Except I could learn them, I had learned them, because he had given them to me, along with his heart.

And I wanted to give him everything of mine in return. I’d told him it was too fucking late for a happy ending for us, and it was. But maybe it wasn’t too late for something else.

It doesn’t matter, Molly, a sensible part of me thought. Go to sleep.

Instead I slid off the bed and took a lamp off my end table. Padding downstairs, I went to my office, the soft rustling of my skirt unnaturally loud in the empty house. I went to my desk, where I found Hugh’s contract. I flipped through the pages until I found what I was looking for:

Infidelity, which shall be defined as the following acts…

I glanced up at the clock. A little before midnight. It would take me at least thirty minutes to get back to Gravendon Manor, and possibly another thirty to find the other thing I would need to do this…oh my God, was I really thinking about doing this?

I glanced down at the contract, at my hand with its diamond glittering in the lamplight.

Yes. Fuck it all, I was doing this.

After drinking what felt like a gallon of gin, I went to bed before midnight, which was practically unheard of for me, but I was exhausted. Not necessarily my body, but my mind—my thoughts were a grayscape of rejection and defeat, and I couldn’t even pretend to feel otherwise. I excused myself to Castor, Julian, and Ivy and then went up to my room, where I shucked my clothes and toppled face first onto the bed, waiting to die. I would just lay here and refuse to eat and drink, and then I would die, and at least that would be better than knowing what it looked like to have Molly O’Flaherty walking away from me after I’d offered up everything.

Yes, that was the plan. I would consign myself to death, and then everyone would feel terrible—especially Molly—and she would weep at my graveside, and then somewhere, from Hell or Heaven, wherever I ended up, I would at least have that satisfaction. Castor would shake his head sternly and Ivy and Julian would name their next child after me, and poets would write lyric odes to my steadfast dedication to love.

All this decided upon, I promptly fell asleep.

When I woke up, I had that heavy, groggy disorientation that comes with having slept either too much or too little. I was unable to tell if I’d been asleep for days or only for a few minutes, although the lamplight I was currently squinting against indicated it was still nighttime. I started to roll over to shutter the lamp, only to find myself impeded in some way that my sleep-fogged mind didn’t comprehend. The impediment turned out to be silk ropes, binding my wrists and ankles and securing them to the posts of the bedstead.

“They’re tied pretty well. In case you were thinking of struggling,” a voice observed.

I blinked once, hard, to clear my vision. “Castor?” What the fuck?

The Baron just smiled. He was sitting in an armchair by my bed, a book open on his lap. I glanced around—soft lamps, silk ropes, me still stark naked from when I’d undressed earlier. Was he planning what I thought he was planning? I’d been with a couple of men before, but never in the, uh, receptive capacity, and I wasn’t sure that tonight was the night I wanted to rectify that.

“Relax, Silas. I’m only here to be a witness.”

My brow furrowed. “A witness to what?”

He nodded towards the door, which had just clicked open, revealing a slender young woman in her middle twenties, a woman I recognized from a few of the parties at the Baron’s but whose name I didn’t know. She was as naked as I was, small-waisted and small-breasted. More arresting to me than her nudity was her dark red hair, unbound and tumbling down her back. If you had only seen Molly a handful of times, it would be easy to confuse the two, although this woman had brown eyes and no freckles and a very timid expression you’d never see on Molly’s face.

But that didn’t matter right now, because the only thing that mattered was that this woman was naked and walking towards me, and that I was naked and tied to a bed, and no fucking way could I stomach the idea of sex with a stranger right now. I yanked on the ties again, this time in earnest, growing more panicked as the Baron’s words proved true and the ropes refused to give.

“Castor, untie me,” I pleaded.

My loyal ally these many years, the man Julian and I saw as a mentor, shook his head.

“You are not my friend anymore,” I said, my voice tight as I tried to kick at the leg ties.

The Baron let out a loud laugh. “It’s for the best, Silas, I promise.”

The woman approached the bed and stood at the side, looking at me almost shyly. This gave me hope. If she was shy, then she might be nervous. If she was nervous, then maybe I could talk her into turning her pert little ass around and leaving the room. Leaving my bereaved heart and my soulless body alone. “Look,” I told her. “I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but it’s not true. I mean, it was true, but it’s not true right now. Or any more. I don’t want to have sex with you—I’m sure you’re a very nice person and you are very pretty, but I only want one person right now, and you’re not her. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.”

She cocked her head to the side, and then someone stepped out from behind the screen in the corner of the room.

Molly.

“Silas, I’m flattered,” she said with a small smile.

I sucked in a breath. “Jesus, Molly.”

She moved over to the bed, on the opposite side of her would-be doppelgänger, and everything about her was designed to send tendrils of heat through me. Jolting my heart awake and—more embarrassingly given my utter and complete nakedness—jolting my dick awake. She wore a dressing gown the same golden color of her dress earlier tonight, her furled nipples tight and hard under the thin silk. Her thick hair tangled and waved around her shoulders, hanging down to her waist in a mass of glorious copper. Somehow, the mere suggestion of her naked form under that silk did far more for me than the overtly naked girl perched just on the other side of the bed.

“Come here,” I said, before I could stop myself. Before I could think about the painful way we parted, before I could think about her vengeful fiancé and his ridiculous contract. Before I could think about the other people in the room. I just wanted her close. I wanted her touching me, her cinnamon smell surrounding me, her hair tickling my face and chest.

She didn’t climb onto the bed with me, but instead raised her hand and ran her fingers from my wrist down to my chest, where she splayed her hand against my pectoral muscle. The warm pressure of her touch sent more blood to my groin, and now my desire was completely and utterly apparent.

But I didn’t care. I didn’t give a fuck about anybody else in this room. I kept my gaze on my Molly.

“Come here,” I repeated.

She bit her lip. “I want to,” she whispered.

“But,” Castor interjected, standing from his chair, “we have a slightly unusual arrangement tonight.”

Molly nodded and her face cleared, as if the Baron’s voice had reminded her of something crucial. “What you said to me tonight…” She glanced up at Castor and the woman, and then back down to me, her expression uncomfortable. Molly didn’t like emotions and even less liked feeling them in front of other people. “I reacted poorly. And I want you to know what it meant to me, all the things you said…all the things you made me feel.”

“And this is how you wanted to show me?” I couldn’t help it—despite everything, I grinned. I mean, I was willing to forget all the heartache of tonight, if it ended where it looked like it was going to end. But then I remembered. “But what about Hugh? And the contract?”