The Persuasion of Molly O'Flaherty (9 page)

Hugh wanted to honeymoon in Paris.

I didn’t want to honeymoon at all.

After all, a honeymoon was a celebration, and what was there to celebrate? Certainly not our marriage, which would be a sham. Certainly not our happy future, because there wouldn’t be one. And certainly not the possibility of a family, which I mulled over as I drank my morning tea in bed—the same tea I drank every morning, a brew I’d learned from my auntie in Ellis before we’d moved to Liverpool.

“What the Pope doesn’t know…” she’d said with a wink, as she’d showed me the dried bundles of herbs hanging from her ceiling. I’d been ten when she’d taught me how to brew the tea, and I didn’t really understand until I was older what a gift she had given me. I’d been able to live my life as freely as I wanted, and even now that I was being chained to a man I didn’t love, I still wouldn’t have to bear him any children if I didn’t want to.

But I could have happily had children with Silas…

I finished the tea, refusing to let that thought settle. No, it was done and over. I would save my company now and worry about the rest later, and so what if my chest felt as if someone had cracked it open and scorched the inside? So much the better. Hope couldn’t grow on scorched ground, and hope was for the foolish.

If anything, this would make me stronger.

Not for the first time, I thought about leaving London and going back to Ireland. Finding some quiet stone cottage by the sea and drinking whiskey all day. A place where money and businesses didn’t matter, where I could be free of any consideration aside from what I wanted. Silas could be there. It could be the two of us, secluded and spoiled, spending every moment with one another. And I would watch him staring at the surf, watch the way the corners of his eyes would crinkle as he squinted into the setting sun. I would watch those long, strong hands flex and curl as he sifted through pebbles on the beach.

But all of that only made me remember the last man I’d been on an Irish beach with. My father, walking home from my mother’s funeral, him telling me about opportunities for dockworkers in Liverpool…

Daddy.

I slid off the bed and went in search of a dressing gown, trying to avoid the crushing wave of sadness that came when I thought about my family. My mom, dying of consumption just months after my little brother. My father, moving us to Liverpool and then to London, working his way up from dockworker to manager and then to the owner of his own company, only to succumb to the same disease before I turned twenty-one.

He had poured all of himself into his work, and it was his blood and sweat that had created O’Flaherty Shipping Lines.

Well, his blood and sweat and one very lucky investment.

It had been my fourteenth birthday. We had just moved to London, and my father had taken all the money he’d earned in the last two years and purchased one ship—a beaten-up, decades-old vessel called the
Aquamarine
(which he’d promptly renamed the
Clare
, after our home.) My father was a prompt deliverer and fairly priced, and before long, we had more work than the
Clare
could handle. Then came the
Shannon
, named for my mother, the
Sean
, for my brother, and finally the
Molly
. We had the beginnings of a fleet, the makings of a thriving business.

Since my father had made sure I’d been schooled, I was far better at the accounting and bookkeeping than he was, and so I’d spent every evening after school and every Saturday in our warehouse, working the numbers.

Mr. Cunningham had come into the warehouse we rented in the East End, looking for my father, but upon seeing me scribbling at a desk, had sauntered over with a smile. He’d been a young man then, newly married. He was the handsomest man I’d ever seen, and I had looked up into his face and been temporarily paralyzed by the sudden awareness of his
maleness
, or rather, of my
femaleness
. He’d looked at me like I was a woman, not a girl. And I had felt very compelled to tell him, when he’d asked me if I was Aiden O’Flaherty’s daughter, that yes I was, and that I had also just turned fourteen years old.

“What a special age,” he’d murmured. “Happy birthday, Miss O’Flaherty.” And then he’d presented me with the small daffodil from his buttonhole. I’d clutched it while he’d spoken with my father about the possibility of investing. Only my father and I knew how desperately we needed the money—we were swamped with work and if we didn’t purchase new ships, we would have to start turning away orders. When he’d left, he’d placed a small card on the desk where I worked. Even I, as inexperienced as I was, could tell the card was expensively made, with its thick stock and filigreed letters, and so I didn’t dare refuse the order dashed in ink on the back.

See me.

And below that, an address in Knightsbridge.

The next day, when my father thought I was at school, I went to Frederick Cunningham’s house. Looking back, I cannot believe that I went…fourteen years old in a new city, going unchaperoned to a strange man’s house. I’d always been bold, but this had been outright dangerous. I suppose I’d felt special, somehow, with my card and my wilting daffodil. And when I was admitted into the palatial townhouse, I felt a little bit like a princess from a fairytale. That ended quickly, however, when I’d been shown into his library. There’d been none of the charm of the day before, none of the smiles. He’d made me stand before him as he fired question after question at me. What was the net worth of the shipping company? How many men did we employ and what did we pay them? How quickly could we recoup the cost of a new ship? The kinds of questions that he’d asked my father, but he must have sensed I’d have better answers for him, given that I actually kept the books of the business.

“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?”

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.

“I will sign it,” I said, pulling away from Hugh. “But for the company. Only for the company.”

Hugh smiled a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “That’s good enough for me.”