Chapter 5
Aboard the boat, Helen, Rose, Daisy, and I squeezed into the tiny cabin. The boatman worked the oars at the stern, allowing the vessel to drift gently downstream with the current.
A thin mist rose over the river, blurring the scenery along the banks.
"Helen, where exactly are we heading?" I asked.
"To Riverside," Helen replied. "I used my personal wealth to purchase a modest estate there. No one in the world knows about it."
She looked at me, her gaze stretching far into the past.
She stated, "Grace, I was exactly your age when I married into the Stanton family. My marriage was nothing more than a transaction, arranged by my father to secure the Stanton family's political backing.
"Your marriage was arranged because your father wished to cling to the nobility. We were treated exactly the same."
I listened in silence.
She continued, "I endured it for twenty years. I endured Richard parading one woman after another into our home. I endured raising his illegitimate children under my own name.
"I endured him draining my personal inheritance to fill the massive voids in his military funding. I honestly believed that once Edward grew up and took a wife, my suffering would finally come to an end."
Her voice was calm, as if she were reciting a tragedy that belonged to someone else.
Helen said, "However, I never expected Edward to be the exact replica of his father. The second I saw the way he looked at Charlotte, I knew the truth.
"That household was beyond redemption. If we continued to endure, your present would mirror my past, and my present would become your future.
"I refused to accept that fate."
She articulated every single word with heavy emphasis. "Why must we women constantly endure? Why are those men allowed to do whatever they please without consequence? Since they refuse to give us a path to survive, we must carve out our own way."
The cabin grew intensely quiet, broken only by the rhythmic splashing of the oars cutting through the water.
I stared at the silver strands weaving through her hair, and suddenly, everything became incredibly clear.
This wasn't a momentary act of rebellion.
She was wagering half a lifetime of silent endurance to win this one final, magnificent bid for freedom.
"I will follow your lead entirely," I told her.
She smiled, and this time it was a smile born of genuine relief. "From now on, leave those titles behind in that house. I am no longer the matriarch. My maiden name is Helen Carter. You may simply call me Aunt Helen."
A sharp sting pricked my nose, and I nodded. "Aunt Helen."
She hummed in response and pulled a thick stack of papers from her bodice.
She spread the pages out across her lap. "This is the foundation of our future. I converted all the stationary assets of the Stanton family into these."
They were dozens of banknotes, each bearing an astonishingly large sum. Beneath them lay over a dozen property deeds for estates and manors scattered across the entire continent.
"Jack transported the gold, silver, and ancient relics. Those items are highly conspicuous and easily tracked. What we carry is this," Helen said, pointing directly at the documents. "The banks honor the paper, not the person holding it.
"Once we reach Riverside, we will assume entirely new identities, and no one will ever be able to trace us."
"And then there is this," she whispered, drew out one final document, and handed it to me.
I took it, staring wildly at the bold, commanding letters written across the top. It was a letter of divorce.
It was no notice of a lord abandoning his wife. It was Helen throwing him away.
Reading the contents below made my heart leap into my throat. Helen had methodically listed every despicable crime Richard had committed over the past two decades, ranging from gross moral corruption to the blatant embezzlement of military funds.
Every single charge was severe enough to secure his absolute ruin.
Helen uttered, "I have already arranged for one hundred copies of this letter to be transcribed. If we remain safe and undisturbed, these pages will never see the light of day. But if they dare send men to hunt us down..."
A streak of ruthless malice flashed across her eyes. "Then the Stanton family will be stripped of everything and wiped from existence."
I held the letter, my hands trembling slightly.
The woman sitting before me was no longer Helen, nor was she merely my husband's mother.
She was a brilliant tactician, an unyielding commander.
Her battlefield was the shadowed halls of the manor. Her army consisted of human greed and boundless wealth.
And in this war, she had achieved a flawless victory.