“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.

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?”