When Harry Met Molly

perform dramatic readings they’ve selected themselves. I’ve a note from His Royal Highness that I must read aloud to you.”

He took a few seconds to remove the note from the envelope, and read:

My Impossible Bachelors, you shall judge the ladies tonight on many things: beauty, comportment, originality, charm, and dramatic skills. But, above all, before you cast your last vote for this year’s Most Delectable Companion, you might ask yourself the following crucial question: Which lady, other than my own, is the most unforgettable, and why?

Of course, at the start of this week, you might have wondered why your Prince Regent takes so much interest in your lives that I would arrange this extensive wager and command you to participate.

Gentlemen, I write to you in confidence. The people claim the merry path I’ve chosen has exacted a great price not only on my country—but on my very soul. I am ceaselessly urged to bolster the health of both.

Well, my friends, you must know serious endeavors bore me. But in a nod to my detractors—and with a devilish wish to irk them as well—I created this frivolous bet as a means to share with you, the next generation of English gentlemen, what paltry wisdom I may have accrued in this lifetime.

You know as well as I how difficult it is to behave. A wastrel they may call me, but I’m not completely addled. And one thing I’ve learned in this wicked life of mine is that women don’t need us as much as we need them.

Lowering, isn’t it, to find that your own best destinies may very well lie in the hearts of those women who deign to love you?

My Impossible Bachelors, I leave you to ponder that possibility in your own brandy-soaked hearts. Good luck and Godspeed.

His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent

“Ye gads,” said Sir Richard.

Harry folded the note and put it in his breast pocket. “I rather like Prinny better when he’s not so acute in his perceptions,” he drawled.

“Those moments are brief, I assure you,” Maxwell commented dryly.

Lumley scratched his head. “The woman he was with at the club probably dictated that in his ear.”

“Must forget the letter ever happened,” Arrow muttered around his cheroot. He waved at Harry. “Let’s move on, as quickly as possible.”

There was a chorus of affirmatives.

Harry was glad to know he wasn’t the only bachelor discomfited by Prinny’s words. “Remember,” he said, “at the conclusion of the show, we shall tally the votes, add them to those accrued by the mistresses all week, and if all goes accordingly, present the title of Most Delectable Companion to one of these lovely ladies.”

He went to the curtain and pulled it to the side. “Let the finale begin!”

Chapter 36

Molly was last in the lineup, her stomach in knots. Last night, when she’d let slip that crazy idea that Harry should marry her, and he’d soundly but kindly rejected the notion, she’d faced up to facts. She and Harry were best together as friends. Friends who occasionally removed each other’s clothes and kissed each other senseless.

It sounded rather like an arrangement between a man and his mistress, didn’t it? A romp between the sheets, a good laugh, and…

No commitment.

If she won tonight, his inevitable fate—marrying Anne Riordan—would be delayed. But only for another year. Anne was bound to catch up with him sometime.

And if Molly lost, he would help her find another man to marry.

She released a shaky breath. Why was there no good solution? She was damned if she won and damned if she lost.

Either way, she and Harry would be apart. Forever.

But friends, she consoled herself, until one of them got married.

Friends of a special nature.

He didn’t know it, but that was what she was going to tell him after this week was over, that she would be his mistress. And just as he did last night when she’d suggested the same thing, he would balk, he would say no, and she would simply carry the day by kissing him and getting him to change his mind.

It was as fine a solution as any to her constant emotional turmoil.

Wasn’t it?

From behind the makeshift dressing room’s curtain, Molly could see Bunny walk on stage in her extremely revealing gown. She curtsied to her male audience, all of whom clapped madly for her and whistled. The light from the torches flickered over her body, highlighting her curves, exposing flesh beneath the gaping holes in her gown, and leaving shadows in all the right places. The jewels she wore in her hair, on her neck, and on her wrists glinted and sparkled.

She’d never appeared more beautiful, Molly thought.

The men quieted for a moment, the mood expectant, as Bunny opened the book Tristram Shandy. But when she began to read a portion of the familiar and hilarious tale of the long-nosed stranger from Strasbourg, they chuckled.

“‘I have made a vow to St. Nicholas this day, said the stranger, that my nose shall not be touched,’” read Bunny in a pompous voice, and as she continued the tale, the bachelors laughed—everyone but Sir Richard, that is. He sat with his arms crossed over his chest, and his lower lip stuck out.

And no wonder. He could be the long-nosed stranger from Strasbourg!

Molly wondered if that was Bunny’s intent all along.

When she exited the stage with a bright smile on her face, Molly hugged her. “Were you doing what I think you were doing?”

“Yes,” Bunny said, her voice catching, “and I’m never going to be alone with him again. Lord Harry’s promised me a footman to guard my bedchamber tonight, and he’s also informing Sir Richard he has the choice of sleeping in the stables or leaving this evening after the program. He assures me Sir Richard will stay far away from me from now on, and he’s teaching me how to shoot a pistol just in case he ever shows up again!”

“Wonderful!” Molly hugged her again.

Athena strode past them to the stage. “I need silence,” she hissed.

“Sorry,” whispered Molly—too late—and looked at Bunny.

They both had to bite their lips to keep from laughing. Athena, much as they’d come to appreciate her, was always…Athena.

She positioned herself center stage, her shoulders thrown back. And with a twist of her lips, an arch of her brow, and an unholy glint in her eye—transformed herself into Lady Macbeth.

“Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe top full

Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood…”

Of course, Molly noted with envy, Athena had refused to read her passage. She’d memorized it, as all good actresses do. And at the moment she was living and breathing it, as all great actresses do.

She’d positioned herself so the torchlight cast shadows under her face, making her appear even more evil and demented than she sounded. The tattered, gaping dress added to the effect, especially when she swung her arms madly as she stalked about the stage.

“She appears possessed by a demon,” Bunny whispered, and grabbed Molly’s arm, which had gotten goose bumps as soon as Athena had begun speaking.