Maybe murderous wasn’t the right word. She looked like she could obliterate worlds, like the Hindu god Shiva, and every self-preservation instinct I had told me to run away. I had no interest in once again testing the boxing skills an impoverished Molly had learned as a girl in the gutters of Liverpool.

Instead, I buttoned myself up and walked towards her, debating what to do. After all, I’d told her when I’d proposed that we wouldn’t have to live as man and wife, and clearly since she was cavorting around with other men, she didn’t feel the need to prove her loyalty to any one person, so why should I? Our group had never been about sexual exclusivity. Even Julian had shared Ivy with our friends and me.

On the other hand, I had just realized something important, something huge, and it meant that I had betrayed her. I loved her and I let another woman put her mouth on me. Not just any woman, either. The woman who had driven us apart the first time.

Guilt crawled up my spine and lodged itself in my throat.

I stopped just short of striking distance, deciding on cautious honesty. “Molly, I can explain. But before anything else is said, you need to know that I—”

Hugh stepped out from behind her, and it was clear he’d been hovering out of sight the whole time. The pompous needledick.

“Silas,” he said, sliding an arm around Molly’s waist. “Fancy seeing you here. How’s your face feeling?”

I wanted to rip his throat out. “Marvelous. Look, it didn’t even bruise.” I tilted my jaw so he could see how little damage his punch had actually done.

He looked sour, and that give me the smallest micron of pleasure. I turned my attention back to Molly, trying not to notice the way Hugh’s fingers splayed against her rib cage, trying not to think about them going home together last night, trying not to think about her fucking him like I so wanted her to fuck me.

“Molly,” I tried again. “This—I know this looks bad. And it is bad, I’m not denying that, but I realized something when Mercy was…” I trailed off. Fuck. There was no way to have this conversation without completely driving home the fact that I’d been, once again, caught fooling around with Mercy Atworth.

Molly didn’t say anything to fill the silence, but she met my eyes, and what I saw there punched me in the chest. Pain and betrayal and rage, and the same deep, deep sadness I’d seen in her last year. The kind of hopeless despair that seemed so unlike her.

“Will you say something?” I pleaded. I was used to people talking to me, I was used to people smiling and laughing around me, and I had no idea how to handle this silence. This stone wall of O’Flaherty. Say something, you idiot. Make her laugh or make her blush or make her mad—anything is better than this silence.

I decided just to go for it. To just tell her. “Molly, I love you.”

If the words sounded grand and important in my head, if I imagined them accompanied to music like they were part of a Gilbert and Sullivan show, I would never admit it to another soul, because in reality they came out weak and defensive and a tad bit manipulative. They in no way sounded noble or heartfelt or even genuine—they sounded like a kid telling his parents he loved them to avoid a strapping.

Molly responded predictably; whatever despair had been there before was now entirely wiped out by a fierce anger. She stepped forward, and it was only with great courage that I held my ground, bracing myself for the inevitable strike. But she didn’t hit me. Instead, she leaned forward and said in a voice so low that I knew only I could hear it:

“Get. Out.”

“Molly—”

“Clare,” she seethed.

Clare.

Fuck.

With one last glance—a glance that was more like a glare on her end—I left.

I met Frederick Cunningham over lunch at the Cafe Royal. The venue was my choice, as it was primarily frequented by a younger, more fashionable set than Mr. Cunningham was likely used to, and I wanted him to feel out of place. I also wanted to meet him on familiar ground. Home territory.

I watched his face crease with distaste at the ornate pillars and brightly frescoed ceilings, and at the women dining beside men, all in a jostling swarm of Bohemians, journalists, and military officers.

Good.

The more unsettled he was, the more defensive he’d be. And defensive people often revealed their weaknesses.

I stood to shake Mr. Cunningham’s hand as he approached, and then we both sat down, him appraising the restaurant while I casually appraised him. Mid-forties, good-looking—if a little prettyish for a man. Undoubtedly wealthy, given the expensive cut of his suit and the fob watch gleaming under his jacket. But as I watched him condescendingly place his order and then sip tiny, Lilliputian sips from his wine glass, I deduced that whatever power he held came solely from his money and nowhere else. He didn’t possess an innate respect for his fellow man—which meant that underneath his arrogance, there was a deep-seated and unconscious insecurity. And nothing about his carriage or demeanor belied anything but bored derision. No intelligence, no perception, no idea of his own soft spots. No inherent strength of will.

Plus, he drank his wine like a schoolgirl, and I made it a point never to trust people who were weak drinkers.

“So, Mr. Cecil-Coke, to what do I owe the pleasure of this meeting? I was rather surprised to receive a letter from you, given that we haven’t been previously introduced.”

I’d kept my letter requesting our meeting purposefully vague, mentioning only that I had a lucrative business proposal for him. I’d done it because I wanted to see his face and hear his voice when I mentioned Molly. I wanted to know how he felt about her. Contemptuous? Jealous? Completely neutral?

I leaned forward, smiling as widely as I could. I wasn’t unaware of the effect I had on men as well as women. Beyond the sexual, I’d always found that people responded much better to friendly charm than to brooding threats. (Which was the reason I’d always had more friends than Julian Markham.)

“Mr. Cunningham, I’ve heard that you and your company are looking for a man to marry Molly O’Flaherty. I would like to be that man, and I want to discuss terms with you to see how we can make that happen.”

Mr. Cunningham blinked for a minute, and in that minute, I saw everything I expected to see—scorn and avarice and a glint of lust. “Well, Mr. Cecil-Coke, I’m sorry to say that you are too late. The board has already approved of a suitor.”

“I heard. The Viscount Beaumont.”

His blond eyebrows lifted. “You know that? Where did you hear that?”

“Mutual friends,” I said vaguely. Until our lunch was finished and he inevitably hunted down any and all information about me, I didn’t want him to know how close I was to Molly, since I suspected that would work against me at the moment. Let him just think I was a wealthy, run-of-the-mill suitor chasing after an inheritance.

He made an indeterminate noise. “Mutual friends, you say.”

“What did the viscount offer you?” I asked. “If it’s money, I have plenty. If it’s connections, I have plenty of those, too. Just name your price—and then any extra you would like to keep for yourself beyond that—and it’s yours.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why are you so eager to wed Miss O’Flaherty? Maybe you don’t spend much time in London, but her…ah, spotted…reputation is quite well known among certain circles here.”

“My own reputation is quite spotted, Mr. Cunningham,” I replied, not bothering to tell him that Molly and I had earned most of those spots together. “I’m not threatened by not having a virgin bride.”

Mr. Cunningham actually shuddered. “I can’t imagine. I made a physician ensure my wife was a virgin before we were married.”