“Because I didn’t breed you sons to carry on your title. It was all you wanted from me. You won’t spend the time and money, nor risk the scandal for a divorce. So you intend to wipe me off the face of the earth and then remarry.”
His lips pinched. “You are delusional, Emilia. Hysterical.”
She shivered at his use of words that had sent many a good woman to Bedlam for her so-called sins. But it would not be her. “I am getting on the ship with these men,” she said, slowly and succinctly. “You will not stop me. You won’t interfere.”
“And why is that?” Wilburn asked.
She glanced back at Aiden and Wren. They were both tense, coiled and ready to strike. But she wanted to end this a different way. It was so perfectly clear now.
“Because your wife is dead,” she said. “She died when I left you. It is not Emilia, Viscountess of Wilburn who will board this vessel and sail from London, never to be seen again. It will be a woman you never met.” She stepped toward him even as Aiden grabbed for her hand and tried to keep her close.
Wilburn’s gaze flitted over her, though and she could see she had sparked his interest.
“Declare me dead,” she said. “I died in an accident, I drowned in the sea and my body never washed up, I wasted away from a venereal disease, I don’t care what you say. Take all that I have, all that I brought to our marriage financially. And move on.” She tilted her head. “Or challenge me here on this dock, and these two men will still ensure I escape, but I will make every day of your life as much of a living hell as you made mine.”
She felt Aiden and Wren move, flanking her on either side, steady and intimidating as they all stared down a man who had ruled over her for the last time. His cheek twitched and then he nodded. “That is acceptable. But if you ever step foot in England again?—”
“Careful now,” Wren said softly. “I wouldn’t finish that sentence.”
Wilburn let out his breath in a shaky sigh, and then he pivoted and walked away. She watched him and it was only when he had disappeared out of sight that her knees buckled and Wren and Aiden caught her to hold her up.
“Come, let’s board,” Aiden said, rushing the two of them up the gangplank and onto the relative safety of the ship.
They were directed to the stateroom they would share, though Emilia hardly heard the words of the servants who directed them, nor saw the lovely room that Richard Fitzroy had somehow procured at the last moment. Her mind spun too much on what she had just done. She had rid herself at last of the man who had ruled and ruined her world for nearly a decade.
And she had killed her old self in the process. Fully stepped into the future. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Aiden shut the stateroom door and then he and Wren were coming to her, their arms sliding around her, their comfort loosening some of her fear.
“You were magnificent,” Aiden said against her hair. “My God, it was like watching an empress.”
“I only hope it will work,” Emilia murmured. “That he will hold to his side of the bargain and not seek me out again.”
“When we get to Athawick, we’ll change our names to something more permanent,” Wren promised as he drew back. “He won’t know them. And I doubt he’ll waste time on it since I assume he has been heartily compensated for his loss by whatever you just granted him.”
“Far too much,” Aiden said with a frown. “Your money had been well-invested, Emilia. It is no small sum.”
“No sum is too large to be free of him,” she said.
Wren paced away and moved to the window of the stateroom where he looked out on the dock below. The bell had begun to ring and the last passengers were boarding in a rush. “I hate that he’ll escape, though. That he won’t be punished for his ill deeds and will even be free to commit more against whatever poor woman he marries next.”
Emilia smiled slightly and Aiden cocked his head. “What is that look?”
Now she laughed because her freedom was truly beginning to set in and it felt like everything right and wonderful. “He won’t, I don’t think. This morning as we were saying our goodbyes, Huxley whispered to me not to worry about Wilburn. That his specialty was making sure pricks, as he called them, got what was coming to them. So Wilburn will not be unscathed, I don’t think.”
Wren’s eyes widened. “I pity the man who gets on Hux’s bad side.”
They stared at each other, smiling as the ship began to move. And then they moved to each other again, their arms around each other, the truth of what was happening so powerful and true that it was almost too much.
“We are free,” Emilia whispered. “Free to live. Free to love one another. All of us.”
Aiden pulled back and looked at them both and then he whispered, “If it wasn’t all of us, it had to be none of us. But by God, I prefer this way.”
“As do I,” Wren and Emilia murmured.
And then they kissed, just as they had when they’d parted all those years ago. A joining of three mouths, three bodies, three hearts that somehow made up one whole.
And it was everything to Emilia. As it would be for the rest of her life.
