“Interesting,” the Baron mused. We started riding again as the Baron pondered…whatever it was that he was pondering. After a few minutes, he said, “I’m sorry for my silence. I just didn’t realize Hugh’s cousin was involved in this.”
Hugh’s cousin.
Cunningham.
I stopped my horse. “What?”
“Yes,” the Baron said, stopping as well, and there was a small frown on his lips. “There was a scandal a few years back—a girl was appallingly abused at The Corinthian. A man had paid an exceptionally high price to take her virginity, and when the madam had found the girl the next morning, she’d been beaten and sodomized.” The Baron’s hands tightened on his reins. “She was thirteen.”
“Christ,” I muttered.
“The man was Frederick Cunningham.”
I suspected as much, but the confirmation infuriated me. That stupid mustache and the ridiculous mincing way he drank his wine…all that time, I’d been sitting across the table from a rapist and I’d had no idea. I wanted to ride to wherever he was right now and beat his face in. I wanted to watch his body bob in the Thames.
The Baron looked equally furious as he recalled the incident, and a furious Castor Gravendon was a terrifying thing, an avenging god straight from Roman myth, muscled and hulking and implacable. Castor may have been a dominant man, but he had no tolerance for cruelty.
We nudged our horses forward in silence, each of us wrapped up in our individual fantasies of retribution.
“As you might know, The Corinthian leases its property from me,” the Baron continued after we turned a corner near the woods, calmer now. “The madam approached me for help—she had no recourse to seek justice for this girl, but she wanted to make sure that this man couldn’t hurt another in this manner again. My circle is wide and varied and well-connected to many high-end establishments like The Corinthian, so I spread the word about him. Mr. Cunningham was barred from the best of the London brothels and has since had to travel overseas to find what he craves.”
“What an abominable pile of shit.”
The Baron nodded in agreement. “And when, in the course of spreading this word, I discovered through mutual friends that Frederick Cunningham was actually Frederick Beaumont Cunningham, Hugh came to me and asked that I keep their relation quiet. I granted his request, since I could understand why Hugh wouldn’t want to be associated with such reprehensible behavior.”
I thought of my suspicions in the Cafe Royal. “So that must be why Cunningham was so set on Hugh marrying Molly. They’re family.”
“Possibly. And as I understand it, Hugh has been living off loans from Cunningham for quite some time.”
“But Hugh’s a viscount,” I protested. “I thought surely he must have plenty of money…”
“There are many peers of the realm who aren’t more than paupers, Silas. Hugh is one of them.”
I sat back in my saddle and thought. I had at least believed that Hugh was marrying Molly out of some misguided affection or love, that he wasn’t using her for money, but that didn’t seem to be the case. And for Cunningham, using Hugh to marry Molly must have been a convenient way to infuse his relative with cash, while also solidifying his control over Molly. Any children she bore would be Beaumonts and related to him.
The realization made me so miserably angry that I had to close my eyes for a minute and concentrate on breathing normally.
“I’ll see if I can find anything more,” the Baron said. “I hate the idea of Molly being tied to that man, in whatever way.”
“Me too,” I agreed.
Me too.
“Does Molly know?” I asked. “About Hugh and Cunningham?”
“Surely she must,” the Baron said.
But I worried that she didn’t. And she deserved to know. But how did one tell somebody something this crucial when they refused to see you? “She won’t believe me if I tell her,” I said with a sigh. “Because she’ll think I’m interfering out of jealousy, not concern.”
“Which you are,” the Baron pointed out.
“Both. It’s both.”
He accepted that and we rode back to the stables, dismounting the horses and passing the gin back and forth for a few minutes. From here, I could see the lawn where we’d made love, where I’d parted her folds to see my seed inside of her. My cock twitched at the same time my heart twisted.
I don’t need a safe word for a game I’m not playing.
“Do you think Molly is really a dominant?” I asked, knowing the question probably seemed abrupt and irrelevant to Castor and also not caring.
He looked taken aback. “Our Molly? Certainly not.”
That surprised me. “You don’t think so?” But then I remembered that, even though it had been years ago, Molly and Castor had played together. “Was she submissive for you?”
Castor took another deep draught of the gin. “Yes and no. Yes, she submitted physically, which for her is a tremendous step, but she never submitted to me mentally or emotionally. She never found the submission fulfilling, but it wasn’t because of the submission itself, I think. I believe Molly needs to have complete trust and love in the person she’s submitting to, and while she trusted me, she didn’t love me. Which is why we never played together more than two or three times—it wasn’t rewarding for either of us.”
I thought about this.
“Just because a person refuses to be topped by unworthy men doesn’t necessarily make her dominant,” Castor added. “No more than your allowing a woman to take charge in bed out of politeness or laziness makes you a submissive.” He gave me a pointed look. “For her, she’s never found a man worth that surrender. And you’ve never found a woman worth exerting that level of effort for.”
“I want to believe that. I want to believe that I can be the kind of man who can take care of her, but…”
“But it feels like she won’t let you?” the Baron finished for me.
“Right.”
“Silas,” the Baron said, screwing the cap back on the flask and handing it to me, “spanking her in a maze once isn’t enough to make her forget the ways that you’ve hurt her. If you want her to surrender to you, if you want her to allow herself to be brought under your care so you can love and protect her in all the ways she needs and deserves it…then you are going to have to surrender yourself to her first.”
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.