near Christopher and Garrett, still near their help…if only she could find a way to shore. Because neither of them knew where she was.
The brutal truth was that no one was coming to save her. She had to find a way to save herself.
Chapter 23
Kit raced down the hallway of the Mermaid toward the room they’d taken yesterday, praying to God that Diana would be there.
She had to be here! The moment he’d realized she was gone, he’d frantically searched the wharf for her, calling for her and shouting out at the crowd if anyone had seen a young blonde woman in a blue dress. For Christ’s sake, he’d even crawled down beneath the pier itself, in case she’d fallen out of the rowboat attempting to climb out.
Nothing. She was gone.
He desperately wanted to believe that she’d simply become too upset by their earlier conversation, enough to flee from the docks the first moment she had the chance. That she’d come back here to collect her things, though he’d told her not to. That she was even now in a hired post-chaise and bouncing her way across the countryside toward home, cursing him with every passing mile.
His pounding heart didn’t hold much hope. Yet he had to search first all the most probable places where he might find her. And then…
No. There was no then.
There was only finding her.
He flung open the door and charged into the room. “Diana!”
He stopped just over the threshold, and his chest sank. She hadn’t returned. Her things were still here. Her dress still hung on the wall hook, her little bag still tucked beneath the chair where he’d put it. The room was exactly the same as when they’d left last night, for nothing more than a stroll through the festival grounds.
“Carlisle.” A man stepped into the room behind him.
Kit lunged. In one smooth movement, he grabbed the man around the throat with one hand and by the right arm with the other. He threw the man back against the wall so hard that his back whacked loudly against the plaster and cracked it, so hard that the air whooshed audibly as it ripped from his lungs.
Kit forced his forearm beneath the man’s chin and against his windpipe, pinning him to the wall. The man gurgled, his eyes wide.
“Where the hell is she?” Kit pressed his arm harder against the man’s throat.
He reflexively gulped for air, his toes nearly lifted off the floor.
“What have you done with her?”
“Morgan,” the man rasped out breathlessly, his fingers clawing at Kit’s forearm to move him away. “Morgan…sent…for you.”
Kit leaned into the man with his full weight, carefully keeping his lower body positioned at an angle to make it harder for the man to suddenly find a burst of strength and kick him in the bollocks. “Why?”
“He wants to meet with you.” A second man’s voice was punctuated by the metallic click of a cocked pistol.
Kit didn’t move except to slice his gaze sideways to the man standing in the doorway, pistol drawn and pointed directly at him. “The hell I will.”
Behind his forearm, the man continued to struggle weakly, receiving just enough air to stay on his feet and keep from falling unconscious. Kit ignored him. The intruder in the doorway was now the bigger threat.
“Morgan warned us that you might not cooperate,” he drawled from behind the pistol. “He said we might have to be more persuasive. That we might have to divulge that the meeting regards his sister Diana.”
Slowly, Kit stepped back and lowered his arm. The man fell limp against the wall, then slid to the floor. His hand went to his throat, and he wheezed as he struggled to gulp back his breath.
Kit toed the man in the leg with his boot and chastised, “You should have said so sooner.”
With every muscle in his body alert and ready to spring, he faced the second man, then nodded toward the gun. “You should put that damned pistol down before it goes off and hurts someone.”
The man’s eyes glinted, yet he lowered the gun. Keeping the barrel safely pointed away, he eased down the hammer, then tucked it into the holster beneath his coat.
“Who the hell are you, and who are you working for?” Kit demanded.
One of the players in this game had taken Diana. Now it was just a matter of discovering who. And then killing the bastard when he caught him.
“Answers come later.” Gesturing into the hall, he stepped back from the doorway. “Now, we have to leave.”
“Not until you tell me about Diana.”
“She’s safe for now.” He tugged at his leather gloves. “But not if you keep delaying. Morgan will explain everything.”
Grudgingly, Kit followed him out of the room. Behind him, the other man moaned softly, still curled in a ball on the floor.
As he stepped past the man in the hall, Kit stopped and leveled his gaze on him. Hard. He leaned closer, making no mistake that he would kill him if necessary.
“Let me be clear,” Kit said slowly. “If one hair on Diana’s head is harmed, I will hunt down you and all of your associates.” His voice lowered to an icy threat. “And I will slit you open from your throat to your balls.”
The man gave a knowing nod. “We were warned about that, too.”
He stepped away from Kit, leading him out of the hotel and through the village.
They walked side by side in silence, neither man glancing at the other, but both ready to strike at a moment’s provocation. They walked not toward the docks as Kit had suspected, but up the winding street leading away from the waterfront, where stone and brick row houses lined the road.
“The last one.” The man gestured toward an abandoned weaver’s cottage, then glanced cautiously up and down the street to make certain no one was following them.
