Two Weeks Later

Miss Molly O’Flaherty of London and Mr. Hugh Calvert, Viscount Beaumont, request the pleasure of your company two weeks hence, August the Thirtieth, to celebrate their engagement…

I stared down at the invitation in my hand. A thick cream-colored card, bordered with gold, embossed with looping letters and bearing the seal of the Beaumont family at the bottom. I tossed it away without bothering to look at the location or the time; it did not matter where the party was to be held. Even if it was held in my own bedroom, I would not attend, I could not. For the sake of my own sanity, if not for the sake of propriety.

It had been two weeks since that terrible afternoon on the Baron’s lawn. I’d tried writing Molly, calling at her house, haunting the hallways of the Baron’s mansion…and all to no avail. She would not see me, she would not answer my letters and I knew she was deliberately abstaining from her usual parties and circles to avoid me. And of course, I had heard about her engagement, rumored to have been settled on the very evening we’d parted ways. She’d agreed to marry Hugh with my semen still dripping down her thighs, and I didn’t know if that made me furious, depressed, or hysterical with laughter.

All three, really, depending on the day.

The envelope for the invitation caught my eye, and I examined the back of it. To Silas, it said, in the sharply elegant handwriting that I recognized as Molly’s. And below it, several tiny dots of ink, as if she had set her pen down several times to write something else, but had stopped herself before the words could come out. Instead, it only read, Deepest regards, Molly, at the bottom.

Cold words. Polite words. I crumpled the paper in my fist and then went in search of a drink.

“So will you go?”

The Baron and I were atop two of his finest horses, riding around his expansive property. I suppose I must have struck him as disconsolate and listless (and frankly pathetic) when he’d walked into his library to find me slouched on a sofa with a bottle of gin, and so he’d suggested we go for a ride.

I watched a flock of birds fly up from the leafy stand of trees near the white gravel path leading out from the stables. “How can I?” I finally answered, not bothering to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “It would hardly be appropriate.”

The Baron shrugged. “I don’t see how it could be inappropriate. Several of Molly’s ex-lovers will be there, myself included. Even Julian and his wife are coming into town for the event.” I could feel him looking at me as I turned my horse slightly to the side. “Are you sure that it’s not your jealousy preventing you from going?”

“Of course it’s my jealousy. And my broken heart. And the fact that I hate Hugh, and I hate that she’s been forced into this ridiculous marriage.”

“Hugh has been friends with us a long time, if only on the periphery. Surely if Molly wants to be with other men during their marriage, he’ll allow it, especially given that their marriage will be one of convenience.”

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.”