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 the 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.