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.”
“Interesting,” the Baron mused. We started riding again as the Baron pondered…whatever it was that he was pondering. After a few minutes, he said, “I’m sorry for my silence. I just didn’t realize Hugh’s cousin was involved in this.”
Hugh’s cousin.
Cunningham.
I stopped my horse. “What?”
“Yes,” the Baron said, stopping as well, and there was a small frown on his lips. “There was a scandal a few years back—a girl was appallingly abused at The Corinthian. A man had paid an exceptionally high price to take her virginity, and when the madam had found the girl the next morning, she’d been beaten and sodomized.” The Baron’s hands tightened on his reins. “She was thirteen.”
“Christ,” I muttered.
“The man was Frederick Cunningham.”
I suspected as much, but the confirmation infuriated me. That stupid mustache and the ridiculous mincing way he drank his wine…all that time, I’d been sitting across the table from a rapist and I’d had no idea. I wanted to ride to wherever he was right now and beat his face in. I wanted to watch his body bob in the Thames.
The Baron looked equally furious as he recalled the incident, and a furious Castor Gravendon was a terrifying thing, an avenging god straight from Roman myth, muscled and hulking and implacable. Castor may have been a dominant man, but he had no tolerance for cruelty.
We nudged our horses forward in silence, each of us wrapped up in our individual fantasies of retribution.
“As you might know, The Corinthian leases its property from me,” the Baron continued after we turned a corner near the woods, calmer now. “The madam approached me for help—she had no recourse to seek justice for this girl, but she wanted to make sure that this man couldn’t hurt another in this manner again. My circle is wide and varied and well-connected to many high-end establishments like The Corinthian, so I spread the word about him. Mr. Cunningham was barred from the best of the London brothels and has since had to travel overseas to find what he craves.”
“What an abominable pile of shit.”
The Baron nodded in agreement. “And when, in the course of spreading this word, I discovered through mutual friends that Frederick Cunningham was actually Frederick Beaumont Cunningham, Hugh came to me and asked that I keep their relation quiet. I granted his request, since I could understand why Hugh wouldn’t want to be associated with such reprehensible behavior.”
I thought of my suspicions in the Cafe Royal. “So that must be why Cunningham was so set on Hugh marrying Molly. They’re family.”
“Possibly. And as I understand it, Hugh has been living off loans from Cunningham for quite some time.”
“But Hugh’s a viscount,” I protested. “I thought surely he must have plenty of money…”
“There are many peers of the realm who aren’t more than paupers, Silas. Hugh is one of them.”
I sat back in my saddle and thought. I had at least believed that Hugh was marrying Molly out of some misguided affection or love, that he wasn’t using her for money, but that didn’t seem to be the case. And for Cunningham, using Hugh to marry Molly must have been a convenient way to infuse his relative with cash, while also solidifying his control over Molly. Any children she bore would be Beaumonts and related to him.
The realization made me so miserably angry that I had to close my eyes for a minute and concentrate on breathing normally.
“I’ll see if I can find anything more,” the Baron said. “I hate the idea of Molly being tied to that man, in whatever way.”
“Me too,” I agreed.
Me too.
“Does Molly know?” I asked. “About Hugh and Cunningham?”
“Surely she must,” the Baron said.
But I worried that she didn’t. And she deserved to know. But how did one tell somebody something this crucial when they refused to see you? “She won’t believe me if I tell her,” I said with a sigh. “Because she’ll think I’m interfering out of jealousy, not concern.”
“Which you are,” the Baron pointed out.
“Both. It’s both.”
He accepted that and we rode back to the stables, dismounting the horses and passing the gin back and forth for a few minutes. From here, I could see the lawn where we’d made love, where I’d parted her folds to see my seed inside of her. My cock twitched at the same time my heart twisted.
I don’t need a safe word for a game I’m not playing.
“Do you think Molly is really a dominant?” I asked, knowing the question probably seemed abrupt and irrelevant to Castor and also not caring.
He looked taken aback. “Our Molly? Certainly not.”
That surprised me. “You don’t think so?” But then I remembered that, even though it had been years ago, Molly and Castor had played together. “Was she submissive for you?”
