“What do you say?” I asked, pausing my work to look down at her. “To marrying me?”
“Silas…” she said, trailing off. “We can’t. Besides…”
“Besides what, doll? Besides the fact that I love you?”
She met my eyes, and her gaze was sharp, perceptive. “No, Silas. I didn’t mean that. I meant besides the fact that you fucked Mercy—and you almost did it again—and I don’t think I can forgive you for that.”
Pain lanced through my chest. “Please tell me that’s not true,” I whispered. “Please tell me there is a way I can win your forgiveness.”
She struggled to sit up, and I let her, even though what I really wanted to do was pin her to the ground and kiss her until she relented. But I knew I didn’t deserve that right, I hadn’t earned it. It didn’t matter if I fucked Molly a thousand times, it was her mind and her heart that I wanted to possess, and so it was pointless to keep her here if she didn’t want to be kept.
“The truth is that I understand why you did it,” she said, now avoiding my eyes. “And maybe it could have been me, maybe it would have been me, because we’re so much the same, Silas. And we weren’t made for marrying or for children or for love. We enjoy fucking, we’re good at fucking, we’re both good with money and business—that is what we must content ourselves with.”
“I don’t want to be content with that,” I told her. “I want more. I want you.”
She stood up, arranging her skirts so that they hung straight down to the ground and when I reached out to help, she took a step farther back. “What I’m saying is that even though I can trust you with my body, I know I can’t trust you with my heart.” She studied the ground, as if it held all the answers, but even from this angle, I could glimpse the shine in her eyes. “I shouldn’t have done this…this was a mistake.”
I scrambled to my feet, panic clawing at the base of my skull. I couldn’t lose her; she couldn’t walk away, not after what we had just shared.
“Molly…”
“I’m not going to say the safe word, Silas. I don’t need a safe word for a game I’m not playing.”
I drew in a ragged breath. Please play, I wanted to beg her. Please let me at least try to win you back.
She extended her hand, like she wanted me to shake it, but instead I took it in my own and kissed it, letting my lips linger there. Goose bumps raced up her arms, and when I straightened, a single tear had spilled out of her eye, falling slowly down one cheek. She let me pull her closer, and I wiped the tear away. “Don’t do this,” I said. “Don’t let Hugh win…don’t let the board win.”
She shook her head. “I am going to win, Silas. You think just because I let you spank me, I’m submissive? When have I ever been anything other than the mistress of my own life and the mistress of everyone around me? I control my life, I control what happens from here on out, and you aren’t man enough to wrestle the reins from me, so just give up.”
And with that, she was out of my arms and walking away, leaving me with her tears drying on my finger and a broken heart.
Two Weeks Later
Miss Molly O’Flaherty of London and Mr. Hugh Calvert, Viscount Beaumont, request the pleasure of your company two weeks hence, August the Thirtieth, to celebrate their engagement…
I stared down at the invitation in my hand. A thick cream-colored card, bordered with gold, embossed with looping letters and bearing the seal of the Beaumont family at the bottom. I tossed it away without bothering to look at the location or the time; it did not matter where the party was to be held. Even if it was held in my own bedroom, I would not attend, I could not. For the sake of my own sanity, if not for the sake of propriety.
It had been two weeks since that terrible afternoon on the Baron’s lawn. I’d tried writing Molly, calling at her house, haunting the hallways of the Baron’s mansion…and all to no avail. She would not see me, she would not answer my letters and I knew she was deliberately abstaining from her usual parties and circles to avoid me. And of course, I had heard about her engagement, rumored to have been settled on the very evening we’d parted ways. She’d agreed to marry Hugh with my semen still dripping down her thighs, and I didn’t know if that made me furious, depressed, or hysterical with laughter.
All three, really, depending on the day.
The envelope for the invitation caught my eye, and I examined the back of it. To Silas, it said, in the sharply elegant handwriting that I recognized as Molly’s. And below it, several tiny dots of ink, as if she had set her pen down several times to write something else, but had stopped herself before the words could come out. Instead, it only read, Deepest regards, Molly, at the bottom.
Cold words. Polite words. I crumpled the paper in my fist and then went in search of a drink.
“So will you go?”
The Baron and I were atop two of his finest horses, riding around his expansive property. I suppose I must have struck him as disconsolate and listless (and frankly pathetic) when he’d walked into his library to find me slouched on a sofa with a bottle of gin, and so he’d suggested we go for a ride.
I watched a flock of birds fly up from the leafy stand of trees near the white gravel path leading out from the stables. “How can I?” I finally answered, not bothering to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “It would hardly be appropriate.”
The Baron shrugged. “I don’t see how it could be inappropriate. Several of Molly’s ex-lovers will be there, myself included. Even Julian and his wife are coming into town for the event.” I could feel him looking at me as I turned my horse slightly to the side. “Are you sure that it’s not your jealousy preventing you from going?”
“Of course it’s my jealousy. And my broken heart. And the fact that I hate Hugh, and I hate that she’s been forced into this ridiculous marriage.”
“Hugh has been friends with us a long time, if only on the periphery. Surely if Molly wants to be with other men during their marriage, he’ll allow it, especially given that their marriage will be one of convenience.”
The Baron sounded so calm, so sure. And it was easy to believe, if only for a minute, that I could still be with Molly as a lover, even after her marriage. “But I don’t want that,” I admitted. “I want her all to myself.”
“How interesting, then, that you haven’t, in turn, given all of yourself to Molly.” The Baron raised an eyebrow and kicked his heels, urging his horse forward.
I followed, feeling a bit sullen, like a child who’d been called out on his mischief, but then the Baron turned around, so that our horses faced each other and we could look eye to eye. “Silas, you know how deeply I care about you. Like a brother. And I love Molly too. I would hate to see the beautiful friendship you’ve cultivated over the years dissolve.”
I hung my head. “I know. I should be the bigger man here and gracefully accept my defeat. Hugh won. Mr. Cunningham won. I lost.”
“Cunningham?” the Baron asked. “Who’s that?”
I reached for the flask of gin inside my jacket pocket and helped myself to a healthy drink before answering. “Frederick Cunningham is the informal leader of her company’s board. He is the one who insisted that Hugh be Molly’s husband and refused to accept any bribe I could give him.”