I took a deep breath and said what I should have said nine months ago. “I loved you and I betrayed you. I indulged the weakest, basest parts of me, I was selfish and despicable and disgusting. I was low. I am low. I don’t ever deserve your forgiveness, and I won’t presume to ask for it, but you deserve my groveling and my apology and so here it is. I am so sorry that it hurts. I am so sorry that when I look in the mirror at myself, all I feel is hatred. I am so sorry that sometimes I can’t sleep, and I pace the room and drink and cry until I’m so drunk and emotionally exhausted that I can’t remember why I started drinking in the first place.

“I am so sorry, and there’s nothing you could command me to do right now that I wouldn’t do, because you deserve that. You deserve my blood and my pain and my torture. You deserve to watch me branded with hot iron, and I would do it gladly, if only to spend that much more time with you.”

The music swelled and came to an end, but I didn’t let go of my partner, not caring that it was my second breach of etiquette that night, not caring that Hugh was surely glowering somewhere in the margins of the ballroom. Let him seethe, let him rage—he wouldn’t come out here to claim Molly, not tonight, because it would make him look weak. Even he knew that.

Instead, I kept hold of her until the next waltz began, watching her face. She had turned away from me again, allowing me to see the exquisite quivering in her lower lip, the rapid sweep of her long eyelashes as she tried to keep her tears to herself. I wanted to lean in and blot them away from her lashes with my lips, I wanted to kiss away every tremor in her chin and throat, and I fucking couldn’t. And I wanted to ask her what she was thinking, if she was crying out of rage or hurt or understanding or what, but I also knew she wouldn’t want to break down in front of everybody here, and I worried that interrogating her as to her feelings would push her closer to the edge…but fuck, I was desperate to know. Was I making everything worse by being honest?

No, I decided. It was time for honesty.

“Let me tell you what should have happened that night. What I wanted to happen, what I spend every night falling asleep wishing had happened,” I said, guiding her easily through the steps of the dance. Even looking away, even about to cry, her dancing was still flawless, her body still perfectly in tune with mine. This time, as my hand tightened against her waist, I did allow one finger to play with the laces there, tugging hard enough that she could feel it.

She blinked faster.

“I wish we had kept kissing in the park that day. I wish that I had pulled back and looked at your sweet face and had the courage to admit to myself that I didn’t want to see anybody else. I didn’t want to share my time with anybody else. I wanted only you, and there was no way in hell that I was going to go to a dinner party when the only place we belonged was in a bed together, just you and me.”

A tear finally slipped past her eyelashes, spilling gracefully. And then another and another, and I could feel her ribs seize and stutter under my hands as her breathing turned jagged.

“I should have taken you out of that park and back to your bed, and then I should have spent hours with my face between your legs, fucking you with my mouth until you couldn’t speak or think or even breathe, and then I should have asked you to marry me. Not because of your company or because I wanted a family, but because I wanted you. Because I wanted to spend every night of the rest of my life with you underneath me, every day counting the freckles on your stomach when we woke up.”

She was crying in earnest now, her face crumpled and her voice thick. “But why?” she asked. “Why did you love me?”

I moved my hand from her back to her delicate jaw, taking it in my fingers and tilting her face to mine.

I stared directly down into her eyes as I talked, feeling the words burning everywhere—my heart and my mind and my stomach. “Why do I love you, you mean. I love you right now, still…and more than ever. And it’s because you provoke me, because you provoke everyone. Because you’re strong and because you need someone you can be frail with…because you’re the smartest woman I know and sometimes also the stupidest, because you’re honest and determined and sometimes manipulative. Because I want to see Ireland with you, because I want to see everywhere with you, and I want you to read me novels in the evening with your adorable Irish lilt, and I want you to let me hold you when it’s all too much. Because I’ve known you for ten years, and it feels so desperately like no time at all, and I need more.”

I finally stopped talking, my own breathing coming fast now, my own tears close at hand. I felt suddenly naked, raw, like my skin had been flayed from my body, my rib cage cracked open and my beating heart exposed for all to see.

Molly’s dancing slowed until we both stood stock still, our hands clasped and her eyes pinned to mine, and despite the tears, her eyes had grown unreadable, hard-shelled like jewels.

“Say something,” I begged. “Please. Anything at all—tell me I’m an ass for saying this, a prick for still chasing after you when you’re engaged, a monster to beg for forgiveness. Tell me to get ready for the hot irons. I don’t care, just please speak.”

The other dancers moved awkwardly around us, and in the corner of my eye, I could see Hugh finally pushing his way toward us, his patience exhausted or his dignity overridden by his irritation, one of the two.

Molly took a deep shuddering breath and then straightened her shoulders. “Yes, Silas, you are an ass. And a prick. And a monster. And you are something worse than all of those things put together.”

My voice was hoarse. “Which is?”

“Too fucking late.”

Who could sleep after that?

Not me.

I’d left Silas on the ballroom floor, looking wrecked, those eyebrows lifted ever so slightly, like a puppy who’d been kicked and didn’t know why. But those eyes, bloodshot and glossy and still that evocative China blue—those eyes knew everything, understood everything.

I’d left the Baron’s, fending off Hugh with a continuation of the headache excuse and came straight home to collapse on my bed in a puddle of silk and tears. I had no way to process any of the things Silas had said…not the apology, not his explanation of what had happened that night between him and Mercy…

I rolled over onto my side, blinking sightlessly at the small white fireplace across the room. I’d completely forgotten that Gideon had kissed me that night. It had been so casual, such a common occurrence in my life, that at the time, it had taken me a moment to realize why I was unhappy with it. It had taken me a moment to realize that I’d grown accustomed, in the space of only a few hours, to having only Silas’s lips on mine, and I didn’t want anybody else’s, and so I’d politely pushed Gideon away. And Gideon had been more than a gentleman about it. But if I had been Silas, watching from the margin…yes. I could understand. The shock and the fear and the desperate need to prove that it didn’t matter, because if it did matter, then everything had to change.

And neither of us was ready for that last year.

You deserve to watch me branded with hot iron, and I would do it gladly, if only to spend that much more time with you.

I sat up and hugged my knees to my chest, the ball gown scrunching and bunching around my legs, and I knew I should call in my maid to help me undress. I knew I should simply go to sleep, because I had chosen my path, and what did it matter that the man I wanted had laid his heart bare to me tonight? That he had given me the messy totality of him, his failings and his fears, along with all of his reckless, foolhardy pledges of atonement and his fervent adorations? Every part of it was real and raw and just so gutting to witness because there was no veneer, no shield—and Silas had always been a man of veneer. A man of smiles and politeness and charm, where you sensed that unknowable thoughts flickered in the blue depths of his eyes, but knew you could never learn them.