“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.

I had wanted to spend the day otherwise. I told myself that I’d wanted to spend it meeting up with friends and acquaintances, but truthfully, I’d wanted to spend it with my face under Molly’s skirts. I’d left the Baron’s last night with a raging erection that refused to abate, despite the two times I’d stroked myself off. Last year—hell, even last week—I would have found a woman to take care of it. I would have charmed her into my bed and fucked her until we were both limp and sweaty.

But for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate to myself, I abstained. I settled for my hand and then woke up as hard as an adolescent boy as a result (and was forced to settle for my hand again.)

So I was already miserable this morning when I heard the rumors at a breakfast with Rhoda and Zona, rumors that infuriated me and frustrated me and made me even more miserable.

Hugh and Molly. About to be engaged.

Thus the trip to the solicitor’s. Contingency plans, my father used to tell Thomas and me as he managed the business of our estate. The secret to success is to always have a contingency plan.

And so here I was. Contingency plan in place, although I desperately hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.

I didn’t feel satisfied, or even relieved, as I took a cab back to my townhouse, mostly because things were still so uncertain. There were only rumors, hearsay, the one thing that travels faster than the wind. And since this Mr. Cunningham I’d wanted to meet with had decided that our meeting should be put off until tomorrow, I would have no real answers until then.

It wasn’t until we pulled onto my street that I realized there might be someone else who had real answers, someone close to me.

Which was how I ended up in Mercy Atworth’s house, waiting for her in her front room, pacing the rug with long strides. I practically jumped on her the moment she entered, but I backed away when I noticed she was wrapped in a silk dressing gown and nothing else.

My groin—already aching from last night’s neglect—filled with blood.

“Silas, how unexpected. And wonderful. I’m sorry it took me a couple minutes, I needed to send word to a friend about something.” She raised up and kissed my cheeks in the Continental fashion, her nearly-bare breasts brushing against my chest as she did, the thin silk of her wrapper doing nothing to hide the erect peaks of her nipples.

I took a step backward. And then deciding that wasn’t enough, spun around on the pretense of examining the clock on her mantel.