When Harry Met Molly

The couple moving to America stood atop the bar and motioned for silence. When the room quieted, the young man raised a mug of beer skyward. “To our beloved home in England, our temporary home aboard the schooner Megan Casey, and the new home we’ll establish in Boston. May we never forget from whence we came, yet may we always follow the tide of destiny!”

Everyone raised their mugs to the couple and cheered.

“Destiny!” Molly exclaimed to Harry.

“Surely that reference was mere coincidence,” he said thoughtfully, “but his talk of tides and ships has given me an idea.” He pointed at a wall covered with small and large oil paintings. “What if one of the ships in those oil paintings is named the Destiny?”

Molly gasped. “Of course! But I see at least”—she counted beneath her breath—“fifteen ships!” She was already running over to the paintings and examining them closely. Harry joined her, and thankfully, no one seemed to notice their interest as being anything out of the ordinary.

“Here it is!” Molly pointed at a medium-sized painting of a ship on rough seas.

It was, indeed, called the Destiny. As discreetly as possible, Harry felt around the edge of the frame and pulled out a piece of paper.

“I have a good feeling about this,” Molly said. “But we’ll need to hurry! What if the others are ahead of us?”

“Then we can always say we had more fun than they did,” Harry reminded her.

And it was true. He was having fun. More fun than he’d had in years.

As he led Molly outside, he was oblivious for the moment to the crowds jostling around them, the cacophony that was the party, the smells of mutton and beer, and the continuing travails of the treasure hunt. Instead, he was distracted—and confused—by the sense of completeness that overcame him when he held Molly’s soft, trusting hand in his own.

Chapter 28

A half hour later, after following detailed instructions on the paper she and Harry had found at the pub, Molly found herself in a fallow field, counting fence posts to find the place where Prinny’s advisors had buried the treasure.

“Here,” she said, pointing at a tuft of grass at the base of the fourth post to the right of a twisted oak tree.

Harry lifted the tuft right up, revealing a neat hole in the ground containing a small red leather box. “Shall I?” he asked her with a grin.

She clasped her hands and nodded.

He lifted the lid.

“Oh!” Molly was surprised to see a scroll inside. “I thought the actual treasure would be in the box.”

“Maybe it’s too big.”

“Really.” She imagined all sorts of possibilities: a chest filled with gold—a horse, perhaps! Or…or—

A monkey! She’d always wanted one of those. The kind with a little red hat and a striped shirt that rode along on your shoulder.

But she had no other ideas. She was simply too excited to think.

Harry seemed to read her mind. “Why don’t we relax and read it together?” he asked her.

“Brilliant idea.”

So they sat together, Molly between Harry’s knees, and Harry leaning back on the fence post that had led them to the treasure.

Their fence post, she thought, smiling softly to herself.

Their treasure.

She sighed and closed her eyes and listened to Harry open the scroll. He felt so good. And he smelled divine. Like the peppery scent of green grass baking in the sun. And the scent of fresh linen. And…and man.

But then she sat bold upright. “Tell me, Harry! What’s the treasure?”

“A night together,” he said, his voice husky. “An Arabian night, actually.”

“What’s that?”

He looked at her with an inscrutable expression. “Prinny’s arranged to have a Moroccan tent set up by the lake and stocked it with a lavish feast, and we shall be waited upon by exotic servants.”

“And—and we shall spend the night together in this tent?”

“Yes,” he said thoughtfully, and rolled up the scroll again.

Her body flooded with all sorts of feelings—fear, worry, and…and if she were honest with herself, excitement. She would love to be held in Harry’s arms all night.

But she couldn’t spend the night with him!

By society’s standards, she was already compromised, of course, but she was coming to believe there were degrees. At least in her bedchamber at the hunting box, she’d pushed that bureau in front of the door connecting her room to Harry’s. But in the tent…

There would be nothing separating them. Nothing at all.

“We—we’ll have to mark a line down the middle of the tent,” she said.

Harry nodded slowly. “All right, if that’s what you want.”

Oh, dear, he’d left that sentence hanging. “You mean”—she dared to look up at him—“that’s not what you want?”

Harry chuckled. “What do you think? But what I want and what I can have are two very different things.”

Molly looked at her fingers. She was too embarrassed to look at him.

The man she loved.

He stood, and she was at eye level with his muscular thighs, encased in buffskin breeches. She forced herself to look away, to concentrate on the beautiful country scene in front of her.

“We’ll make the best of it tonight,” Harry said. “We worked hard for this, and there’s really no way out without everyone figuring out our ruse. So let’s enjoy it—we’ve won many points, after all—and I promise, I won’t allow anything…unworthy of you to occur.”

Points.

Yes, that’s what this treasure hunt was all about, wasn’t it? She mustn’t forget that, even though in every other way his speech was noble. Endearing, even.

He held out his hand. She took it—and smiled wanly as he pulled her up.

“Thank you, Harry,” she said, close enough to his face that he could kiss her with ease.

But he turned away instead and fiddled with the clasp on the leather box.

She suppressed her need to touch him and told herself to be glad. Harry was being wise. Prudent.

And she should follow suit.

* * *

“And I thought you were all brawn and no brains, Traemore!” The nasty voice rang out from somewhere to Harry’s left.

He felt a huge black cloud of resentment when he turned and saw Sir Richard walking briskly down the field toward him and Molly, Bunny not far behind.

“Think again, Bell,” Harry returned. “We beat you here, did we not?”

“Yes, well, no doubt luck played a role.” Sir Richard stalked off to a nearby shady tree. He sprawled on the ground, opened a flask, and drank deeply from it.

Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“Congratulations, you two,” said Bunny, a sweet smile on her face, a smile that couldn’t disguise the signs of strain around her eyes.

No wonder. Sir Richard was an ass. And Harry would like nothing more than to kill him.