The Persuasion of Molly O'Flaherty (11 page)

Molly wouldn’t look at me, however, keeping her face turned to the side, exposing the delicate line of her jaw to me. I wanted to bite it.

“Silas,” she said as we danced. “Hugh has…he is…he’s threatened to take the company away from me.”

I kept perfect, easy rhythm and I didn’t let my face betray the sudden flare of fury I felt, but I let my voice carry my displeasure with this revelation. “Explain. Please.”

And she did—telling me about the contract, about Hugh’s ultimatum, his demand that her fidelity start now. It explained so much about her behavior tonight, so much more timid and passive than I was used to from her, and it also explained why Hugh seemed to be so singularly possessive at dinner.

“You can’t be thinking of signing this contract, Molly,” I told her. We spun and came back to center, my hand finding the small of her waist again. I heroically resisted the urge to play with the laces and buttons there.

“What choice do I have?” she asked impatiently. “If I refuse, I get nothing.”

“Legally, you would technically get nothing either way. What if you marry Hugh and he reneges on his verbal agreement with you to allow you access to the company? What if you end up with nothing and married to him?”

A small line appeared between her eyebrows. I wanted to bite that too. “Hugh wouldn’t do that,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

She didn’t answer right away, but when she did, her voice was so heartbreakingly tired. “What’s my alternative, Silas? Walk away from it all? This company that my father built, that
I
built?”

“Is it worth your future? Your happiness?”

“I don’t need to be happy,” she said firmly. “I just need O’Flaherty Shipping to keep running.”

I spoke with my lips close to her cheek, and she shivered as my breath skated over the delicate skin there. “Ask me for help, Mary Margaret. Ask me.”

“There’s nothing to be done.”

“There’s always something.”

She looked up at me, her blue eyes glittering in the light of the chandeliers. “Not this time.”

I hoped she was wrong. I hoped that my crazy plan would work, and I almost told her about it, right then and there. But it depended completely on secrecy, and I didn’t want Hugh to get even an inkling of what I was doing, and a change in Molly’s attitude towards everything might signal to him that something was off. Not to mention that I couldn’t bear to let her down—what if I told her and then I ended up failing?

No, silence was better for now. But I hated that defeated look on her face, the rigid way she held her body, as if already preparing for the onslaught of misery her choices would unleash upon her. I couldn’t comfort her the way I wanted, with my lips and my hands and my cock, not with Hugh here. But maybe I could comfort her with my words and say all the things I needed her to hear right now.

“Do you want to know why I fucked Mercy?” I asked.

Her already tense body stiffened and she tried to pull away, but I didn’t let her. My hand tightened around hers, and the other tightened against her waist. “Don’t do this,” she said, angry and frail all at once.

“Yes, Mary Margaret, we are doing this and you are going to listen to me.” My voice left no room for question, and her lips parted ever so slightly.

She liked that voice.

We whirled past another couple and then I started talking again. “That day,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t have to clarify which day I meant. It would always be
That Day
for us, that defining and pivotal moment where everything had shifted from almost unbearable joy to unbearable pain. “That day, we woke up in bed together, and I looked at you…your body tangled in the sheets, your hair still knotted from the night before, and then you woke up and do you remember what happened?”

“You took me on a picnic,” she said quietly.

“We didn’t fuck, we didn’t fool around. I took you out in the sunshine, and I kissed you on that blanket for hours. Just kissed. Do you remember?”

“Yes, Silas,” she said, and she looked up to me. Her pulse pounded in her throat, her pupils wide and dilated. “I remember.”

“Kissing you is heaven,” I told her. “Your mouth is perfect, you know that? And Christ, I could have kept kissing you until the stars came out. But we were coming here, to the Baron’s for a party, and you needed to change into an evening dress and I needed to change into my tuxedo. So we went our separate ways. And it was on my lonely ride to the Baron’s that I panicked. Was I arriving at Castor’s a single man? Or was I now attached to you? And if so, it was the first time I had been anything other than unattached, and that was terrifying. That’s not who we were, Molly, not who we
are
. We fuck people. Lots of people. We don’t go into the sunshine and kiss for hours, we fuck and we move on, and what was happening to me? Who was I, if I wasn’t acting like the man I’d always been?”

We spun again, and she swallowed, but she didn’t say anything, her rapt expression encouraging me to continue.

“And so I got to the Baron’s already panicked, panicked but still desperately in love, and then I saw you and Gideon dancing already, and he leaned down and kissed you. Kissed that mouth like it wasn’t the same mouth I’d spent hours laying claim to just that afternoon, and you let him. You let him kiss you.”

