Was it his crazed imagination—or did her bosom rise on a fuller breath?
“Don’t leave me, love.” His voice cracked, and he cradled her to his chest, saying in an agonized whisper, “I’m not letting you go. Wherever you go, I’m coming with you...”
Emma coughed. Sputtered out water.
“Darling?” he said in a torment of hope.
Her lashes lifted. “A-Alaric?”
“Aye, lass.” His eyes stung. “I’m here.”
She coughed out more water. “Your aunt... shedruggedme.”
Even as tears scalded his throat, his lips twitched at her indignation.
“I know, and I’ll be dealing with her shortly.” He smoothed a damp tendril from his beloved’s cheek. “You’re safe now. I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”
“You gave us a fright, Em,” Kent said gruffly.
Emma turned her head in his direction. “Thank you for rescuing me, Ambrose.”
“That’s what brothers are for. Although ’tis your duke here who deserves most of the credit.”
Emma looked up at Alaric, her expression so adoring that his throat burned once more.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you,” he said hoarsely. “So damned much.”
He kissed her reverently, and in the warm vitality of her response, his fear receded.
When they reached the shore, Will was waiting. He had Patrice under his watch. As Alaric faced their aunt with Emma in his arms, he knew it was time for a reckoning.
He bit out a single word. “Why?”
The dowager’s plaintive smile made his gut roil. “Because, my dear boy, I was trying to save you, care for you, as I’ve always done. She,”—the bitch pointed a finger at Emma, and Alaric’s muscles bunched protectively—“would have hurt you. Just like Laura did.”
“You tried to kill my wife. Tried to kill me and murdered Clara Osgood instead,” he said through his clenched jaw. “Lily White confessed that it was you who hired her to put poison in my whiskey.”
Emma stiffened in his embrace. “Iknewthe maid was important.”
Patrice’s expression turned pleading. “Lady Osgood was an accident. How was I to know that she would drink your whiskey and so much of it? I wasn’t trying to kill you, dear boy, but to make you understand that you need me. You were pushing me away, Alaric. Distancing yourself.” Her eyes glittered with tears of madness. “I calibrated the dose perfectly to give you a reminder of your illness—what we had been through together, all those days and nights I spent nursing you. I never intended to harm you permanently. I planned to come to London andsaveyou.”
At Emma’s gasp, Alaric knew that she’d reached the same nefarious conclusion as he had.
Insides churning, he said, “There was no illness, was there? It was you all along. All that I suffered—it was at your hand.”
His aunt licked her lips. “It wasn’t my fault. I had no choice.”
“No choice?” Emma choked out. “You crazedwitch—”
Alaric held his wife back. “Let her finish.”
“It was my husband’s fault,” the dowager said, her lips trembling. “I loved my Henry—gave him everything—yet he betrayed me. With your whore of a mother.”
Shock jolted Alaric. He heard Will’s chuff of surprise.
“It was at a house party at Strathmore. We’d invited our poor relations to see the castle. And how did they repay us?” Rage lit Patrice’s eyes. “The slut seduced my duke—her own husband’s cousin—and got herself with a bastard.”
