When Harry Met Molly (3 page)

He’d been home only a year, hardly long enough to enjoy his freedom.

Liza stood and handed the decree to Prinny, who immediately passed it off to Harry. “See that it’s hung to the right of the fireplace in the front room of the club.” He chuckled and took the candle from the mantel. “Congratulations. You’re all the Prince Regent’s Impossible Bachelors now. Except Wray, of course.”

He nudged Wray with his foot. Wray flung out an arm and snorted.

“I believe I shall name one more Impossible Bachelor,” Prinny said. “To fill the vacant spot Wray would have occupied had he not been vanquished by feminine forces already.” His brow creased in thought. “Possibly that rat Sir Richard Bell. He’s seduced so many virgins that it’s time he sweated a bit, eh?”

And before anyone could respond, he swooped into the hidden passageway, pulling Liza by the hand.

The bookcase shut upon them both.

There was total silence in the room until the creeping footsteps of Prinny and his lady were no longer audible.

“Dammit all to hell,” Lord Maxwell said, his voice dangerously low.

Arrow ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t
want
to be reassigned! And I most certainly don’t want to be called an Impossible Bachelor. It doesn’t have nearly the ring to it
admiral
has.”

Lumley threw himself into a chair. “I’ve nothing to do except oversee my estates. And perhaps acquire a few more. So I think I shall quite enjoy this wager. Especially if Sir Richard shows up. I’d like to pound his face for ruining the Glasbury girl last year. She’s a nun now, did you know that?”

“Yes, I knew that,” Harry spluttered, “and I agree with you about Bell. But really, Lumley.
Enjoy
the wager? What are you thinking? One of us will wind up
married
at the end of it!”

“I forgot about that part.” Lumley sighed. “I don’t even have a mistress at the moment, much less a delectable one. Which means, right now, I’m favored to get legshackled!”

“You and I both,” said Arrow. “We must get cracking. Maxwell’s Athena is sublime, and Harry’s girl is—who is she now, Harry? The blonde, or have you moved on to that redhead you met at the Cyprian Ball?”

“That’s beside the point at the moment.” Harry had difficulty keeping up with all the women in his life. He’d rather not think of them unless he had to, which was usually right before he saw them—when he’d open a drawer near his bed table and pull out a little bauble from a collection of baubles his jeweler had put together for him to save him the tedium of selecting little gifts himself. “We’re Prinny’s puppets. He’s shrewd when he wants to be, but the only thing that interests his addled brain these days is mindless entertainment.”

“There’s nothing more annoying than an intelligent person who’s gone to seed,” Maxwell said with a hint of contempt. He raised his brandy glass and drained it—then filled it again.

Wray sat up with a groan. “I’m awake.”

“Obviously,” said Maxwell. “And no doubt with the devil of a headache already.”

“Gawd, yes.” Wray’s hair was sticking up all over his head.

Maxwell poured another brandy and handed it to his soon-to-be-married friend.

Wray took a large gulp. “I daren’t let Prinny know,” he rasped, “but I came to when he opened that demmed bookcase. No telling what shenanigans he would have had me participate in before the wedding tomorrow had I been any more lucid.”

He raised himself to sit on a leather chair, wincing as he did. “Don’t be so down, gentlemen. Imagine…one of you at Almack’s, looking over the girls, and no one—not even Lady Jersey—being permitted to say a word to you about their gowns, their pedigree, or their worthiness as potential wives.”

“There
is
that,” Arrow said hopefully.

“So before you go feeling sorry for yourselves,” Wray said with a grimace, “remember, I’d give anything to be in your position.”

He was right, of course. And if Harry were truthful with himself, he must admit that beneath the resentment he felt about being pulled into Prinny’s scheme, there was a spark of hope…

That
he
would win the wager. And be able to walk into any ballroom in London and not have to worry about someone trying to marry him off.

He patted Wray’s shoulder. “You’re a good man.”

It was his way of saying farewell to a noble bachelor, and everyone there knew it.

Wray tried to buck up and grin, but it turned into another wince. He got up and stumbled toward the door. “I’ve got to go, gentlemen. I—I’ll see you”—he hesitated—“
after
I’m married. At church. Or a musicale. Or something equally boring.”

And he shut the door behind him.

There was a grave silence, but Harry turned to the others. “I’d like to raise a toast,” he said.

