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.
