“You’ve lost weight,” I said quietly, and the dark thing in me was pacing and angry. Not at her, but at myself. I felt the unaccountable urge to find some food and make her eat it in front of me. She’s your responsibility, the dark thing said. She is the woman you love, the woman you should be serving. The woman you should be doing everything in your power to care for.

I pushed the voice down, down and away from my mind. “Molly,” I tried again. “I’m so sorry. May we start over?”

She cleared her throat, not meeting my eyes. “I think you should leave.”

“Leave the Baron’s?”

She took a breath and then lifted her gaze, firm and still wet with tears. “No. Leave London.”

Something jagged sliced through my chest. Jagged and cold.

“We ended badly,” she continued, “but I see now that it was for the best. You and me—what we had—it wasn’t real. It was only three days, and Silas, we know better than to believe in love. Whatever we said to each other, whatever we promised each other, it was delirium brought on by good sex and nothing more. And you did us both a favor by dispelling that delirium as quickly as possible.”

The cold, jagged slice went deeper. “Dispelling it by fucking Mercy, you mean,” I said hollowly.

She hesitated, her throat bobbing ever so slightly, a tiny tremor in her chin. “Yes,” she said after a minute. “By fucking Mercy.”

We stared at each other again.

“Molly—”

She held up a hand. “Don’t. Just—whatever you were here to prove, you’ve proven it, okay? And I wish that I could rage at you, I wish that I could rain hellfire on your head, but I can’t. Not tonight. You’ve won, Silas. Now take pity on me and leave. I have too much going on in my life to expend the effort it would take to hate you.”

I felt completely sliced in two now, bleeding and severed. I had done this, I had earned this apathetic defeated tone, with my own weakness and cowardice last year. But tonight wasn’t supposed to be about last year. It was supposed to be about a fresh start, a straightforward agreement.

Just say what you came here to say, you idiot. “Molly,” I said, as contritely and also as charmingly as I could. “I came here to help you. Not to fight you.”

She lifted an eyebrow. She didn’t believe me, which was fair, I supposed, given our history.

I went on. “Julian told me about the board and their decision to make you marry.”

She sighed, making a yes…and? gesture with her hand.

“And I came back from France because I want to help you.”

“Silas,” she said, “you can’t help. No one can. I’ve seen every solicitor in London and there’s nothing to be done. Their decision is in no way illegal. They have every right to sell their shares if they so choose, and even though using that to force me into marriage feels like blackmail, legally, it is not.”

“I wasn’t talking about solicitors, Mary Margaret,” I said softly. “I was talking about me. Me and you. I came here to marry you.”

Her mouth fell open into a small O, and the glimpse of her pearl-white teeth and pink tongue reminded me how stiff my erection still was, how much my skin still burned to touch hers.

“You want to marry me?” she asked disbelievingly. “Why?”

Because I love you.

Because I can’t stop thinking about you.

Because I’ve found heaven, and it’s you and your perfect mouth and your perfect pussy.

“Because I have a proposition for you,” I said, still friendly, still smiling, still all business. “I can marry you, so you can satisfy the board’s demands, and then I will never, ever interfere in your running of the company or allow the board to use me to coerce you in any way—even if we have to playact at me taking charge, I never will interfere. And then you give me what I want. A transaction. No emotions, no entanglements, simply an exchange.”

“Exchange? Exchange for what?” Her tone was still doubtful, still incredulous. I knew that what I was about to say next would not repair that in any way.

I gave her the most dimpled and handsome smile I could muster.

“For a child.”

Her skin went even paler than normal, chalk-white against the sandy ecru of her freckles. “A baby,” she said, her voice devoid of any affect or feeling. “A…child.”

“A human baby. Yes.”

She blinked. Stared at me. Like she’d never heard of babies before.

“You want a baby,” she said, her face slowly changing from flatly pale to flushed and suspicious. “You want to marry me so that…what? So that we have children together?”

“Yes.”

She spun on her heel, realized she was facing a wall and then spun back. “Have you gone mad?”

“It’s been a while since I checked, buttercup.”

She didn’t even crack a smile at my response. She stepped forward, her cheeks flaming scarlet. “Are you joking, then? Is this some sort of elaborate prank?”

“My offer is as serious as sin, Molly. I’m not insane and I’m not joking.”

She came closer, so close I could smell her again, spices and the clean, flowery smell of her hair. “Then how dare you,” she seethed. “How dare you come here after what you did and presume to think that I could ever—ever—entertain the idea of being bound to you. How dare you think that I would debase myself enough to marry you? To carry your fucking child?”

Her volume had risen with her color, and I was certain people on the other side of the curtain could hear her. She was magnificent right now, her hands balled into fists in her skirt, her hair tumbling around her shoulders, her slender frame visibly shaking with anger.

I hadn’t expected her to hit me and I hadn’t expected my very physical (and deeply wrong) response to her striking me—but this? This bone-rattling, blood-boiling rage?

This I had expected.

“I know we have a history—” I started.

“A history?” she shrieked. “A history? Is that what you call it? You told me you cared about me, Silas, you told me that you wanted me and me alone and that you were done being with other women. You saw me crying! I told you…” She faltered and trailed off, her gaze breaking away from mine, her thin arms wrapping themselves around her body. “I told you I loved you.”

She didn’t have to say any more. We both knew what had happened next.

“I won’t try to defend myself,” I said quietly. “I don’t have any reasons or excuses except that I’m a loathsome troll.” And that I was scared to death of the way that you made me feel.

Of the way you still make me feel.

“But I don’t think we should let this bad blood keep us from a mutually beneficial arrangement. You need a husband to appease the board, and I can be that husband, just for appearances’ sake. We won’t have to live as man and wife, and I won’t ever involve myself in your business. It will be like we aren’t even married, and then the board will have lost that particular bit of leverage over you.”

“We won’t have to live as man and wife…except you want a baby,” Molly pointed out. Irritation and hurt still laced her words. “So you’ll get to marry me and fuck me…and I am supposed to be grateful for it? For your charity?”

God, when she put it that way, it did sound terrible. “This isn’t charity, darling, this is a mutually beneficial business arrangement. You need a husband. I want a family.”

“And why do you want a family so badly, anyway?” she demanded, arms still crossed and eyebrow raised.

I didn’t have a ready answer to that, not because I couldn’t name all the reasons why I wanted one, but because it just seemed so…apparent. So obvious.

Who didn’t want a family?

Molly. That’s who.

I gestured to the curtain, where a chink in the fabric revealed a whirling tableau of dancing, drinking and sex. “Is this really all you want your life to be? Meaningless fucking and too much wine? You don’t ever think about your future—about settling down and being content? You don’t ever want to experience the kind of pure, unconditional love that comes with a family?”