Julian, Ivy, and George were staying with Castor, so I invited myself to stay as well, mostly to be close to my good friend, but also on the remote, slim, nigh-impossible chance that Molly might come to the mansion. I didn’t know what I would do if I actually saw her—I only knew that something needed to be done. I loved her. I wanted to take care of her. But my past failings prevented me from doing just that, and I didn’t know where to go from here, how to escape this net we’d woven around ourselves.
George and I were lying together on the plush Persian rug in one of the scores of receiving rooms that the Baron seemed to have. George, almost five months old, had sat up for a little while, before rolling onto his back and beginning to industriously gnaw on his feet. Ivy sat pensively in a window seat, a book half-open on her lap as she stared into the gardens, probably wishing she could escape outdoors. And Julian sat near me, reading a paper, patiently waiting for me to divulge all of the reasons I was a pouting, pitiful lump.
“You do realize I can wait all day?” Julian asked dryly, not bothering to look up from his paper.
“I’m busy,” I said, helping George grab his other foot. I wasn’t really though, and it wasn’t even that Ivy was in the room—we’d been together, quite intimately, on the couple of occasions that Julian had wanted to share her with me, and I tended not to be shy around women after I’d come in their mouths. No, it was simply that saying all of the words out loud—all of them, including the ones about how I’d fucked up totally with Mercy—was too damn hard. They lodged in my throat, along with all the guilt and pain and misery.
But later, after supper, when Ivy had taken George up to bed, Julian and I were back in the library with tumblers of the Baron’s best gin, it all came pouring out. How I’d come to England after getting Julian’s letter. How I’d found Molly and made my proposition, only to find myself with Mercy the very next morning. I’d told him about the sex on the Baron’s lawn and Molly’s subsequent engagement to Hugh. About Cunningham.
By the end of my story, true darkness had settled outside and a servant had come in to light a small fire to ward off the slight chill creeping in from the windows.
“I never liked Hugh,” Julian remarked, taking a sip of gin. “He always struck me as a voyeur of sorts. But I wouldn’t have suspected him of conspiring with someone to take advantage of Molly.”
“I know! The only reason we allowed him in was because of Molly, because she liked him.”
Julian tapped his fingers on the glass. “So does Molly know about the connection between her board and her future husband?”
I shook my head. “And I don’t see how I can tell her without her thinking that I’m trying to stir up trouble.”
“I’ll tell her the next opportunity I have,” Julian said without hesitation. “As I am the only one of her friends that has been in an unhappy marriage before, I feel as if I have no choice. She should know everything before she goes to the altar.”
I didn’t say anything for a few moments, because what I wanted to say was so petulant and selfish that even I recognized how immature I was being. But it pushed itself out of me anyway. “What if you tell her about Hugh and Cunningham, and she doesn’t care? What if she still decides to marry Hugh?”
Julian took a thoughtful drink.
When he didn’t answer for a few moments, I sighed and set my glass down. “And don’t judge me. I know you are wondering whether I’m asking this out of a pure and loving concern for her well-being or whether I’m asking because I’m jealous, and what I want to know is why can’t it be both? Why can’t I be certain that she’ll be unhappy with Hugh and want to protect her from that, when at the same time I want to have her for my own? Why must it be mutually exclusive?”
“I would never tell you that it has to be,” he replied slowly. “In fact, I would trust you less if you told me you had no personal stake in Molly’s happiness. But you know that Molly won’t be steered—not after she’s set her course and especially not by a man who’s hurt her. And I think that if you don’t want her to marry Hugh, then you’re going to have to do a whole hell of a lot more than fuck her.”
“The Baron said as much,” I said glumly, picking up my glass and draining the last of my gin. “But what do I do?”
We sat in silence for a while, the fire popping and the sound of a piano trickling in from some unknown room. I thought of that day a year ago, when I found her crying in her parlor. I thought of my contingency plans. I thought of all the miserable lonely years that awaited me if I let her slip through my fingers. A plan started to formulate in my mind, a plan as distant and frail as those piano notes, a plan that wasn’t exactly playing fair. But then again, I’d warned her I wouldn’t play fair.