Her face went white. “Silas…”

I gave a curt shake of my head to let her know she wasn’t allowed to speak yet. “You pushed him away, I know. I saw. But you hesitated before you did, and I thought to myself,
what if she’s right to hesitate?
What if we were making a mistake trying to bring this new thing between us into our old world? What if we were denying who we really were? And then Mercy was there, beckoning me upstairs, and I had to prove to myself that I didn’t care that you kissed Gideon. That I wouldn’t care if you went to bed with him. I had to prove that this meant nothing, because if it didn’t mean
nothing
then that meant that it would mean
everything
, and God, Molly, I was terrified of that. Terrified like a sinner about to convert. Terrified like a man about die and go to heaven, because the reward was paradise but the price…the price was me. My life. My soul. It would no longer belong to me alone.”

I took a deep breath and said what I should have said nine months ago. “I loved you and I betrayed you. I indulged the weakest, basest parts of me, I was selfish and despicable and disgusting. I was low. I
am
low. I don’t ever deserve your forgiveness, and I won’t presume to ask for it, but you deserve my groveling and my apology and so here it is. I am so sorry that it hurts. I am so sorry that when I look in the mirror at myself, all I feel is hatred. I am so sorry that sometimes I can’t sleep, and I pace the room and drink and cry until I’m so drunk and emotionally exhausted that I can’t remember why I started drinking in the first place.

“I am so sorry, and there’s nothing you could command me to do right now that I wouldn’t do, because you deserve that. You deserve my blood and my pain and my torture. 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.”

The music swelled and came to an end, but I didn’t let go of my partner, not caring that it was my second breach of etiquette that night, not caring that Hugh was surely glowering somewhere in the margins of the ballroom. Let him seethe, let him rage—he wouldn’t come out here to claim Molly, not tonight, because it would make him look weak. Even he knew that.

Instead, I kept hold of her until the next waltz began, watching her face. She had turned away from me again, allowing me to see the exquisite quivering in her lower lip, the rapid sweep of her long eyelashes as she tried to keep her tears to herself. I wanted to lean in and blot them away from her lashes with my lips, I wanted to kiss away every tremor in her chin and throat, and I fucking couldn’t. And I wanted to ask her what she was thinking, if she was crying out of rage or hurt or understanding or what, but I also knew she wouldn’t want to break down in front of everybody here, and I worried that interrogating her as to her feelings would push her closer to the edge…but fuck, I was desperate to know. Was I making everything worse by being honest?

No
, I decided. It was time for honesty.

“Let me tell you what should have happened that night. What I wanted to happen, what I spend every night falling asleep wishing had happened,” I said, guiding her easily through the steps of the dance. Even looking away, even about to cry, her dancing was still flawless, her body still perfectly in tune with mine. This time, as my hand tightened against her waist, I did allow one finger to play with the laces there, tugging hard enough that she could feel it.

She blinked faster.

“I wish we had kept kissing in the park that day. I wish that I had pulled back and looked at your sweet face and had the courage to admit to myself that I didn’t want to see anybody else. I didn’t want to share my time with anybody else. I wanted only
you
, and there was no way in hell that I was going to go to a dinner party when the only place we belonged was in a bed together, just you and me.”

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.

All this decided upon, I promptly fell asleep.

When I woke up, I had that heavy, groggy disorientation that comes with having slept either too much or too little. I was unable to tell if I’d been asleep for days or only for a few minutes, although the lamplight I was currently squinting against indicated it was still nighttime. I started to roll over to shutter the lamp, only to find myself impeded in some way that my sleep-fogged mind didn’t comprehend. The impediment turned out to be silk ropes, binding my wrists and ankles and securing them to the posts of the bedstead.

“They’re tied pretty well. In case you were thinking of struggling,” a voice observed.

I blinked once, hard, to clear my vision. “
Castor?
” What the fuck?

The Baron just smiled. He was sitting in an armchair by my bed, a book open on his lap. I glanced around—soft lamps, silk ropes, me still stark naked from when I’d undressed earlier. Was he planning what I thought he was planning? I’d been with a couple of men before, but never in the, uh,
receptive
capacity, and I wasn’t sure that tonight was the night I wanted to rectify that.

“Relax, Silas. I’m only here to be a witness.”

My brow furrowed. “A witness to
what
?”

He nodded towards the door, which had just clicked open, revealing a slender young woman in her middle twenties, a woman I recognized from a few of the parties at the Baron’s but whose name I didn’t know. She was as naked as I was, small-waisted and small-breasted. More arresting to me than her nudity was her dark red hair, unbound and tumbling down her back. If you had only seen Molly a handful of times, it would be easy to confuse the two, although this woman had brown eyes and no freckles and a very timid expression you’d never see on Molly’s face.

