“Reading!” Wakefield shouted. “Is this your still?”
“Fuck you,” Griffin replied, and elbowed a short, bandy-legged tough in the face.
Wakefield drew a pistol, aimed it over Griffin’s head, pulled the trigger, and nearly deafened Griffin with the boom! He looked at Griffin again, frowning, and his lips moved, but Griffin couldn’t hear him.
He was jostled from behind and Griffin turned. Deedle was using one of his pistols to beat a man about the head.
Griffin felt a touch on his shoulder and swung his sword.
Wakefield jerked up, then cupped his hand about his mouth, shouting. “Are these your men?”
“Would I be fighting my own men?” Griffin asked in exasperation.
He dodged aside as a man staggered toward him, then kicked the fellow’s feet out from under him before stomping him once viciously in the head. He glanced around. Most of the Vicar’s men were fleeing in disorder, routed by the more experienced fighting of the soldiers.
“It appears you have a business rival, then,” Wakefield observed.
He drew his sword and leaned down to slap the blade against the face of a charging rough. The man spun with the force of the blow and his own momentum, and Griffin finished him off by hitting him across the back of the head with the hilt of his sword. Griffin watched the man slump to the ground and then turned to Wakefield with a sarcastic reply on his lips.
But he saw a movement beyond Wakefield’s giant horse, and Griffin’s shoulders tensed in horror instead.
There at the mouth of the alley, Hero was picking her way delicately toward the fight, the footman beside her armed only with a lantern and a wavering drawn pistol.
“Christ,” Griffin breathed.
Wakefield glanced over his shoulder. “What the hell is my sister doing here, Reading?”
* * *
THOMAS HAD NEVER knelt to anyone. He was aware as he looked up at Lavinia how humble the position was, but that was appropriate: He was a petitioner for her hand. Indeed, he was desperate for her hand. If Lavinia left him, he’d have nothing. If she asked him, he’d crawl to her on hands and knees.
Had she any idea the straits she’d left him in?
But her brown eyes had filled with tears that made them glitter. “You know you cannot marry me, Thomas. You’ve told me so many times before.”
She started to turn from him, but he was up and off the rug in a thrice, taking her hand, holding it between his own. “I’ve told you so, but I lied, Lavinia. Both to me and to you. I can marry you.”
“But what about Anne? What about your fears of betrayal?”
He felt ignoble panic rise in his chest. “They don’t matter.”
“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “Yes, they do. Anne horribly betrayed you, and you haven’t trusted a woman since. I can’t live with the constant fear that I’ll do something that you’ll misinterpret.”
“No!” He closed his eyes, trying to control himself so he could make this important plea. “I was a cad, I admit it, to ever doubt you. You never strayed from me when we were together. You weren’t the one who found someone else. I was.”
“But—”
“No, hear me out.” He squeezed her hand. “I know I am the problem. Griffin told me that he’d never seduced Anne, yet I refused to give him the satisfaction of believing him. Please, please, Lavinia, trust me. Let me prove I can change.”
She was shaking her head, trying ineffectually to wipe at the tears. “What of parliament? Or the succession of the marquessate?”
“Don’t you see?” He shook his head, searching for the words, he who was known for his eloquence on the floor of the House of Lords. “None of that matters. Without you, I am a shadow of a man, a mere wisp. Parliament, even the marquessate, can survive without me, but I cannot survive without you.”
She made a sort of gasping sound.
“I love you, Lavinia,” he said, desperate now. “I don’t think that’s ever going to change, because I’ve tried to stop and I can’t. I love you and I want to marry you. Will you marry me?”
“Oh, Thomas!” She was half laughing, half crying. Her eyes were red, her cheeks blotchy, and strangely she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
HERO STARTED RUNNING the moment she saw Griffin beside Maximus on his horse. They were lit by flickering torches and in the midst of a desperate battle, but all she could see were the two men. Dear God, was her brother about to kill her lover?
“My lady!” George shouted, and blocked a blow from a man with a large stick. “My lady, please!”
Griffin ducked around Maximus’s horse. He shoved aside a man in his way, stabbed another with his sword, and punched and then kicked a third. In all of this, he never took his eyes from Hero. Even in the dimly lit alley, his pale green eyes seemed to glow with a savage light. He reached her just as George gave a shout and fired his pistol.
Hero flinched and turned to see a man falling, bloody, at George’s feet.
Then her shoulders were grabbed, and she was swung around. Griffin glared down at her. He’d lost his wig and was bleeding from a cut on his forehead. Blackened blood was drying on the right side of his face, his right eye gleaming in the midst of the gore like a demon.
She almost fainted from the relief of seeing him alive and whole. Thank God she’d arrived in time. Thank God she’d not have to spend the rest of her life mourning him. Thank God—
Griffin opened his mouth. “What the hell are you doing here, you bloody stupid woman?”
She blinked and stiffened. “I just spent the last hour traveling across London to get to you!”
“I told you never to go into St. Giles alone!” He shook her.
“I had George—”
He snorted. “George! One man! And after dark. Have you completely lost your senses?”
She thrust up her chin. “I was coming to rescue you, you… you cad!”
Tears of humiliation and hurt were flooding her eyes. She shoved away from him and turned to flee.
He muttered a completely inappropriate curse and grabbed her from behind. He swung her around, and then his mouth was on hers, hot and angry and oh so alive.
She was glad—so very glad—that he was well, even if he’d just been awful to her, that she opened her lips beneath his and wrapped her arms as tightly as she could around his neck. Sight and sound and place disappeared until it was just the two of them, alone in their own world. Her heart was beating loud in her ears. She could smell gunpowder and sweat on him, and the sharp, acrid scents made him more real. More alive. She could taste her own tears on his lips—tears of joy.