Page 82 of After the Spy Seduces

The sound of the water changed, and a tingle raced down his spine. His muscles tensing, he reached beneath his jacket and withdrew his pistol. Keeping it lowered at his side and pointed at the floor, he fixed his eyes on the stairs.

His ears caught the soft thud of wood against wood as oars were secured, followed by the scuffling of footsteps across the stone and the creak of the old stairs. Two dark figures appeared from the shadows.

“Paxton,” Kit called out, wanting the man to know that he was there in the darkness, expecting him. And wanting Diana to know, as well.

“Christopher!” she cried out and impulsively took a step toward him, only to be yanked back.

With one arm wrapped around her waist to hold her in front of him as a shield, Paxton pulled a knife from the scabbard at his waist and held its sharp end pointed at Diana’s chest. The blade shined in the moonlight. “One wrong move from you, Carlisle, and Iwillkill her.”

And Kit would shoot the man dead where he stood. His eyes not leaving Paxton, he called out to her, “Diana, are you all right?”

“Yes.” But her voice was barely above a whisper. She was terrified, and damn that bastard for making her afraid!

“Good. Just do as I say,” he assured her, “and this will all be over soon.”

She gave a jerking nod, only for Paxton to pull her back against him, drawing a gasp from her.

“You’re not surprised to see me,” Paxton mused. “You figured it out.”

Kit clenched his jaw. “Just as I discovered that you were the one who murdered James Fitch-Batten.”

“Had to. He’d learned that I’d been communicating with the French and had to be silenced, or everything I’d worked so hard to achieve would have been ruined.”

Acid formed on Kit’s tongue, and he choked down the anger rising inside him. “So you killed him before he could reveal to Whitehall that you were selling General Morgan’s diary.”

“Oh, I was working with the French long before that,” he corrected with a dark laugh. “How do you think I knew which passage from the diary to offer them? I’ve been working with their operatives and contacts since shortly after Waterloo, along with other countries across the continent.”

“You’ve been offering up secrets to the highest bidder, you mean.”

“If there’s one thing that the wars taught me, it’s that exclusive alliances are worthless.” He smiled tightly. “Including those with England, even as part of His Majesty’s army.”

“Why do it? You were a hero in the wars.”

“I still am a hero. Just not one of ours.” He tightened his hold around Diana, and the fleeting look he darted at her when she cried out softly in fear registered exactly how much the man despised her and her family. “I did it for the same reason that Benedict Arnold switched sides in the American war.”

“Self-interest?” Kit bit out.

His jaw clenched. “Lack of recognition and no chance of being given the position I deserved. I was passed over for promotion after the Battle of Toulouse because I was a brewer’s son. But even then I still foolishly thought that I’d be recognized for my valor eventually, that I’d be given the accolades that I deserved. Then came Waterloo, yet I was rewarded with nothing. Nothing!”

“That’s not how promotions work, you know that,” Diana interjected softly. “There are only so many men who can—”

He grabbed her by the hair and yanked back her head, placing the knife at her throat. He leered at her, his face close to hers. Kit saw her eyes squeeze shut as Paxton half-panted out in anger, “The wars are over. My only chance for promotion now is by buying one. But how does a man do that when he’s surviving on an officer’s salary and not a member of the aristocracy? He’s damned from the start.Thatwas when I decided that I had to take matters into my own hands.”

“By selling information to the enemy?” she choked out.

The terror in her voice made Kit’s hand tighten around his pistol. But in the darkness, with Diana positioned in front of Paxton like that, he couldn’t shoot without risking Diana’s life. And that he wouldneverdo.

“All kinds of wonderful information, right there at my fingertips, garnered through the general and his connections to the War Department. That’s why I went with General Morgan into the damnable countryside, into self-exile at Idlewild. Even retired, he had access to so much, which meant that I had access to it by extension. When he wrote about his experiences in the Waterloo campaign, I knew they were worth their weight in gold.”

“And you’d used a little girl and a woman in the process,” Kit interjected, wanting Paxton’s attention away from Diana.

“Lots of innocent women and little girls died in the wars,” he countered, his arm sliding around Diana’s throat to hold her pressed against him. He lowered the knife to her belly. “What difference do two more make?”

“Youknewus,” Diana accused. “For God’s sake! Meri loved and trusted you.”

“You didn’t.”

His reply stirred a low warning in Kit’s gut. He heard it in the man’s voice—revenge. Suddenly, this exchange had become so much more dangerous.