The Wedding of Molly O'Flaherty (11 page)

Guilt crashed into me. This entire time, I’d perceived this as either an act of emotional self-preservation or, worse, an act designed to deliberately hurt me. And all along, he’d been wrapped in grief, wrapped in the grief of those small orphaned children, and
Jesus
, this made every sleepless night and lonely morning feel so fucking trivial. What were a few stray tears in comparison to this kind of loss? What was the pain of a shattered romance in comparison to the pain of a dead brother?

As easy as it was to pretend when we were together, the world didn’t revolve around us. The world was cruel and harsh and full of unexpected pain, and it had yanked Silas away without a care for my needs or even his. And I had been so petty and shallow and selfish to have never even considered that Silas’s trip had nothing to do with me.

I suddenly felt very small. And very stupid.

I arranged for a carriage up to the villa, my mind churning the entire time. It was as if I were King Lear, only too late realizing my destructive self-absorption and narrowness of my vision, and like Lear, I was close to madness and weeping. I’d been so focused on my company and on me, and how could I not see that Silas was the only thing that made me happy? The only person who completed me?

Why had I run away from my own happiness?

Twilight had set around the villa, pale crepuscular light casting long shadows around the walls and tiled roof, clustering in between the even rows of lavender stretching out toward the horizon. I walked through these shadows after exiting my carriage, flexing my fingers and reminding myself to breathe.

Breathe breathe breathe.

Because Silas had every right to shut me out of his grief. He had every right to turn me away, even if his brother hadn’t died, because of how we’d left things.

I prayed that he wouldn’t, though. I prayed that he’d unleash his anger and his hurt on me, punish me and use me, make me suffer as he used my body to soothe the ache inside him—anything but shut me out.

Voices spilled out of the courtyard as I approached, happy voices. The heavy wooden doors were cracked, and so I could see the scene inside, lit by several hanging lanterns, and when I saw it, my throat closed with emotion.

There he was, my Silas, tall and handsome and already a little tanned from his two weeks here in France. He was dressed more casually than he hardly ever was—trousers and a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbow. A tie loosely knotted around his neck, loose enough to expose the dip of his collarbone and the jut of his Adam’s apple. A day-old beard roughened those sharp cheekbones and that even sharper jaw, and in the lantern-light, his blue eyes looked deep purple or black. He was laughing—an infectiously happy sound that resounded in my very bones—and my chest tightened as I realized that was so quintessentially Silas. Laughing in the face of tragedy. Finding joy in pain.

He was chasing four small children, his laughs interspersed with chesty mock-growls, and his loping gait punctuated by low, long swipes of his arms. He was clearly supposed to a bear of some sort, and the children squealed with fearful delight when he drew close enough seize them, which he did often and then tickled them until they begged for mercy.

And in the corner, sitting on a chair, a stout older woman dandied a baby on her knee, and Silas would also occasionally stop to plant a kiss on the little one’s head with a gentle affection.

If the mere act of witnessing a scene such as this had the power to impregnate, then I would be pregnant this instant. Watching Silas in his element, with the people he cared about, made my face flush with happiness. Not the selfish kind of happiness I was used to, but that almost spiritual kind of happiness that you feel in response to someone else’s. I was happy that Silas was happy, regardless of the fact that I wasn’t currently part of that happiness.

But the thought came anyway.
You don’t belong here.

And I didn’t. I was intruding. Silas had created a small island of joy for his family in the midst of all this pain, and who was I to invade that with my need to apologize? My need for resolution?

I would come back, I decided. Later maybe. Or I could send a letter…yes, that would be best. A short letter or an invitation to talk. That would be the polite thing to do, given the circumstances.

I turned, moving away from the courtyard door and back to my waiting carriage, and then I heard his voice.

“Molly?”

There was a pause between my saying her name and her turning back, and for a brief instant, I wondered if I’d imagined her face at the courtyard door, imagined the lantern-light glinting in her copper hair.

But then she turned and, after a moment’s hesitation, stepped through the door, her figure resolving itself out of the shadows. She was real.

She was
here
.

My Molly.

Something was swelling in my chest, something heavy and light all at the same time, and it took me a moment to recognize the feeling of simple, pure happiness. Thomas had only been dead a week, and the feeling was already so foreign and strange, as if it had been years since I’d felt it instead of days.