Arrow, Lumley, and Maxwell each wore almost identical somber looks, but they lifted their glasses anyway.

“To the Impossible Bachelors,” Harry said with spirit. “And this impossible wager. May we survive it handily, with our freedom intact.”

“Here, here,” the others said in chorus.

Everyone drained their glasses.

“One more thing,” Harry said with a grin. “I propose the damned bookcase is nailed shut before we leave tonight. All in?”

“All in!”
they cried.

Just as he knew they would.

Chapter 2

August 1816

Thanks to the Providence School for Wayward Girls, which took her in hand at age thirteen, twenty-one-year-old Molly Fairbanks was no longer a silly romantic—she was a silly romantic with superb posture. She sat perfectly straight in her chair at the rather seedy inn where she and Cedric Alliston were taking a bit of nuncheon before eloping to Gretna Green.

Not that she could actually eat. She was much too excited. And confused. The way she suspected a bird let out of a cage is confused moments before it flies away to freedom.

To honor her emancipation, she’d forgone her usual dreary traveling dress. She’d worn instead her favorite white muslin gown paired with her late mother’s gloves and a navy blue and white striped silk parasol Penelope had just sent her from Italy, where she and her family were on a six-month painting holiday.

“Cedric—” Molly toyed with her glass of ratafia. “If Papa weren’t so damnably rich—and far away at the moment—would you still be running off with me?”

“What a sh-illy question,” Cedric said, working his jaw in a grand manner as he cut his sausage. He often spoke as if he were clenching a knife between his back teeth, which should have seemed terribly Londonish to a girl who’d been rusticating in Kent an age with an addled crone of a cousin, and before that, a cold, stone school high atop the wind-scoured Yorkshire dales.

But as Molly had never
been
to London, she couldn’t be impressed.

“The elopement izzh what it izzh,” Cedric said, glancing at the gold watch he wore on his emerald green waistcoat. “And we are what we are.”

Molly blinked. “I don’t understand you.”

Which was nothing new. Cedric was like a puzzle. And she was like a person who, um, didn’t
like
puzzles. Particularly the kinds with one piece missing. Cedric seemed one of those.

He sighed, his perfectly chiseled jaw framed by the exceedingly high points of his shirt collar. “Our nature is sh-tamped upon us, Mary. Every piece of broken pottery your father and I pull from the earth reveals the human condition. And we can’t esh-cape it.”

“Oh,” she said politely. How did every conversation they had come round to broken pottery?

Cedric pointed his fork at her. “Unlike your perfectly proper sister Penelope, you are nothing more, or lesh, than a well-bred young lady—of too high spirits, I might add—who requires constant direction from a better mind. And I…I am the brilliant treasure hunter—of noble visage,” he added with a loft to his brow, “who shall provide that tutelage. It’s our lot in life.”

He shrugged and popped a piece of sausage in his mouth.

Oh, pish posh. Molly pursed her lips. Cedric was no treasure hunter. He was an impoverished social climber—Cousin Augusta’s husband’s nephew—who served as an assistant to her father. And Penelope wasn’t perfectly proper, either. Any girl who kissed her fiancé’s brother couldn’t qualify as perfectly proper, could she? And Molly loved her long-married sister all the more for it.

Molly knew ladies weren’t supposed to seethe, but really, why was it that only gentlemen were allowed to speak boldly? And why were they permitted to boast about themselves—even contradict themselves!—while ladies must remain meek and…and boring?

“Someday,” she said, leaning toward Cedric, “someday you shall call me Molly. And you’ll never go back to calling me…Mary.”

“I beg to differ.” He slurped at his wine.

“
I
beg to differ.”

“You can’t. I already did.” He set his goblet down with a
thunk
.

“We both can. You don’t have a license to differ
alone
.”

Cedric scoffed. “You make no sen-sh.”

“I beg to differ,” she said.

Although secretly, in her deepest heart, she realized Cedric had a point. She
must
have lost her mind to have agreed to stay at home, pour out Cousin Augusta’s tea, and listen to her complain of a brass band playing in her ears—while Papa traipsed about Europe hunting treasure with Cedric for the past three years.

And when Papa
did
return to visit Marble Hill, Molly spent each night at the dining room table (sitting quite straight) while Cedric and her father prosed on about chunks of broken, thousand-year-old vases for
hours
.