When they reached the house, the man rapped his knuckles against the blue-painted door. A knock answered from within. He silently lifted his gaze to Kit’s, then knocked three times, paused, and knocked once more.
The door opened with a soft clanking of its old metal latch and a rusty groan of its hinges. Kit could see nothing inside the dark row house as he peered into it from the footpath, but he followed the man inside, despite the wariness that prickled at his nape. He had no other choice but to follow.
“This way.” The man signaled to the guard at the door to lock it behind them, then led Kit up the narrow stairs to the attic room.
The space where a former occupant
had surely once worked a loom now stood empty, except for a makeshift table near the windows that was constructed of a board laid across two tall barrels. A handful of men crowded around it and argued, pointing at a map spread across the board.
But the man in the center crossed his arms over his chest and listened intently, not saying a word. Until he glanced up at Kit.
Garrett Morgan didn’t move a muscle or a give a single twitch of his facial expression, but Kit sensed a change in him. A hardening. The same way a lion would tense when it saw its prey.
Or the same way the prey would when it saw the lion.
“Carlisle.”
“Morgan,” Kit answered, his face held carefully inscrutable as he stopped in his steps, when what he wanted to do was leap over that table and grab the bastard by the throat.
The men who had been arguing fell silent and exchanged looks as they glanced between the two of them. One reached a hand slowly beneath his jacket for a weapon, but he was smart enough not to withdraw it.
“You’ve arrived.” Morgan raked an assessing gaze over Kit, head to toe. “Good.”
He drawled, “How could I have refused such a gracious invitation?”
Morgan’s mouth twisted, but he never moved his gaze from Kit. Not even when he turned his head slightly to address the others. “Leave us.”
The men complied, casting curious glances back at Kit as they shuffled down the stairs. They knew who he was. There was no mistaking the way he and Morgan had squared off across the room.
“So.” Kit hit right at the crux. “You’re a double agent.”
“And you’ve gone rogue.” He slid another gaze over Kit, this time more deliberate. “You’ll be dead in three days.”
“You’ll be dead sooner if you’ve done anything to harm Diana or Meri.”
The icy threat hung in the air between them for a long beat before Morgan answered, “I would never do anything to harm them.” Determination underpinned his voice. “I’m here to save them.”
Kit stepped forward, his eyes narrowed on Diana’s brother. How could this man be Garrett Morgan? He knew Morgan from before Fitch’s death. Had seen his weak attempts at gambling, drinking, and whoring in London, had heard his excuses for everything that had gone wrong in his life. Especially the blame he’d heaped upon the general for being an unforgiving father who expected too much from his only son.
This man wasn’t the Garrett Morgan he knew.
He stood tall, straight, and solid, with his shoulders broad in his shirtsleeves as he crossed his arms over his chest in a casual pose that belied the tension crackling between them. Not a trace of weakness was visible anywhere in him, right down to the steely stare of his eyes. This wasn’t a man who was a failure.
Apparently, nothing was as it seemed.
“Explain,” Kit ordered, stopping in front of the makeshift table.
“This all began years ago.” Morgan reached into his waistcoat and withdrew a small book. The general’s diary. He tossed it onto the table in front of Kit. “You’re just the most recent player to join the game.”
He placed his palms on the board, ignoring the diary as he bracketed it between his hands and leaned toward Morgan. He repeated in a low growl, “Explain.”
“I was twenty-two, out of the army and hating university. My family had just returned from India and set up household at Idlewild when I was approached by the Foreign Office. A story similar to yours, I understand.” Kit’s inscrutable expression never changed at that, but Morgan answered the unasked question, “Of course I researched you. The moment I heard that you were at the tavern the night of the failed exchange I knew you were more than simply an earl’s wastrel brother.”
Ignoring that, Kit demanded, “Why did they want you? The Foreign Office isn’t in the habit of recruiting untried men. And failed soldiers.”
“I did leave the army, but not for the reason you think. I wanted to make my own mark, but in the ranks, I was only General Thaddeus ‘Never Surrender’ Morgan’s son. There was no way to prove myself there. But there was with Whitehall, even if I had to keep my work secret until the mission was completed.”
“What mission?”
“Whitehall had heard that a British army officer was selling military information and War Department secrets. Because of my father’s rank and influence, I had access to army officers at all levels, in all assignments. So I spent two years tracking down the leak.” He grimaced. “Imagine my surprise to find the man right in my own household.”
Kit knew… “Paxton.”
“Yes.”
He shoved himself away from the table and straightened to his full height. “But he’s still in place, still working with the general. Why?”
“Once the Foreign Office knew what Paxton was doing, the decision was made to feed him false information that he could pass along to the French. More good could be done that way than by hanging him.”
Suspicion tingled at the backs of Kit’s knees. “You were doing more than simply reporting back on Paxton. You’re actively involved with the French. They think you work for them.”
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.”
After the Spy Seduces Page 23