Page 153 of To Catch A Rogue

She continued on, repeating word for word what Balfour had said, leaving out the part about proof of Obsidian’s identity.

"As I said, lying," Balfour said with a sneer when she’d finally finished. "Who do you believe? The man who has faithfully served this court for the past three years, or an English agent?"

The court broke into whispers, and Balfour gave her a very small smile.

"Please," he murmured, "continue. Perhaps you can bring up that very delightful letter my wife found in her study?"

She’d thought Tatiana a puppet, but the woman was clearly involved in this treachery.

But… why?

All her intelligence said Tatiana adored her cousin, Elisabeta, and wanted to see her on the throne.

Her intelligence….

Luther.

With everything Lark revealed and the rush of the day's work, they hadn’t pursued the concept of a mole. But someone had been giving Balfour information. Someone had fed the Company of Rogues false leads.

Gemma circled Balfour, her fingers curling into a fist. No wonder he was so smug. He’d been ahead of them at every step. How she hated this man. Time to play her trump card. "There was one more witness who listened to every word you said in that study. Someone who has no reason to lie."

"I hope it is a good witness, my dear," Balfour murmured in English.

Gemma finally allowed herself to smile. "Oh, yes. I think he’s very credible."

"Me."

The voice rang through the throne room.

People gasped and heads turned as a man appeared in the shadows of the hallway, his heels clipping the marble floors. Resting his hand upon the hilt of the ceremonial sword at his side, he paused at the very top of the stairs.

There was no mistaking his identity.

"Saints’ blood," a woman whispered at her side. "What sorcery is this?"

"No sorcery," Sergey Grigoriev said with a shark's smile as he locked eyes upon Balfour. "But a trap all the same. The only problem, Vladimir, is you thought you were the one setting it."

For the rest of her life, Gemma would recall the look upon Balfour's face as he watched Sergey Grigoriev come back from the dead.

"Check. And mate," she whispered, crossing directly in front of her most hated enemy.

"Sergey?" His wife stepped forward with a hesitant frown. "What is this? You were shot. You... you died. We all saw you die."

Balfour tried to push forward, but the two guards who'd dragged Obsidian into the throne room slammed him to his knees.

Sergey sauntered down the stairs. "This English delegation you claim tried to kill me came to me yesterday with news of an assassination you'd intended. Of course, I didn't know whether to believe them. I thought you my friend, Vladimir. What an outlandish claim of blackmail and assassination. There was no proof, so how could I call you traitor when you had been so good to me all these years?"

She saw the muscle in Balfour’s jaw twitch as Sergey taunted him.

Clearly, whatever tension existed between the two men was significant.

"And then they told me they could give me proof. I could hear your treachery with my own ears. So I set a trap." Sergey patted his chest. "I wore a bladder filled with chicken's blood and challenged Dmitri Zhukov to a duel. When I fell, my friend, Paul, injected me with a concoction of poisons that would slow my heart rate enough to consider me dead. As soon as I was whisked away to my room, he revived me with blood.

"I was there, Vladimir, listening through the English delegation's device when you told Zhukov you wanted my death to look like an accident. You did not want it to happen in front of the court.

"You said you were the next thing to a god. You said princes knelt at your feet, and then you spoke of even the tsarina herself dancing to your tune.Or her replacement. Were you planning to murder our tsarina too?" Sergey drew his sword with a steely rasp.

Balfour glared bloody murder at Gemma as the court erupted in cries of horror and rage. "This is a lie."