Castor took another deep draught of the gin. “Yes and no. Yes, she submitted physically, which for her is a tremendous step, but she never submitted to me mentally or emotionally. She never found the submission fulfilling, but it wasn’t because of the submission itself, I think. I believe Molly needs to have complete trust and love in the person she’s submitting to, and while she trusted me, she didn’t love me. Which is why we never played together more than two or three times—it wasn’t rewarding for either of us.”
I thought about this.
“Just because a person refuses to be topped by unworthy men doesn’t necessarily make her dominant,” Castor added. “No more than your allowing a woman to take charge in bed out of politeness or laziness makes you a submissive.” He gave me a pointed look. “For her, she’s never found a man worth that surrender. And you’ve never found a woman worth exerting that level of effort for.”
“I want to believe that. I want to believe that I can be the kind of man who can take care of her, but…”
“But it feels like she won’t let you?” the Baron finished for me.
“Right.”
“Silas,” the Baron said, screwing the cap back on the flask and handing it to me, “spanking her in a maze once isn’t enough to make her forget the ways that you’ve hurt her. If you want her to surrender to you, if you want her to allow herself to be brought under your care so you can love and protect her in all the ways she needs and deserves it…then you are going to have to surrender yourself to her first.”
Hugh wanted to honeymoon in Paris.
I didn’t want to honeymoon at all.
After all, a honeymoon was a celebration, and what was there to celebrate? Certainly not our marriage, which would be a sham. Certainly not our happy future, because there wouldn’t be one. And certainly not the possibility of a family, which I mulled over as I drank my morning tea in bed—the same tea I drank every morning, a brew I’d learned from my
auntie in Ellis before we’d moved to Liverpool.
“What the Pope doesn’t know…” she’d said with a wink, as she’d showed me the dried bundles of herbs hanging from her ceiling. I’d been ten when she’d taught me how to brew the tea, and I didn’t really understand until I was older what a gift she had given me. I’d been able to live my life as freely as I wanted, and even now that I was being chained to a man I didn’t love, I still wouldn’t have to bear him any children if I didn’t want to.
But I could have happily had children with Silas…
I finished the tea, refusing to let that thought settle. No, it was done and over. I would save my company now and worry about the rest later, and so what if my chest felt as if someone had cracked it open and scorched the inside? So much the better. Hope couldn’t grow on scorched ground, and hope was for the foolish.
If anything, this would make me stronger.
Not for the first time, I thought about leaving London and going back to Ireland. Finding some quiet stone cottage by the sea and drinking whiskey all day. A place where money and businesses didn’t matter, where I could be free of any consideration aside from what I wanted. Silas could be there. It could be the two of us, secluded and spoiled, spending every moment with one another. And I would watch him staring at the surf, watch the way the corners of his eyes would crinkle as he squinted into the setting sun. I would watch those long, strong hands flex and curl as he sifted through pebbles on the beach.
But all of that only made me remember the last man I’d been on an Irish beach with. My father, walking home from my mother’s funeral, him telling me about opportunities for dockworkers in Liverpool…
Daddy.
I slid off the bed and went in search of a dressing gown, trying to avoid the crushing wave of sadness that came when I thought about my family. My mom, dying of consumption just months after my little brother. My father, moving us to Liverpool and then to London, working his way up from dockworker to manager and then to the owner of his own company, only to succumb to the same disease before I turned twenty-one.
He had poured all of himself into his work, and it was his blood and sweat that had created O’Flaherty Shipping Lines.
Well, his blood and sweat and one very lucky investment.
It had been my fourteenth birthday. We had just moved to London, and my father had taken all the money he’d earned in the last two years and purchased one ship—a beaten-up, decades-old vessel called the Aquamarine (which he’d promptly renamed the Clare, after our home.) My father was a prompt deliverer and fairly priced, and before long, we had more work than the Clare could handle. Then came the Shannon, named for my mother, the Sean, for my brother, and finally the Molly. We had the beginnings of a fleet, the makings of a thriving business.
Since my father had made sure I’d been schooled, I was far better at the accounting and bookkeeping than he was, and so I’d spent every evening after school and every Saturday in our warehouse, working the numbers.
Mr. Cunningham had come into the warehouse we rented in the East End, looking for my father, but upon seeing me scribbling at a desk, had sauntered over with a smile. He’d been a young man then, newly married. He was the handsomest man I’d ever seen, and I had looked up into his face and been temporarily paralyzed by the sudden awareness of his maleness, or rather, of my femaleness. He’d looked at me like I was a woman, not a girl. And I had felt very compelled to tell him, when he’d asked me if I was Aiden O’Flaherty’s daughter, that yes I was, and that I had also just turned fourteen years old.
“What a special age,” he’d murmured. “Happy birthday, Miss O’Flaherty.” And then he’d presented me with the small daffodil from his buttonhole. I’d clutched it while he’d spoken with my father about the possibility of investing. Only my father and I knew how desperately we needed the money—we were swamped with work and if we didn’t purchase new ships, we would have to start turning away orders. When he’d left, he’d placed a small card on the desk where I worked. Even I, as inexperienced as I was, could tell the card was expensively made, with its thick stock and filigreed letters, and so I didn’t dare refuse the order dashed in ink on the back.
See me.
And below that, an address in Knightsbridge.
The next day, when my father thought I was at school, I went to Frederick Cunningham’s house. Looking back, I cannot believe that I went…fourteen years old in a new city, going unchaperoned to a strange man’s house. I’d always been bold, but this had been outright dangerous. I suppose I’d felt special, somehow, with my card and my wilting daffodil. And when I was admitted into the palatial townhouse, I felt a little bit like a princess from a fairytale. That ended quickly, however, when I’d been shown into his library. There’d been none of the charm of the day before, none of the smiles. He’d made me stand before him as he fired question after question at me. What was the net worth of the shipping company? How many men did we employ and what did we pay them? How quickly could we recoup the cost of a new ship? The kinds of questions that he’d asked my father, but he must have sensed I’d have better answers for him, given that I actually kept the books of the business.
“What would you do with an investment of half a million pounds?” he’d asked finally, lighting a cigarette.
I’d blinked in the smoke. Half a million pounds… I couldn’t even fathom that amount of money. I stammered around possibilities of more ships, more men, advance payments on tariffs, layering it with copious thank yous, until he’d held up a hand to forestall me.