Molly didn’t like dirt. Or dark, broken things pulled out of the ground.

She liked flowers. Romantic novels. Fresh air. And dancing.

And although Cedric did look rather like Apollo, with his shining halo of golden curls, patrician nose, and long, golden lashes framing cerulean blue eyes, she didn’t love him. He was too much of a boor
and
a bore—and sometimes even a
boar,
the way he snuffled and snorted when he ate—to love.

Of course, part of her—the silly romantic part which had read
Pride and Prejudice
thirteen times—thought it would be awfully nice if he loved her. Because maybe then she’d come to love him back. Someday. After her senses had been dulled by age or…or perhaps after he’d done something heroic.

She watched him shake out his lacy cuffs and lean back in his chair, chewing with his nose in the air.

Very well. He’d never do something heroic. But she had no other options. Clearly. Other than spinsterhood. Or being driven mad by Cousin Augusta’s imaginary brass band.

At least, being married to Cedric, Molly could finally see London and Paris and kick up her heels while Cedric and Papa were away.

But her daydream of a future as a social butterfly was interrupted when a man and a woman swept into the taproom, drawing not just her attention but everyone’s. The woman was extremely beautiful, if a trifle overdone, in a tulip pink gown with a neckline that showed her décolletage to great advantage.

“She’s lovely in a tartish way, is she not?” whispered Molly to Cedric.

The vision in pink lowered her brows, flicked her curls back, and stuck her hand on her hip. But her male companion at the bar either didn’t notice her or was ignoring her. He wore a simple lawn riding shirt and buff breeches tucked in tall black boots, one of which rested jauntily on a brass rail near the floor. Molly couldn’t help but observe the impressive breadth of his shoulders and the glossy blackness of the hair spilling over his collar.

Cedric placed his fork and knife on his plate and gazed at the woman in pink. “She is Aphrodite,” he said simply. “Come to life.”

Molly watched as Aphrodite compressed her lips, wended her way through the tables without her consort, and approached a table adjacent to theirs. Looking over her shoulder, the beauty saw Cedric and smiled slowly, like a dewy rose blooming at the kiss of the sun.

Cedric drew in a breath.

Molly wondered if Cedric ever thought
she
was fine-looking. She doubted it. No matter how often she pulled on her nose in front of her looking glass at home, it stayed short and snub, not aristocratic and elegant. Her mouth, she knew, was wider than the river Thames. Her eyes were a Wedgwood blue, but Miss Dunlap, the headmistress at Providence School, said they were too impertinent to be ladylike, and Molly’s hair…well, it was her greatest annoyance. It was the color of molasses and as thick as it, too, always slipping out of its pins.

“Hello,” said Molly, and gave the woman a little wave.

Aphrodite inclined her head in cool acknowledgment of Molly’s greeting, but her expression grew much…warmer when she looked at Cedric. There was silence between them, but Molly sensed an invisible golden thread extending from Cedric to the woman. And that thread thrummed with tension. It was the call of one beauty to another, the recognition that one perfect specimen of physical form had found its ideal mate.

But that was a silly thought, Molly said to herself. She was here with Cedric and they were going to Gretna together.

He pushed his chair back, stood up, and strode to the woman’s table. “Please allow me to assist you,” he said to her, and pulled out a chair.

Molly felt her face flush. Cedric never pulled out
her
chair. Somehow there was always a servant around to pull out her chair, so until this very moment, she’d never noticed Cedric’s lack of attention that way. Though, come to think of it, he hadn’t pulled out her chair for her in this very taproom thirty minutes ago.

Her heart clenched. So what if Cedric and Aphrodite looked perfect together? Looks weren’t everything. Attraction between like minds was much stronger than any physical attraction, wasn’t it?

Of course, Molly and Cedric didn’t
have
like minds. But perhaps someday they would.

If Cedric completely changed.

It
could
happen, Molly thought quickly. She’d once heard about a woman who fell off a horse and woke up believing she was the Pope!

But what did it matter now, anyway? Cedric was now firmly ensconced back in his own chair. Crisis over.

“Shall we have some fruit and cheese?” he asked her.

Cedric
never
asked for fruit and cheese.

“Good idea,” she said, but her heart sank.

She knew. She knew he simply wanted to stay longer at the taproom so he could gaze at the Aphrodite look-alike.

