Page 88 of After the Spy Seduces

Grey walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.

“You knew,” Kit drawled to Morgan, yet kept his gaze on the closed door. “All this time…”

“Yes,” Morgan answered impassively.

“And you lied to me that day in the cottage.”

“Partially.” He paused. “But so did you.”

Kit swung his gaze sideways and narrowed it murderously on the man. His life was in upheaval, his future uncertain, and his damned shoulder throbbed with pain. He was in no mood for this.

Morgan sat down casually on the window sill and crossed his legs at his ankles, and arched an accusing brow. “You didn’t tell me that you’d been intimate with my sister.”

Christ.He was in no mood forthateither.

“That’s none of your damned business,” Kit growled and stalked over to the washstand. With his good arm, he poured water into the basin.

“She’s in love with you, you know.”

Kit glared over his shoulder at him, then splashed water onto his face with one hand.

“Which is good. Because you’re certainly in love with her.”

He missed, and the water spilled down his chest. With a curse, he snatched up the hand towel.

“Are you going to tell me that’s none of my business, too?”

His gaze shot angrily to Morgan’s in the mirror as he wiped his chest. “If I thought it would do any good.”

“It won’t,” he answered with a shrug of his shoulder. But then his teasing faded, replaced by grim sobriety. “My sister went through hell when John Meredith died, and she deserves to have a husband who loves her and would do anything to make her happy. And for some reason I can’t fathom, she’s fallen for you.”

Kit could barely fathom it himself. Yet he’d seen the emotion in her eyes that dawn when she made love to him on the deck of the sailboat, had heard her soft declaration right before the darkness swept over him.

But he also saw the worry and fear that had gripped her when she’d spoken about finding a stable and dependable man to be Meri’s father. He knew she didn’t mean him.

“You will marry her,” Morgan ordered.

He laughed darkly, regretting it when stabs of pain shot down his arm. As if he hadn’t thought of that already! A hundred times since he first kissed her, in fact, and every time, he ended up at the same realization— “Your sister doesn’t want to marry a man like me.”

“Oh yes, she does. She just doesn’t want to marry a soldier.” He gave a curt nod. “Congratulations on your court martial.”

Kit’s heart stuttered. His blood began to warm with a faint tingle that started in his bare toes and worked its way up his half-dressed body, until the hair on his head felt as if it were standing on end. It fell over him slowly, the realization that his world had just been irrevocably changed. That everything his life had been was now gone. An unnamable sensation seeped through him that he was floating weightless, tied to nothing that anchored him in place…nothing that held him down. For the first time since he entered the army over a decade ago, his life was his own, wide open to be anything he wanted it to be.

That was the unrecognizable feeling that crept through him…freedom. A freedom that only a few months ago—only a few days ago, in fact—seemed impossible.

The door opened. The soft metallic click of the latch snapped him back to the moment, so did the slam of pain through his shoulder when he turned too quickly toward it.

“Christopher,” Diana whispered breathlessly, stopping in the doorway and holding onto the door for support. As if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The relief that flooded her face shot through him with the force of cannon fire. So did the bright tears that glistened in her blue eyes, despite her rapid blinking to clear them away.

Letting his gaze wander deliberately over her, he drank her in. Never—neverhad he seen a more beautiful vision in his life than Diana at that moment. The sight of her pierced him. To his soul.

“Well,” Morgan drawled, pushing himself away from the window. “I know when I’m not wanted.”

Ignoring Kit, he stopped in front of Diana on his way out the door. He took her arms in his hands to make her face him, even as she attempted to crane her neck to see around him, to keep her eyes on Kit.

“Carlisle’s going to ask you something very important,” Morgan told her. Then he brought her attention back to him with a kiss to her forehead. “However badly he mangles it, say yes.”

Kit rolled his eyes.Good Lord.