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.
“Don’t thank me so soon. I haven’t given you the money yet, Miss O’Flaherty. It must be earned.”
“Earned?” I’d had enough sense then to start feeling wary, although I hadn’t had enough sense to run home to my father.
“Yes,” he said, and now his smile was back as he leaned forward, his eyes gleaming through the smoke. “Earned by you.”
In the end, I’d made the decision as I made most of my decisions—brashly and without much thought. What was my virginity worth to me? I’d seen dairy maids in County Clare tumble in barn lofts at my age; prostitutes in Liverpool younger than me. And half a million pounds was a princely sum for what amounted to a small barrier of flesh…
I’d missed school again the next day to be examined by Cunningham’s physician, who’d ensured that I was indeed a virgin, and then I was deposited at a gentleman’s club not far away from his house.
It had not been quick. It had not been gentle. He’d wanted more as soon as he’d finished, and he went over and over again, my blood and his come the lubricant after my own body had run dry. He’d slapped me, bruised me, and called me awful names. But even the pain and degradation I could handle. I’d refused to cry, forced myself to remain strong, for the company and for my own sense of pride. I had gotten myself into this situation…and I would see myself out, with as much dignity as I could muster.
But in the end, as he was fucking me one last time, he’d looked down at me and at my distant expression, and his face turned calculating. “No, my dear,” he’d said. “You don’t get to pretend me away.”
I hadn’t understood what he meant at first, and even as he pulled out and knelt between my legs, I still hadn’t understood. It wasn’t until he wiped me with a clean linen cloth and then lowered his face to the battered parts in between my legs that I realized what he was doing.
“No,” I’d whispered, trying to roll or buck away, but his hands—sharp with their vain, long fingernails—dug into my hips and kept me pinned to the spot. The true horror of it unfolded over the course of the following days and years, but even then, I could grasp an inkling of this terrible act. Of his tongue lapping and licking, of my body responding, of the way my mind screamed no as my body climbed inexorably towards climax.
He’d made me come.
He’d made me enjoy it.
And with that manipulative little act, he made me feel equally complicit in his perversion. The first man ever to give me an orgasm was
the man who cruelly bartered for my virginity and won. It was the man who shoved his cock back into me as soon as my orgasm started, so that I was forced to feel the unfamiliar waves of pleasure while he was inside me and looming over me.
It had taken me years to get over that. Years to find the joy in sex, although God knew I tried very, very hard and very, very often. In fact, it wasn’t until I met Julian and Silas in Amsterdam that I succeeded, realizing that if I had control of the situation—if I could be on top, or at least direct my own orgasm, then I could enjoy it without reservation. I’d slowly but surely won back my sexuality from Cunningham, although there were still so many dark corners of my memory where he lurked, so many places where fear and pain dwelt.
Except with Silas. When he’d spanked me in the maze, when he’d hoisted me over his shoulder and carried me out to the lawn to ravish me, like a brute in some Italian opera, and oh God, when his hand was wrapped around my throat…
I shivered at the delicious memory.
Somehow, when Silas was That Silas, that predatory Silas I’d never seen before last year, somehow he drove all the other darkness away. There was only room for him, for his Cambridge-accented voice delivering those filthy commands, for his hands gripping my neck, for his dick, hard as steel and so delightfully thick and long. He could do the exact same things Cunningham had done, and I would welcome them gladly because when Silas used me, it was with boundless respect and affection and love, and because I wanted him to.
Not that the difference mattered. Not anymore. I had no choice but to marry Hugh, no matter how much I longed for Silas.
I stared at my face in the mirror. Drawn and fatigued. Wary and sad. What would it look like if I were wearing Silas’s ring on my finger? Would I still be drinking that tea every morning?
I shook my head to clear the thoughts and got dressed for the day, mechanically pulling on my clothes and trying not to cry. I’d received word that van der Sant would be in town tomorrow and there were a few last minute things I wanted to check before he arrived. My business still had a future…even if I didn’t.
The Persuasion of Molly O'Flaherty Page 8