It would take time. Another week, if not two.
“Julian,” I said, turning to my oldest friend in the world. “If I told you I wanted to do something a little…crazy…would you help me do it?”
I was signing off on a few papers before I met van der Sant’s delegation at the docks when Hugh set a pile of papers in front of me and then sat down in the chair across my desk, leaning back in a smug pose that unaccountably irritated me.
“What’s this?”
The morning sunlight streamed through the windows of my small townhouse library, illuminating the gold in his hair, just like it had Mr. Cunningham’s. I swallowed back the bitter taste that always came with memories of that vile man and tried to focus on Hugh’s answer.
“…A marriage contract,” he was saying. “Very standard, of course, dictating that all of your assets will be conferred upon me at the time of our union.”
It was standard, but I didn’t bother to hide my frown as I flipped through the pages. I’d known, in a cerebral sort of way, that my money and the company would legally and technically belong to Hugh in the eyes of the law, but I had comforted myself with the fact that Hugh had told me when I agreed to marry him that the company would still be mine in the practical sense. Now, looking at the actual clauses in stark black and white, the reality of it hit me hard. Everything I’d worked so hard to build and protect would belong to someone else. Be possessed by someone else.
“I will have my solicitor look it over,” I said. I meant to push the papers away, not wanting to deal with it right now, but a word caught my eye.
Infidelity.
I glanced up at Hugh and then looked back down to the page. “‘In the event that the wife is found to be unfaithful, her husband may be allowed to divorce her and keep all remaining monies, properties and investments…’” I read aloud. I stopped. “Hugh. Explain this.”
Hugh shrugged. “It’s simple enough. If you fuck someone else, I will divorce you and keep the company.” The words pierced me like a bullet. Another reality I hadn’t considered—that my sexual freedom would also be at an end.
My hands shook. “Are you serious? You expect me to fuck only you?” I quickly scanned the rest of the pages, finding nothing about his fidelity being required. Of course. I had just assumed…I mean, Hugh was part of the same circle I was. For years, we’d fucked whom we wanted, when we wanted, laughing at all the conventional people with their stodgy, sexless marriages. How could he do such an about-face? “Hugh, the things we’ve done…I thought certainly you were more enlightened than this!”
“That was play, Molly. This is real life now. If I have a wife, she must be faithful to me. I cannot compromise on that.”
“And you?” I demanded. “Are you going to be faithful to me?”
“Molly, be serious, please,” Hugh said in a pained voice. “Men naturally have excessive desires that have to be sated, but for a woman…I mean, obviously, we have to make sure that any children you bear are mine and no one else’s. A woman’s fidelity is crucial to the family, and I knew being stripped of your company altogether would be a reliable incentive.”
My hands shook. “Are you really threatening me with that? You would leave me with nothing? Without the only fucking reason I’m doing this in t
he first place?” I stood so fast that the papers fell off the desk, scattering across the floor. I didn’t care. I leaned forward, bracing my hands on my desk. “Go fuck yourself, Hugh.”
“Okay, but…” Again in the pained voice, as if he had no more control over this than I did. “It’s either marry me and remain connected to your company, or refuse to marry me and lose it right now.”
“I—” I couldn’t finish my sentence. There was a ball in my throat, a painful teary ball that made it hard to speak, hard to breathe. All I could see was red and my fingers itched with the urge to claw his face. He must have seen my temper building because he got to his feet and walked towards me, hands outstretched as if approaching a dangerous animal.
“Molly, these are just the formalities, believe me. After we’re married, you can continue running the company as you like, no matter what this contract says. And yes, we need to make sure any children are mine and mine alone, but you’ve always liked sex with me, haven’t you? And we can have as much sex as you’d like.”
He was very close to me now and he took my trembling hands in his. “Haven’t I been your loyal friend all this time? Through all your troubles? I care so very deeply about you, and I want what’s best for you. This is what’s best for you. I’m what’s best for you.”