She’d obviously been traveling all day; her fashionably striped silk dress was noticeably creased and her hair was slightly tousled from the wind. But she looked more beautiful than she’d ever looked to me, set against the Provencal dusk, her normally fierce face shy and vulnerable as my nieces and nephews rushed up to her to ask her who she was, where she was from, if she had any sweets.

And when she bent down to say hello, her rumpled hair spilling over her shoulder and creating a swinging shadow on the swan-like curve of her neck, something other than my heart started swelling too.
Fuck.
That neck and that hair. How had I forgotten how painfully sexy she was? How irresistible? How effortlessly destructive she could be with just a casual flick of her hair or a smiling one-shouldered shrug?

Collecting myself—and discreetly adjusting myself—I stepped forward to rescue her from the herd of children.

“Come inside,” I said, offering a hand to her.

She slid her slender fingers into mine, her eyes raising up, sapphires framed in dark ruby lashes. The hollows and curves of her face were filled with shadows, and she looked sadder and wiser than when I last saw her.

“I don’t want to intrude,” she whispered.

“Please, Mary Margaret.”

She flushed, a flush that was barely visible right now, but that I knew would stain her chest as well as her cheeks. Perhaps she was remembering all the times I’d used her name as I’d fucked her, as I’d held her down and made her come again and again for me.

And now I was remembering too.

I angled my body away from the others in the courtyard and leaned in. “Either you can walk inside yourself or I can throw you over my shoulder and carry you in—and then spank you later for your impertinence. What is it going to be?”

Her eyes grew round and her lips parted. “Both options are tempting,” she breathed.

“Naughty girl.”

I tugged on her hand, and together we walked inside the house.

Bertha and I put the children to bed, and then I sent someone down to the kitchen to bring up a supper for Molly, since I guessed she hadn’t eaten. Rather than eat in the dining hall with its vast dining table and cavernous ceilings, I had her installed on the villa’s portico, which overlooked the lavender fields, lush carpets in the night.

The sky was a breathtaking dome of twinkling stars; the Milky Way wreathed purple and pink-gold directly in front of us. Molly had her face tilted up to the sky, eyes pinned to the colorful display as if searching for meaning there.

“
La Voie Lactée,
” I murmured, setting down a silver tray of food and wine.

She smiled, keeping her eyes on the sky. “Even in French, it sounds so domestic.
The Milky Way.
Such a humble name for such incredible beauty.”

I gazed at her, drinking her in. “That happens sometimes, Molly.”

“Are you saying my name is humble?” she asked, not missing a beat.

“I would never.”

With a sigh, she finally tore her eyes away from the stars and looked to me. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

I held her gaze steadily for a few seconds. “Are you talking about Thomas and Charlotte? Or what happened between us before I left?”

“Both.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “More. Everything. I’m sorry for everything.”

I let out a long breath. “These last two weeks would have been so much easier with you by my side.”

“I know. I was foolish.”

“About that.” I poured myself a glass of wine to disguise the uncertainty in my face and tone. “Maybe you weren’t so foolish.”

Beside me, she’d grown completely still, a rabbit that knows the falcon is swooping overhead.

Be strong, Silas. Think of her life, not just of your own pitiful wants.

I took a deep breath. “When I saw you walk through the door tonight, I thought my greatest wish had been realized. That you had found me, and that I would finally be able to claim you in all the ways I wanted to—fuck you and marry you and spend the rest of my life loving you as your husband. But then I realized, as I was saying goodnight to the children, that this great wish wasn’t actually my greatest wish.”

“It wasn’t?” she asked warily.

“No. You being happy is my greatest wish. And Molly, if you weren’t sure you could be happy with me before…” Fuck, this was hard to say. Hard to do, knowing there was a good chance that she would take the escape hatch I was offering. “I am the children’s legal guardian now. And I love them. I plan on being as involved as their parents were, not only because they are dear to me, but because they deserve that, at least. That if they are going to be deprived of the two best parents the world has ever known, then at least I can try my hardest, even knowing that I’ll fall short in so many ways.”

Molly didn’t speak, but her eyes searched my face imploringly, though imploring me for what, I didn’t know.

“They mean everything, Molly,” I continued. “So I guess what I’m trying to say is that they are bound to me. They are now, and forever will be, the biggest part of my life, and any woman who loved me would have to love them too.”

