Page 101 of A Scottish Bride for the Duke
“This is four,” he said. “Give me evidence against Moreton, and you can have the other four.”
Briggs narrowed his eyes. “Eight hundred, now.”
“And how do I know you’ll follow through instead of taking the money and running?” Adrian dropped the bag on his desk, where it landed with a heavychink, and leaned over it. “I am not a fool, much as I am sure you’d like to paint me as one.”
“I never said anything about?—”
“You’ll have the full amount on completion. Give me the evidence, and I’ll give you the money.” He smiled thinly. “You need have no worries that I would cheat you out of it. I have no need to keep it.”
Briggs’s lip curled at such an overt and arrogant brag, but Adrian didn’t have the energy or the desire to care about the opinion of a man who had proven himself to be a murderer of the worst degree. A hired hand. A man who cared so little for honor, he would not have picked it up off the floor if he’d found it lying there.
If he could have done, Adrian would have had nothing more to do with him.
Unfortunately, for Isobel’s sake, and for the sake of removing Moreton from the world at large, that would prove impossible.
At least for now.
“And I’m supposed to take you at your word?” Briggs demanded. “Putting meself on the line and for what?”
“The lure of eight hundred pounds,” Adrian said sharply. “Moreton will have nothing to say about the matter, because I will use the evidence you provide to put him away forever. And I have no intention of revealing your actions to any magistrates.” Adrian sat back down. “And I rather suspect you’d escape even if they did attempt to lock you up.”
Briggs’s eyes gleamed. “I’ve got my contacts.”
“As I suspected. So, in truth, you have very little to lose from our arrangement. And I have no reason not to pay you for workwell done. In fact, I suspect you could cause me significant inconvenience if I weren’t to pay you.”
He looked at the other man, sitting in his chair as though he owned it—and Adrian suspected he had come by very little in his life honestly.
“Tell me, Mr. Briggs, have you been to Scotland?”
“Might’ve done.” Briggs stuck a finger down the side of his neck, loosening his collar. “Don’t know why it’s any business of yours.”
Adrian remembered what Isobel had told him—the things she had overheard. Moreton had been facing up to someone who wanted more money. Blackmail. And having met Briggs for himself, Adrian could well believe the man capable of both traveling to Scotland in order to blackmail a lord, and thinking himself untouchable enough to blackmail.
No doubt hedidhave contacts. But Adrian was a duke.
“Let me make myself clear,” he said, leaning over the desk and facing up to Briggs, who watched him with more of that sly intelligence. “You may blackmail whoever else you like in your life.
“I do not care what you do with your time, other than when it pertains to me. Iwillpay you for your assistance, but if you even consider trying to bleed me dry, then you will see just what power I wield. You may have contacts, but a whisper in theear of the right people, and I can have you strung up by dawn. Remember that.”
Briggs swallowed slowly, no doubt assessing how to take the threat.
Then he gave a cocky grin. “As you say, Your Grace. I wouldn’t dream of doing you dirty. All my business with you is above board. You have my word.”
Adrian eyed the hand the man extended to him and after a second’s hesitation, grasped it tightly enough. Briggs’s eyes widened.
“Good,” he said, low and threatening. “See to it you don’t disappoint me.” He released the other man and wiped his hand on a handkerchief. “Now where shall we meet for this exchange?”
“By the Thames, Your Grace, if it pleases you.”
Adrian eyed the man, then shrugged. “It pleases me well enough.”
Briggs gave him an address, which Adrian scrawled onto a piece of paper. Then he had his butler escort the man off the premises, warning Briggs not to remove anything from his person.
Then Adrian sank into his chair and rubbed his temples.
Everything was coming to a head. Moreton’s iniquity would soon be exposed, and if he was not hanged for his crimes, he would certainly be deported. This nightmare would finally be at an end, and he would have triumphed, just as he’d expected.
So why did he feel so empty?