The anger hovered, just out of reach, like a mirage that refused to resolve into reality. I couldn’t hold on to it, I couldn’t give it voice, but it was there still, distracting me, making me wary. “I just don’t know if I can be happy like this, Hugh,” I said honestly. “I’m sorry, but that’s the truth.”
Hugh looked at me with his deep brown eyes. He was very handsome and he had been a very loyal friend. A woman could do worse and I knew many women who had. “Would you be more unhappy with me…or without the company you love so dearly?” he asked. “I will do anything in my power to make you happy, so long as it’s within the bounds of reason.”
That is the difference between him and Silas, I thought. Silas would have thrown himself at my feet, would have forsworn all reason, and made a ridiculous but gallant fool of himself in the process.
Silas. I supposed I would never know what he would and wouldn’t do for me.
“I will sign it,” I said, pulling away from Hugh. “But for the company. Only for the company.”
Hugh smiled a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “That’s good enough for me.”
Martjin van der Sant was a short man, with thin white hair cropped close around his ears and a precisely trimmed mustache. Even his clothing looked as if it had been folded and pressed with a ruler in hand. He did not smile, nor did he talk very often, but when he did, it was with a clipped Dutch accent that left no room for argument. My encounter with Hugh and his contract had left me shaken, but I swallowed everything down and mustered my most professional, competent demeanor as the other board members and I met van der Sant’s party down at the docks.
A man as wealthy and powerful as van der Sant could have easily sent representatives to investigate our assets. The fact that he traveled all the way here to see them for himself told me a lot, told me that he was a man to be both respected and feared. I was proud of the way I ran my company and I knew he wouldn’t find anything on the company’s end that would dissuade him from partnering with us, but I was more than a little nervous that word of my personal life might reach his ears. I glanced over at Cunningham as we walked along the docks. He was talking seriously with one of the other businessmen van der Sant had brought along, and there was nothing in his demeanor to suggest he was planting rumors about me.
He wouldn’t, I decided. He wanted this business deal as much as I did—maybe more than I did. Even he wouldn’t jeopardize the chance at more money simply to spite me. Besides, he had taken care to mention my engagement to Mr. van der Sant when we’d introduced ourselves earlier, probably to portray me as a normal, moral young woman.
The dock and warehouse visits went very well, and I was beginning to feel more settled about Hugh and the contract when we escorted Mr. van der Sant back to my townhouse for a late luncheon. “I hope you don’t mind if my daughter joins us,” Mr. van der Sant said. “This is her first visit to London and she is very excited.”
“Of course,” I said, sending word to one of my people to arrange for her to be picked up at their hotel.
But when she walked through the doorway an hour later, my stomach sickened. She was not, as I presumed from van der Sant’s age, a married woman in her thirties or forties, but a girl. A girl of about thirteen or fourteen, with flaxen blonde hair and gray eyes and a sweet, innocent face. “Everyone,” Mr. van der Sant said, “this is Birgit, my daughter.”
Birgit made a shallow curtsey, and I knew without looking that Cunningham’s eyes were pinned on the girl. I knew he was watching her, observing her sweetly uncertain mannerisms as her father introduced her to the other people present, knew that he was already wondering whether she was still intact.
I prefer my women fresher…younger.
He wouldn’t, I thought for the second time that day, but I was not so certain this time, because Cunningham’s eyes still hadn’t left the girl and his expression was hungry, like a fox watching a rabbit bounce by. No, even he wouldn’t be that foolish. That reckless. Cunningham loved money, and van der Sant was a fount of money. He wouldn’t throw that chance away simply to pursue this girl, no matter how virginally pretty and youthful she was.
I saw the way his lips lingered on the back of her hand as he kissed it, and then he did something that nearly made me bolt across the room and shove him away. He handed Birgit the flower from his buttonhole. A daffodil. Her father seemed completely oblivious to her pinking cheeks and fast-fluttering eyelashes, to Mr. Cunningham’s entirely-too-assiduous attentions.