I reached for her hand but she drew it away, her mouth growing tight. My stomach sank, but I finished my speech anyway, already steeling myself for the inevitable rejection. “I know the idea of an engagement scared you. And damn it all if the idea of being your husband isn’t the thing I fall asleep dreaming about every fucking night—but I can’t ask you to take on
this
. A family. Children you don’t even know. And so, with all of my love and my blessing, I want you to know that I understand if you don’t want to continue our relationship in whatever form it takes.”

Her hands were balled in her lap and her mouth was set. “Do you really think I’m that heartless?” she asked in a low voice. “Do you really think I’m that cold? That I would have such distaste for recently orphaned children that I would rather not see you at all than get to know them?”

I sighed. “It would be more than
getting to know
, Molly. For all legal and emotional purposes, they are my children now. Traveling, working, even playing…everything has to change. It’s a sacrifice that I make gladly, because I love them and because a big family is the vision I’ve always had for my own life, but I know that isn’t what you’ve wanted for yourself. I can’t ask you to give up your own vision and your own future.”

“You don’t think I apprehend that much?” Her voice had gone Irish in her anger, her words curling up into themselves. Musical, lovely, and most of all, incendiary. “I’m not an imbecile, Silas, and I’m not some Jezebel incapable of warmth and compassion. I wouldn’t abandon you simply because I didn’t anticipate having a family in this way.”

“But you’re under no obligation to stay. To love me,” I said gently. “This isn’t your burden to bear. It’s mine.”

For a moment, I thought she was truly going to blow up and rain insults (and possibly physical blows) upon my head. But she turned away, staring straight ahead for a moment. Then she stood up and walked over to my chair, kneeling in front of me.

My mind had no idea what was going on, but the moment her hands slid against the inside of my thighs, my cock leapt to happy attention, already half-hard just from her proximity alone. My body responded automatically in other ways—my legs spread to grant her better access and I trailed one finger down her neck. Goosebumps erupted across her skin.

“I want your burdens,” she said. “I want to help you carry the weight of them. I want to…” her eyes blazed in the dark. “I want to
surrender
to you. I want you to exorcise your grief on me, I want you to use me to feel better. I want you to fuck me while you’re angry, while you’re furious and hurt.”

“Even if I’m furious at you?”

“Especially then,” she confirmed in a husky voice that went straight to my dick.

She laid her head against my thigh, looking up at me. “I was wrong. In London. I was scared and I didn’t know what else to do, except stop everything from moving forward until I could figure out my own feelings. But when I got here, I realized that I didn’t need to figure anything else out but this: I love you. I want to be owned by you. As a woman and as a wife.”

Hope unfurled itself inside me, waving gentle tendrils of joy. But my voice remained distant and calm as I said, “You want me to own you?”

“Yes. And use me. Please.” She lowered her gaze. “I’m submitting to you right now. Not because you’ve tricked me into it or forced me into it, but because this is how I want our lives to be. I want to be yours. Please say yes.”

This was the first time she’d ever willingly and intentionally submitted to me, and the act was so incredibly erotic and also so poignantly sweet that I warred between kissing her and shoving the first ring I could find on her finger or wrapping my hand in her hair and fucking her mouth until I came all over those freckled cheeks and that insolent mouth.

I settled for something in between, because even though I wanted to do both of those things, I was also tired of being heartbroken over Molly O’Flaherty. I had to know she meant what she was saying.

“So you want me?” I asked her, a little sternly.

She nodded, eyes still down. Meek and demure. I liked this side of her, although I still wanted her fire and temper too. I would have both, I decided.

“Then you have to prove it.”

“Prove it?” she echoed, nervousness and excitement both evident in her tone.

“Stand up.”

With a questioning look at me, she obeyed. I stood as well and walked behind her, finding the buttons of her dress and slowly working them open.

“I never want you to change who you are outside in the world,” I told her as the back of her dress fell open and I slid it off her shoulders. “I love you and respect you as that woman. But right here, right now, you are nothing more than my plaything, you understand?” The petticoats unlaced, I yanked the dress and the petticoats savagely down to the ground, tossing them to the side once she’d timidly stepped out of them.

Now her corset, and she shivered as I pulled impatiently at the stays. “No thoughts,” I said in her ear as I worked. “No doubts. No fears or worries. Your only responsibility right now is to please me and to remember your safe word if things get to be too much. Understood?”

I saw her shoulders straighten as she nodded, as if an invisible weight had been lifted. I loved that seeming contradiction between submission and freedom. And I knew that’s what she needed, even if she couldn’t articulate it.