“What,” I asked, my voice icy, “makes you think I’d even be willing to consider someone of your choosing?”
“Frankly, Miss O’Flaherty, the board is being very magnanimous here: this gentleman is already a good friend of yours—and if I’m reading things correctly, he’s sometimes been more than a good friend. He approached the board and has told us in good faith that he will assist us in our cares.”
A good friend. My mind flashed to Silas and something in my chest squeezed. He’d said he’d playact with me in order to convince the board that I was doing his bidding; was this part of that? Had he already begun his pursuit of me? And why did that make me feel so light-headed and breathless?
“Who is it?” I demanded.
Mr. Cunningham dusted a speck of lint from his trousers. “Viscount Beaumont, Hugh Calvert.”
“Hugh.” Disappointment deflated me, helplessness streamed through my blood.
Hugh.
Hugh had approached the board, not Silas.
What did you expect? You know you can’t count on Silas for anything. You can’t trust him.
I forced myself to think clear-headedly. To be pragmatic. “Viscount Beaumont has already offered his hand to me.”
“Splendid!” Mr. Cunningham said. “Well, perhaps I am late with this news then. When shall you be delivering your acceptance to him?”
Pragmatic Molly cautioned me to keep the hot, angry words from spilling out, words that would tell Frederick Cunningham exactly how long it would take me to deliver my acceptance to any man, which would be when hell froze over, thawed and then froze again.
No, Pragmatic Molly recognized that she’d already given Hugh’s offer serious consideration. She recognized that perhaps this was the best chance she had at salvaging this miserable scenario and at least getting married to someone pleasant, someone who wasn’t after her money.
“I’m still thinking about it,” I said finally. “I am not willing to make this decision in haste.”
“Very well,” Mr. Cunningham said, shrugging and then standing to leave. “But just so you know, you may cease with interviewing your other would-be husbands. The board is quite set on the viscount.”
“So I don’t even have a choice now?”
Mr. Cunningham approached me, but I stayed sitting, my hands curled around the armrests, my fingernails digging in and denting the wood there.
“Oh, Miss O’Flaherty. Molly—you never minded when I called you Molly, did you? You always have a choice.”
He stood right in front of me now, but I refused to stand or even to look up at him. Instead, I stared resolutely ahead at the large bay window overlooking Eaton Place, my jaw set.
Still, out of the periphery of my vision, I could see him unbuttoning his trousers, could see him withdrawing his penis.
Tears pricked the back of my eyelids, but I refused to let them spill. Not this time.
“You know what your choices are, don’t you, Molly?” he asked, his facade of gentleness too weak to hide the triumph in his voice.
I didn’t answer, didn’t even shake my head, and then his hand was fisting my hair and his erection was at my lips, pressing, but I didn’t open my mouth. He pulled my hair harder and tears did leak out now, but I still refused to accept what he was forcing on me.
“Be my whore,” he said and I could hear him lick his lips. “Be mine, and I’ll make everything else go away.”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard a fourteen-year-old girl crying and the sound of a pen nib scratching on paper. A decision that had saved my father’s fledgling company and destroyed my innocence in one fell swoop.
“Come on,” Mr. Cunningham coaxed. “I hear what a little slut you are. Am I supposed to believe that I have the one cock in London you won’t suck?”
I knew better than to open my mouth to answer; he would only see that as an invitation, and I’d be gagging on his penis before I could get the first word out. While we’d never repeated the trauma of That Night, he had forced himself on me in other ways in the intervening years.
Part of me longed to bite his member as hard as I could, longed to see if I could bite it clean off. Another part wondered how much it would hurt if I grabbed his balls and squeezed until something ruptured. And yet another part of me—a small, defeated part—was tired of fighting him. Wanted merely to let him use me and leave so that I could move on with my life.
But whatever my fantasies were, I knew that Mr. Cunningham held all the power here. If I hurt him now, he’d have me arrested as fast as he could find a police officer. If I hurt him now, not only would he make sure that everything Father (and later, I) had built was taken away, but it would mean all my earlier sacrifices were invalidated. And that idea was just as repellent as doing his bidding, the idea that all of this debasement and humiliation had been for nothing.
He was breathing fast now, stroking himself as I still refused to open my mouth. “It’s been a while since we’ve done this, Molly. How long has it been? A year?”
Eight months, two weeks and three days.
I only knew that because it was the day Silas had found me crying in this very parlor. I hadn’t told him what had happened, I hadn’t given him any sort of explanation, and after it became apparent that I couldn’t be soothed in any of the normal ways, he’d carried me up to my room and my bed. He’d erased every tear with his lips, every foul taste with his own sweet tongue, used his hands and his cock to chase away the disgusting, used feeling I always had after Cunningham.
For whatever reason, thinking of that day, thinking of Silas and his tender blue eyes as he’d made love to me made me stronger. No, I wouldn’t open my mouth today. Maybe I wouldn’t fight back, but I wouldn’t give in. I would find another way.
My refusal only seemed to arouse Cunningham further, as he moved his hand faster over his prick, and then with a soft—almost feminine—noise, cum dribbled out of his tip, dripping onto my dress. I finally looked up at him, meeting his eyes for a moment before glancing meaningfully down at his fast-softening cock.
“If you’re finished, I’d like you to leave,” I said.
He gazed down at me, his eyes cold. “I think I got the answer I needed.” He reached down and used my dress to scrub the remaining globules of cum off his flaccid cock, and it was only the vivid image of getting arrested for assault that stopped me from jumping up and ramming my fist into his teeth.
“Oh, I love seeing you so angry,” he said as he let the ruined silk fall from his hand. “I am almost happy that you didn’t choose to become mine—this way it will be so much more fun to see your husband break you.”
“Hugh would never,” I countered.
“Maybe not, maybe not,” Mr. Cunningham conceded. “Regardless, I expect to hear your engagement announcement to the viscount very soon. The board is getting impatient.” He gave me one last look. “I prefer my women fresher anyhow. Untainted. Younger.”
I didn’t bother seeing him out. Instead, I stood and tore at my dress until my lady’s maid scurried in to help—together we stripped it off and consigned it to the kitchen fire.
Seeing my solicitor and banker had taken all morning and all afternoon, and by the time I left, the day was already fading into a hot evening, accompanied by a listless breeze and the racket of carriage wheels on the road.