“No, no! You cannot do—” Frederick began but already Alex was prepared. His free hand swung upwards just as Emmaline danced away. Still wearing the brass knuckles, he jammed them into his uncle's throat.
“You killed my father. I should kill you!”
Like an angel upon his shoulder, Emmaline was there, both hands gripping his bulging bicep. “No! Alex! You are not the monster they made you into!”
She pulled on his arm, but he did not budge. She was nowhere near strong enough to stop him. Had he wanted to, he could have crushed his uncle's windpipe just as he had confessed to doing to his father.
Instead, in one swift movement, he released the pressure on his throat and aimed his knuckles at the blade still gripped in his hand. He felt. more than heard. the bones in his uncle's wrist snap as the blade was knocked from his hand.
Frederick crumpled onto the ground, clutching his wrist to his chest, weeping like a child.
“Who is sniveling now?” Alex asked, crouching before his uncle. “Lucky for you, my wife is right. I am nothing like you.”
Alex spat upon his uncle then and rose back to his feet. “You are no uncle of mine.”
With that, he turned to Emmaline but quickly realized she was gone from his side. Panicked, he looked for her and found her crouched over a huddled mass in the corner.
“Papa, papa? Can you hear me?”
Realizing it was her father, Alex ordered Sebastian, “Don't take your eyes off that snake,” throwing his hand in Frederick's direction before he rushed to his wife's side.
Dropping down beside her, he helped her to sit her father up.
“Moreau, can you hear me?” Alex demanded, tapping his cheek, holding him against the wall by his shirt.
Just when he thought they had arrived too late, with Emmaline weeping on his shoulder, her father opened one eye and smiled a bloody smile at him.
“I was wrong about you, dear boy,” the earl said, raising his bloodied hand to Alex’s shoulder.
Hearing his voice, Emmaline looked around, the tears drying in her eyes.
Still clutching Alex's shoulder, the earl lifted his free hand to clutch Emmaline's face. “You were right, my sweet girl. He was not the monster I believed him to be.”
Emmaline turned her still watery gaze on Alex then and he felt his heart breaking with the sheer emotion he found there.
“I was a damned fool,” he said, choking up. “Can you ever forgive me?”
Emmaline's gaze darkened then, and she scowled at him. Just when he thought she would claim him the devil, declaring she never wished to see him again, she lunged and grabbed his face. Kissing him ever so passionately, she very nearly knocked him over. He might have fallen if not for the earl’s surprisingly sturdy grip on his shoulder.
And when Emmaline pulled back, she declared, “There is nothing to forgive.”
Chapter 29
Still reeling from all that had happened, Emmaline stood on the pavement outside Frederick’s dockside home and shivered. With her father being tended by physicians inside the house, there was no way she would have left. Nor would she have missed watching Frederick being dragged away in irons behind the still imposing figure of Tiny who took four officers and Alex to force him into the back of the jailer’s cart.
It was only once they were both inside it, the bolts shoved home, that Alex joined her and her brothers and said, “Might I have a moment with my wife?”
Sebastian and Victor, who had said very little since being removed from the house, stood like stone statues on either side of her, just at her back as if they had no intention of budging.
“I am safe with my husband,” Emmaline assured them and reluctantly, they moved away to offer their statements to officers who looked quite bemused at the goings on.
When she looked to Alex, his gaze was filled with surprise.
“Husband?” he whispered in a questioning tone.
Emmaline placed a hand on his forearm. “That is what you are, is it not?”
“Yes, but I… after all that has happened, I thought that you—”