But that didn’t matter right now, because the only thing that mattered was that this woman was naked and walking towards me, and that I was naked and tied to a bed, and
no fucking way
could I stomach the idea of sex with a stranger right now. I yanked on the ties again, this time in earnest, growing more panicked as the Baron’s words proved true and the ropes refused to give.

“Castor, untie me,” I pleaded.

My loyal ally these many years, the man Julian and I saw as a mentor, shook his head.

“You are not my friend anymore,” I said, my voice tight as I tried to kick at the leg ties.

The Baron let out a loud laugh. “It’s for the best, Silas, I promise.”

The woman approached the bed and stood at the side, looking at me almost shyly. This gave me hope. If she was shy, then she might be nervous. If she was nervous, then maybe I could talk her into turning her pert little ass around and leaving the room. Leaving my bereaved heart and my soulless body alone. “Look,” I told her. “I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but it’s not true. I mean, it was true, but it’s not true right now. Or any more. I don’t want to have sex with you—I’m sure you’re a very nice person and you are very pretty, but I only want one person right now, and you’re not her. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.”

She cocked her head to the side, and then someone stepped out from behind the screen in the corner of the room.

Molly.

“Silas, I’m flattered,” she said with a small smile.

I sucked in a breath. “Jesus, Molly.”

She moved over to the bed, on the opposite side of her would-be doppelgänger, and everything about her was designed to send tendrils of heat through me. Jolting my heart awake and—more embarrassingly given my utter and complete nakedness—jolting my dick awake. She wore a dressing gown the same golden color of her dress earlier tonight, her furled nipples tight and hard under the thin silk. Her thick hair tangled and waved around her shoulders, hanging down to her waist in a mass of glorious copper. Somehow, the mere suggestion of her naked form under that silk did far more for me than the overtly naked girl perched just on the other side of the bed.

“Come here,” I said, before I could stop myself. Before I could think about the painful way we parted, before I could think about her vengeful fiancé and his ridiculous contract. Before I could think about the other people in the room. I just wanted her close. I wanted her touching me, her cinnamon smell surrounding me, her hair tickling my face and chest.

She didn’t climb onto the bed with me, but instead raised her hand and ran her fingers from my wrist down to my chest, where she splayed her hand against my pectoral muscle. The warm pressure of her touch sent more blood to my groin, and now my desire was completely and utterly apparent.

But I didn’t care. I didn’t give a fuck about anybody else in this room. I kept my gaze on my Molly.

“Come here,” I repeated.

She bit her lip. “I want to,” she whispered.

“But,” Castor interjected, standing from his chair, “we have a slightly unusual arrangement tonight.”

Molly nodded and her face cleared, as if the Baron’s voice had reminded her of something crucial. “What you said to me tonight…” She glanced up at Castor and the woman, and then back down to me, her expression uncomfortable. Molly didn’t like emotions and even less liked feeling them in front of other people. “I reacted poorly. And I want you to know what it meant to me, all the things you said…all the things you made me feel.”

“And this is how you wanted to show me?” I couldn’t help it—despite everything, I grinned. I mean, I was willing to forget all the heartache of tonight, if it ended where it looked like it was going to end. But then I remembered. “But what about Hugh? And the contract?”

She sighed. “Exactly.” Her fingers trailed down my chest to the ridges on my stomach, back and forth, back and forth, until she reached my navel. I hissed and my erection bobbed to full strength. But her hand went no farther. “I can’t show you the way I want to show you. But I looked at the contract, and there is a way around it.” She moved her hand from my stomach and I exhaled with disappointment. But then her hand was caressing my cheek and I turned into her touch.

“Castor is acting as a legal witness, because Hugh wouldn’t dare to contradict the word of another peer in court,” Molly continued. “And Viola is going to help us.”

“Help with what—
shit
.” A hot mouth closed over my cock, small and wet, and all I could see was that red hair moving over my pelvis. I tried to squirm away, and when that didn’t work, I tried to buck away, groaning in frustration and something worse.

“Shh,” Molly said, and she pressed her fingers against my lips. I stilled, but I didn’t shush.

“Molly, please don’t do this to me,” I beseeched her. “I fucking love you. I don’t want anyone else. Please don’t—
dammit
.” Viola had reached between my legs and was now gently toying with my balls. I was doing everything I could not to enjoy it, not to feel it; I thought the coldest, driest, dullest thoughts I could think of. I thought of Molly’s face when she’d walked in on Mercy and me, I thought of hearing her say Clare.