Wren had put on his trousers, Aiden had done the same and Emilia had taken Aiden’s dressing gown and wrapped it around herself. Wren might have wondered at how erotic she could look in a garment two sizes too big for her frame, but at that moment, he couldn’t focus on something so pleasurable.
All he could see was Aiden’s drawn, worried expression as they sat together on the settee by the fire and Wren finally handed over the letters that had drawn them away from fantasy. Permanently, he feared.
“Shall I read them out loud?” Emilia asked. “So Aiden will know and Wren can hear the words again?”
“Please,” Aiden said as he covered her shaking knee with his hand to steady her.
She glanced at him in thanks and then cleared her throat. “The first is from Wilburn. He writes,I am disappointed to find that you are still in London, Mr. Wren, though I suppose you must exhaust all closest ties before you go farther. But I expect results as you head to Kent.” She cut herself off. “Why did you tell him Kent?”
Wren shrugged though he felt anything but nonchalant about this conversation. “Because it’s in the opposite direction from here.”
She blinked for a moment and her cheeks paled. “Because…because you think he might send someone else after us?”
He didn’t respond for a moment as he tried to find a way to keep her calm. At last Aiden filled the space. “He’s right to be careful, isn’t he?”
She nodded and bent her head. “Yes.” Her breath was shaky a moment and then she continued to read. “Your question about my wife’s relations is a good one. As difficult as she is, she has not kept the favor of her cousins or friends over the years, so I doubt she has anywhere to run to. A point in our favor. I’ll look for your next letter in a few days. Wilburn.”
Her lips were pressed hard together as she set the page away. “Hekeptme from my cousins and friends,” she said through gritted teeth.
“I’m sure he did,” Aiden soothed softly. “Isolating you was in his best interest.”
Wren was pulsing with rage, but he refused to show it and take away from Emilia’s pain by forcing her to soothe or comfort him. “And his belief that you are friendless is in ours. He doesn’t seem to suspect anything still about our true relationship to each other. But...but if you look at that next page from Huntington, you’ll see that things have still taken a turn.”
He hated that Emilia’s hands began to shake as she lifted the next page in the letter. Unlike the viscount, whose handwriting was flowing and overdone, Huntington’s was more sharp and crisp. Rather like the man himself.
“I include the viscount’s response to the letter you had me post here in London and also send a report from what I’ve been looking into. I fear you were right to worry, old friend. It seems the viscount has looked into other ways of finishing this domestic issue with your friend. He was overheard seeking less than savory characters willing to take care of her?—”
Emilia broke off with a cry and pushed to her feet, the letter fluttering to the floor as she paced away, her shoulders shaking with emotion. When Wren began to get up to follow her, she held up a hand and waved him back. She stood at the fire, her head bent.
Aiden swallowed hard and reached out to touch Wren’s arm before he swept up the page she had dropped and continued reading from where she had become overwhelmed. “He was overheard seeking less than savory characters willing to take care of her with violence.” Aiden’s jaw twitched, but he continued, “Immediately I sent in my partner, Barber, to offer his services so that another criminal wouldn’t take charge and create actual danger. Barber has convinced him he’s the one for the job and for now we don’t have any intelligence that he has hired anyone else to do the same. Please respond to me as quickly as possible and let me know your next desired step.” Aiden balled the paper up and threw it to the floor. “And then he signs it. Bloody hell.”
Wren nodded. “Although there was no doubt earlier based on what you experienced, I think we have fulsome proof now that Wilburn intended and still intends to end your life, Emilia.”
Her breathing became steadier and she turned. Wren’s heart broke at the emptiness that was back in her stare. She had become so much more alive in the days the three of them had spent together where the hours of pleasure had let her forget fear and pain. But that was over now. He could see it by the set of her jaw.
“Yes. And there will be little we can do about it. Wilburn is powerful and influential. I’m certain he has left no trail of proof of his intentions toward me, so there will be no way to involve anyone to help in an official capacity. There is only one answer, though I suppose I always knew it.”
Wren tilted his head. “And what is that?”
“I must leave the country. There is nothing else to do but start anew. And I must do it…I must do it alone.”
CHAPTER10
Emilia
If the circumstances she found herself in were not so dire, Emilia might have laughed at the response of her two lovers when she declared she would flee without them. Both men leapt to their feet, talking over each other, gesturing wildly. How she loved them both for desiring to save her. But because she loved them, she couldn’t let them do that.
“Please,” she said sharply, and their arguments stopped at her tone, which she gentled. “Please. I know you both feel a desire to help me. But to do so would be a sacrifice of yourselves. Wren, you have built a large clientele of influential and powerful people who come to you. And Aiden, you’re a sought-after barrister. If you took me as your responsibility and fled, you would both lose everything. And Wilburn would do everything in his power to discredit your names far and wide even if he couldn’t find us.”
“Do you think that matters to us?” Aiden asked.
“It matters tome,” Emilia said softly. “I would be brokenhearted if I knew I’d destroyed what you both worked so hard to create. That was never what I wanted for you two.”
“Emilia,” Wren said, crossing to her, catching her hands in his. “We’ve said it so many times to each other since being reunited, but it seems you need to hear it again. Aiden and Iloveyou. We love you and being together again is like magic. We won’t lose it again.”
“But magic disappears on the wind, it’s not…it can’t be real,” she whispered, and it broke her already broken heart to do so, especially when both men flinched. “Please, Wren, Aiden, don’t…don’t make this harder than it must be. Let me go. Let me go and move on with your lives so that I know that you two were still…together. Were still prosperous.”
She could see Wren wanted to argue and he opened his mouth to do so, but Aiden stepped up. He pressed a hand to Wren’s bare forearm. “Wren,” he said softly. “If this is what Emilia wants, we can’t force her to live the life we would choose for her.”