He gave a self-satisfied smile and waved over the barmaid. Molly’s stomach felt raw and anxious. Everything around her was crystal clear in the most uncomfortable way. She could see the pores on Cedric’s nose, the crack in their tabletop, which was filled with an unknown gooey substance. The smell of sour beer and sweat filled the air. Even the aroma of sizzling sausages passing by on a tray above the barmaid’s head overwhelmed her with its…greasiness.

She felt a dull, heavy ache near her heart, an ache that throbbed. And throbbed harder. And wouldn’t go away. She must admit it. Cedric was a conceited prig. And she’d be wasting her life if she ran away with him. Just as she’d wasted the past three years pouring tea for Cousin Augusta and trying to be the scholarly, obedient girl her father wanted her to be—on top of the five before that she’d spent with the teachers at Providence School, who’d done their best to wring every last bit of fun from her soul.

When was the last time she’d been…

Herself?

Free?

And truly happy?

“I need some air,” she said, and stood.

Cedric nodded.

When she walked by the table with Aphrodite sitting there, alone, Molly tried to forget about her own snub nose and untidy hair and drew her shoulders back because she was a fighter, even though most of the time she forgot that fact about herself. But at this moment of truth, when she sensed that she was second-best, she strove to appear strong and goddesslike herself. She would be above the fray.

So she focused instead on the line of dusty deer antlers above the bar and didn’t particularly fathom that she and the man who’d accompanied Aphrodite—and was approaching his table with two tankards—were on a crash course.

Someone soft and sweet-smelling smacked right into Lord Harry Traemore, second son of the sixth Duke of Mallan. And a split second later, something warm and foamy splashed across his chest.

His beer, of course. A sad waste. Being the spare to the heir of a dukedom, Harry was used to squandering time and energy thinking and talking about beer. And loose women. And outrageous curricle races to Brighton at midnight.

It was the duty of the spare to be a sad waste himself, wasn’t it? To give one’s servants something to talk about and one’s unerringly perfect family a mission in life. Of course, it wouldn’t serve for his family to know that since he was a little boy, he’d wished
he
could be perfect, too, like them.

But it was too late for that. Harry had made his mark on the world, and it was a most imperfect mark—quite damning and irrevocable, impossible to refute. He’d waste no more time grieving over what he couldn’t
be
. What he couldn’t
have
. The only alternative was to be as imperfect as imperfect comes.

At least he’d be the best at
something
.

“Oh, my goodness!” the petite woman in front of him said, the thick brown knot at the top of her head unraveling. “I do apologize.”

“No, no,” he said. “Quite all right. I was trying to get around those two”—he nodded at a couple of old men nearby—“and didn’t see you, either.”

Which wasn’t exactly true. He’d been staring at the sulking Fiona in her revealing pink gown and gloating over the fact that her mere presence at the competition would ensure him a solid win at Prinny’s game—and another year’s freedom from the parson’s noose. He’d soon kiss that ridiculous pout off her mouth. It was only there because he hadn’t allowed her to bring her yapping lapdog on the trip.

Harry didn’t
believe
in lapdogs. He was all for large, rangy dogs that drooled over sofas, but—

Good God. The brunette woman was looking up at him with impish brown eyes. It couldn’t be. But it was—

Molly Fairbanks.
Lady
Molly Fairbanks. What was she doing at a seedy inn in the middle of nowhere?

“You,” she breathed.

“You,”
he said back.

“It can’t be.” She took a step backward.

“It is,” he said, and backed away, as well.

“Why here?” she asked.

“Why not?” he said.

He noticed neither of them could go far in the maze of chairs and tables. They were trapped, forced into a position of proximity.

“I still hate you,” she said. “Just so you know.”

“The feeling is mutual,” he said curtly. His insides roiled, but he held the tankards in his hand steady.

“Please get out of my way,” she insisted, her round little chin pointing high in the air.

“With pleasure,” he returned.

But neither of them moved. Granted, he was rather more trapped than she was, being larger and surrounded by more jutting angles of tables and chairs.

But then a mass of people surged from behind Molly, spilled around them on both sides, and filed past to join their brethren at the large table. Molly joined the swell, bumping against a large lout who leered at her, his teeth stained yellow and broken, and narrowly evading jostling a rosy-cheeked matron with a grinning babe on her hip.