“Go to hell, Swift,” he forced himself to say now. He would be damned if he would allow the smarmy bootlicker to see him laid low.
“I daresay you’ll go there first.” Triumph underscored Swift’s taunt. “How does it feel, Duke? Betrayed by yet another cunny. The first time was Paris, was it not? And all these years later, here you are again, once more about to go to prison because you wanted to bed a whore.”
Griffin didn’t even think. He forgot about his ribs. Forgot about pain. Forgot, even, that he wore manacles, until he shot from the bench and launched himself at Swift. The impediment of his chains quickly became a boon when he planted his fists on either side of the other man’s head, pressing the chain tight against his throat.
He would accept his fate. He would go to prison if he must. He would fight to prove his innocence one way or another. But he would not, by God, allow any man to disparage Violet. No one called his woman a whore and got away with it.
“You will apologize for calling my wife a whore, you bastard,” he growled.
Swift’s grin faded as he struggled for breath. “Get off me, Strathmore.”
“Apologize,” he gritted, refusing to relent.
The temptation was there, to press the chain tighter. To cut off Swift’s air entirely. But then he would be guilty of murder, in addition to facing the charges of treason he was wrongly about to face.
The barrel of a pistol was suddenly jammed into his sore ribs.
“Stand down, or I will shoot you,” Swift ordered.
Damn it, what the hell had he been thinking?
Of course Swift was armed. When he did not move with enough haste, Swift forced the pistol harder into his ribs. He choked out a breath.
And as the blinding white surge of pain rocked through him, realization came with it, sudden and hard.In the waistcoat pocket of the Home Office.Why the hell had he never realized sooner? Why had he never even considered it? He had been looking everywhere, but in the most obvious direction.
The weasel within the League ranks was looking him in the eye and cocking his pistol.
“It was you,” he growled. “You are the one who planted the papers in my study. You are the bastard who sold the League secrets to John Mahoney, are you not?”
“You are deranged, Strathmore.” Swift clenched his teeth, delivering another vicious prod to Griffin’s ribs with the barrel of his gun. “Now get the fuck off me and plant your arse on the bench, or I will blow a hole straight through you.”
Even though he had issued a denial, Griffin had not missed the slight flare of the other man’s nostrils when he had leveled his accusations. Nor had he missed the way his pupils had dilated, growing huge and black and endless as the night.
Bloody hell.
He was right about this. He knew it instinctively. Just as he knew he must do something. Take action.
“I should kill you,” he said, pressing the chains harder into Swift’s throat. Already, a red mark had formed, dull and angry, a horizontal line over his Adam’s apple.
“I will kill you first.”
“Tell me the truth,” he persisted. “Admit you are The Gryphon.”
“Very well,” he snarled. “I am The Gryphon. But it is too late for you to do a goddamn thing about it.”
Swift shoved at him then, in the same moment the carriage rounded a bend, and Griffin lost his balance. The force of the motion dislodged his chains from Swift’s throat.
Swift took advantage, bringing his knee into Griffin’s midsection. Griffin doubled over at the blow, tears stinging his eyes and blurring his vision. He swung his manacled wrists toward Swift’s arm, hitting him in the wrist and knocking the pistol from his grasp as his finger pressed the trigger.
A gunshot tore through the carriage roof, the pistol skittering beneath the opposite bench. He and Swift moved in unison, scrambling for the weapon. They were in a battle of life and death now. There was one reason Swift had given him his confession, and one reason only: he intended to assure himself of Griffin’s silence by killing him.
The carriage slammed to a halt, sending them both flying. He was vaguely aware of the sound of hooves, of hollering beyond the carriage. He wrestled with Swift, weaker because of his injuries and at a disadvantage thanks to his restraints. The pistol was within his reach.
A feminine scream rent the air.
He would know that voice anywhere.
It was Violet’s.