And so after dinner, I asked Mr. van der Sant if it would be okay if Birgit and I retired to the parlor while the men enjoyed some brandy and smoking and business-talk. I could tell that my decorous femininity pleased him, but that’s not why I was doing this. As soon as Birgit and I went into the parlor, I closed the door and locked it and turned to face her.
She was so sweet-looking. I had looked like that, I knew…I still had men remark on how young and girlish I seemed. Maybe that’s why Cunningham still bothered me.
I sighed. “Sit, please, Miss van der Sant.”
She sat, looking a bit confused. I sat as well, on the sofa next to her so I could speak softly, hating that I was about to insinuate something so ugly to a girl so gentle and young. But I could not entertain the alternative, and I didn’t care if it might somehow circle back to Cunningham, if it would somehow tarnish my own place within the company. Right now only one thing mattered, and that was making sure Birgit stayed safe.
“Miss van der Sant, I’d like to ask you—privately—to do me a favor.”
She was clearly still confused, but nevertheless, she drew up, looking eager to please. “Of course! Is it about Father’s business here? I would very much like to help.”
I saw so much of myself in this girl. And her eagerness only made me more certain that I needed to do this. “I would like you to consider me a friend,” I told her, “a confidant. And the things we discuss will only remain between us, so I do not want you to worry that I will speak to your father about any of the things we discuss.” Unless I need to, I added to myself silently. But I didn’t say it aloud; it was more important to cultivate her trust at the moment.
She nodded, her eyes wide.
“That gentleman in the dining room? Mr. Cunningham? I am going to tell you a story about him, and then after I tell it to you, I need you to promise me that you’ll let me know the minute he ever tries to talk to you alone…”
The carriage ride to the Baron’s the next night was long and uncomfortable. The Baron was hosting a party in honor of Julian and Ivy’s visit, and Hugh had forced himself along. He had also taken the trouble to remind me that although we were only engaged, he’d still prefer it if I didn’t sleep with anyone
tonight. The way he’d said prefer made it clear that all of his other threats held true in this case as well. In yet another unexpected corner, I was forced to sacrifice happiness for the hope of holding on to my company.
“But I will make you come plenty, if you’d like,” Hugh had offered once we got in the carriage. He’d tried to slide over to my seat, but I claimed a headache, and he sulked back to his side.
A headache. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, but I hated myself. I’d become one of those terrible women who avoided sex on pitiful pretexts, who lied instead of just saying no in plain language. But I was becoming increasingly aware that I had very little power in this dynamic between Hugh and me. Not if I wanted to keep my company. And so I had to placate him, which for now meant lying, but later it might mean actually having sex with him, and that made me very unhappy. It shouldn’t—he had never been a poor lover and he was so good-looking, but…well, if I was being completely honest with myself, I only wanted Silas right now. The only tears I wanted to cry were tears drawn forth by my smarting ass as he spanked me…the only hands I wanted to feel around my waist were his wide ones.
That’s enough, I told myself firmly. I was a big girl. I needed to accept my fate and move on. Just like I had with Cunningham all those years ago—I was doing what I had to for what I wanted, which was my company. I could handle a loveless marriage. I could handle a life without Silas. I could handle anything as long as I had my company and my dignity.
I sat up straighter in the seat. I was Molly O’Flaherty, dammit. And I would sacrifice anything for what I wanted.
And I would do it without complaint.
My mind flitted briefly to Birgit van der Sant safely ensconced in her hotel with her papa. I sincerely hoped that a different future awaited her.
The Baron hosted many parties, large and small, lavish and quiet, and this was somewhere in between. Despite being something of a recluse, Julian had many old friends in London, and there were even more people curious about the new Mrs. Markham, the mysterious beauty that most of the town had heard about but only a few had seen. And tonight she did look radiant, if a little reluctant to release her chubby boy into the capable arms of the nursemaid. But Julian leaned over and whispered something to her, and she finally relinquished the baby with a kiss and a quiet admonition to the nurse to come fetch her at the slightest hint of fussiness.
The Persuasion of Molly O'Flaherty Page 9