A tear finally slipped past her eyelashes, spilling gracefully. And then another and another, and I could feel her ribs seize and stutter under my hands as her breathing turned jagged.
“I should have taken you out of that park and back to your bed, and then I should have spent hours with my face between your legs, fucking you with my mouth until you couldn’t speak or think or even breathe, and then I should have asked you to marry me. Not because of your company or because I wanted a family, but because I wanted you. Because I wanted to spend every night of the rest of my life with you underneath me, every day counting the freckles on your stomach when we woke up.”
She was crying in earnest now, her face crumpled and her voice thick. “But why?” she asked. “Why did you love me?”
I moved my hand from her back to her delicate jaw, taking it in my fingers and tilting her face to mine.
I stared directly down into her eyes as I talked, feeling the words burning everywhere—my heart and my mind and my stomach. “Why do I love you, you mean. I love you right now, still…and more than ever. And it’s because you provoke me, because you provoke everyone. Because you’re strong and because you need someone you can be frail with…because you’re the smartest woman I know and sometimes also the stupidest, because you’re honest and determined and sometimes manipulative. Because I want to see Ireland with you, because I want to see everywhere with you, and I want you to read me novels in the evening with your adorable Irish lilt, and I want you to let me hold you when it’s all too much. Because I’ve known you for ten years, and it feels so desperately like no time at all, and I need more.”
I finally stopped talking, my own breathing coming fast now, my own tears close at hand. I felt suddenly naked, raw, like my skin had been flayed from my body, my rib cage cracked open and my beating heart exposed for all to see.
Molly’s dancing slowed until we both stood stock still, our hands clasped and her eyes pinned to mine, and despite the tears, her eyes had grown unreadable, hard-shelled like jewels.
“Say something,” I begged. “Please. Anything at all—tell me I’m an ass for saying this, a prick for still chasing after you when you’re engaged, a monster to beg for forgiveness. Tell me to get ready for the hot irons. I don’t care, just please speak.”
The other dancers moved awkwardly around us, and in the corner of my eye, I could see Hugh finally pushing his way toward us, his patience exhausted or his dignity overridden by his irritation, one of the two.
Molly took a deep shuddering breath and then straightened her shoulders. “Yes, Silas, you are an ass. And a prick. And a monster. And you are something worse than all of those things put together.”
My voice was hoarse. “Which is?”
“Too fucking late.”
Who could sleep after that?
Not me.
I’d left Silas on the ballroom floor, looking wrecked, those eyebrows lifted ever so slightly, like a puppy who’d been kicked and didn’t know why. But those eyes, bloodshot and glossy and still that evocative China blue—those eyes knew everything, understood everything.
I’d left the Baron’s, fending off Hugh with a continuation of the headache excuse and came straight home to collapse on my bed in a puddle of silk and tears. I had no way to process any of the things Silas had said…not the apology, not his explanation of what had happened that night between him and Mercy…
I rolled over onto my side, blinking sightlessly at the small white fireplace across the room. I’d completely forgotten that Gideon had kissed me that night. It had been so casual, such a common occurrence in my life, that at the time, it had taken me a moment to realize why I was unhappy with it. It had taken me a moment to realize that I’d grown accustomed, in the space of only a few hours, to having only Silas’s lips on mine, and I didn’t want anybody else’s, and so I’d politely pushed Gideon away. And Gideon had been more than a gentleman about it. But if I had been Silas, watching from the margin…yes. I could understand. The shock and the fear and the desperate need to prove that it didn’t matter, because if it did matter, then everything had to change.
And neither of us was ready for that last year.
You deserve to watch me branded with hot iron, and I would do it gladly, if only to spend that much more time with you.
I sat up and hugged my knees to my chest, the ball gown scrunching and bunching around my legs, and I knew I should call in my maid to help me undress. I knew I should simply go to sleep, because I had chosen my path, and what did it matter that the man I wanted had laid his heart bare to me tonight? That he had given me the messy totality of him, his failings and his fears, along with all of his reckless, foolhardy pledges of atonement and his fervent adorations? Every part of it was real and raw and just so gutting to witness because there was no veneer, no shield—and Silas had always been a man of veneer. A man of smiles and politeness and charm, where you sensed that unknowable thoughts flickered in the blue depths of his eyes, but knew you could never learn them.
Except I could learn them, I had learned them, because he had given them to me, along with his heart.
And I wanted to give him everything of mine in return. I’d told him it was too fucking late for a happy ending for us, and it was. But maybe it wasn’t too late for something else.
It doesn’t matter, Molly, a sensible part of me thought. Go to sleep.
Instead I slid off the bed and took a lamp off my end table. Padding downstairs, I went to my office, the soft rustling of my skirt unnaturally loud in the empty house. I went to my desk, where I found Hugh’s contract. I flipped through the pages until I found what I was looking for:
Infidelity, which shall be defined as the following acts…
I glanced up at the clock. A little before midnight. It would take me at least thirty minutes to get back to Gravendon Manor, and possibly another thirty to find the other thing I would need to do this…oh my God, was I really thinking about doing this?
I glanced down at the contract, at my hand with its diamond glittering in the lamplight.
Yes. Fuck it all, I was doing this.
After drinking what felt like a gallon of gin, I went to bed before midnight, which was practically unheard of for me, but I was exhausted. Not necessarily my body, but my mind—my thoughts were a grayscape of rejection and defeat, and I couldn’t even pretend to feel otherwise. I excused myself to Castor, Julian, and Ivy and then went up to my room, where I shucked my clothes and toppled face first onto the bed, waiting to die. I would just lay here and refuse to eat and drink, and then I would die, and at least that would be better than knowing what it looked like to have Molly O’Flaherty walking away from me after I’d offered up everything.
Yes, that was the plan. I would consign myself to death, and then everyone would feel terrible—especially Molly—and she would weep at my graveside, and then somewhere, from Hell or Heaven, wherever I ended up, I would at least have that satisfaction. Castor would shake his head sternly and Ivy and Julian would name their next child after me, and poets would write lyric odes to my steadfast dedication to love.