When Harry Met Molly

country ball thrown by an overbearing duke who just might happen to love him, after all.

Chapter 44

Molly’s palms were damp. She couldn’t wait to see Harry. It had been six long weeks! How would she act toward him? And how would he act toward her?

She knew she was a fool to wonder. Harry was free to be a bachelor and, as far as she knew, that’s exactly what he’d been doing. According to the gossip rags, he’d been out and about all over London, although she noticed that in no report did his actions appear to be more dissolute than any other bachelor’s.

They were dissolute enough, however, to bring her pain. Was he already entangled with another woman?

At least she knew she looked her best. Her gown came straight from London. Papa, dear man, had spared no expense. It was a pale rose colored muslin—almost white—with the most delicate sheer sleeves. The neckline was modest enough, but the skirt was sprinkled with translucent beading which shimmered as she moved. And in her hair, which was miraculously holding its curl, she wore a cluster of pale pink roses.

At the balcony overlooking the ballroom, Molly waited in the receiving line to greet her host and hostess, after which she’d descend the massive staircase to join the festive crowds below. She realized she should be quite comfortable—the duke’s home was practically her home. She’d been coming here since she was a baby, and her sister was now the duke’s daughter-in-law.

But things had forever changed after the house party. And now, she couldn’t believe how she’d never noticed Harry before that time…in the way a woman notices a man.

She lost her father on the staircase—he was somewhere in the crowd below her.

But then he found her and touched her arm. “Go on without me, Molly. I must have a chat with Lord Winston, and I left my spectacles in the carriage. I shall be back momentarily.”

She was on close enough terms with Harry’s family to go through the receiving line on her own, of course.

“As you wish, Papa,” she said, and proceeded onward.

She couldn’t look down the line for Harry—she was much too preoccupied with greeting his parents. She wondered if she’d ever stop being intimidated by His Grace. She somehow doubted it, but the duchess made up for his controlled, intimidating manner.

“So good to see you, Molly.” The duchess smiled rather tenderly and squeezed her hand. “Do you know you look more like your mother with each passing day?”

Molly felt a rush of warmth fill her. “I do?”

“Most certainly,” replied the duchess. “I hope you enjoy yourself tonight, dear.”

Molly thanked the duchess and moved on to Penelope and Roderick, who were even more pleased to see her, of course. She gave them both the warmest of embraces.

“You look gorgeous,” Penelope gushed. “And it’s been an agony not seeing you sooner.” She hadn’t had a moment to travel over to Marble Hill with the girls since coming home from Italy three days ago. She and the duchess had been busy with the ball preparations.

But Molly understood. And she couldn’t wait to have time alone with her big sister. She had a glow about her—it was love, of course. Love given and returned. Something that she felt destined never to experience herself. But she could be happy for Penelope, and she was. Genuinely so.

And in the midst of that happiness for Penelope, Molly sensed, rather than saw, that the object of her unrequited affections was very near. While she spoke to her sister about her favorite Italian haunts, she heard Roderick turn to his left and say, “Here’s the little hellion that caused you to join the army, Harry.”

And that’s when she saw him. Her insides instantly turned to jelly. In his perfectly cut evening clothes, Harry was more handsome than ever. Yet there was also a solitariness about him, a reserve, that he hadn’t had at the hunting box. Perhaps it was because he was around his family.

Molly could tell by the light in his eye that he was well pleased to see her. He kissed the back of her hand, and the shock of his touch sent ripples of pleasure through her.

“My friends from London shall be asking you to dance,” he continued rather low, even thought Roderick and Penelope were now immersed in conversation with two old spinsters. “I shall introduce you to them myself when I’m done here.”

Molly felt her bubble of happiness deflate. “Thank you, Harry.” She managed a smile. “I’m most obliged.”

“It is my firmest desire to fulfill my promise to you,” he said with a gravity to his tone that she’d never heard before.

He took her hand once more and kissed it. She made sure her smile stayed frozen in place until she was free of the receiving line—as she must be free of him.

He’d made a promise to help her find a husband. But did he have to be so happy to fulfill it? She must move on. She’d flirt with his friends. And if all went well, perhaps tonight she would dance with the man she would marry.

Harry didn’t mind that he’d got caught up in a circle of women surrounding his mother. She’d called him over to answer questions from them about his plans for the future. His parents and their cronies were always asking him his plans for the future.

For the first time, he had some. “I’m starting a small press,” he told the ladies.

His mother gasped. She smiled. And then tears sprang to her eyes.

Harry was rather overwhelmed with emotion himself.

“Mother, dear.” He took her hand and smiled. “My first effort at the Traemore Press shall be a compilation of children’s riddles, jokes, and poems. It shall be called A Christmas Pageant Collection for Children. All the profits from each printing—I intend to update the collection each year—will go to the local orphanage.”

There were murmurs of approval from the women.

“I’ll also be putting together various other charitable projects,” Harry went on, “such as an advice manual for women seeking safe and honest work in London, which we’ll dispense in churches and poor houses around the city.”

“My goodness!” one elderly woman piped up, her quizzing glass to her eye. “Whatever has happened to the Harry of old?”

Harry turned to her. “I’m the same person, Countess. Only better.”

All the women laughed.

“Does your father know, Harry?” His mother’s eyes were bright with hope.

He shook his head. “Not yet. I’ve not had a chance to tell him. But I shall. Later tonight.”

“Good,” she said. “Tell us more.”

Harry grinned at her enthusiasm. And he wished that he’d figured out, long ago, that nothing—not his father, and not even his disgrace in the army—had been holding him back. Only he had.

“Eventually,” he told the company of women, “I’ll branch out into acquiring amusing novels, books of poetry for adults, and learned tomes, but I shall never forget my initial inspiration”—he lifted his mother’s knuckles to his lips and kissed them tenderly—“which is yourself, dear lady, a most loving mother who taught me to do what is right and leave off that which is wrong.”

The duchess was speechless. So were her friends. In fact, not one of them had a dry eye. Harry got more hugs and well wishes than he’d ever gotten in his life, and strangely enough, he was all right with that. He could accept the past. Because he was more than that now. Bigger, somehow.

And, as he’d told the dowager countess, better.

But while the women waxed on about his business venture and paid him the most flattering attention, he yet sought an avenue of escape. Because over his shoulder, he’d caught a glimpse of Molly. She was dancing with his friend Alfred, who must have said something witty because the minx threw her head back and laughed.

Which was when Harry got his first stab of jealousy. The slender column of Molly’s throat, he knew from