When Harry Met Molly (13 page)

Chapter 15

Harry had begun to worry about Molly. No one knew where she was. Which left him with an unpleasant feeling in his gut, particularly as no one knew where Sir Richard was, either. So Harry had run upstairs, through his room and the dressing room connecting his room to Molly’s, and found a blasted bureau blocking his way to her bedchamber. After one quick shove to the door, he was in.

She was sitting on the bed, breathing hard, as if she’d been running. Two spots of color stained her cheeks.

“Where were you?” he demanded, probably more forcefully than he would have wished.

“Goodness, Harry.” Molly placed her hand on her heart. “You frightened me, bursting in like that.”

He was skeptical that he alone had caused her to be so jumpy. “You already looked frightened when I came in. And your hair is mussed. What happened? I went looking for you when I didn’t see you in the drawing room. And Sir Richard disappeared, as well.”

She smoothed her hair. “I was in the garden.”

“And?” Harry felt very dangerous at the moment.

“And Sir Richard followed me. Or else he stumbled upon me while I was out there.”

Harry took her shoulders. “Did he hurt you?”

“No.” She smiled up at him, but it looked awfully wobbly. “I took care of him.”

Harry pressed his lips into a thin line. Molly was part of
home,
part of what his
real
life was about, the rustic one that involved complimenting his mother on her flower beds and saying hello to the elderly people at the country church his parents attended and riding out to see the crops and visit with those who tended them. He didn’t often acknowledge that life even when he was in the midst of it—he told himself it bored him—but he felt a sudden, fierce need to protect it now.

Harry’s gut clamored to do battle with Sir Richard. And he felt an even greater need to wrap Molly in his arms and kiss away the anxiety he read in her eyes.

They were alone in her bedchamber. He grew heated just thinking about the fact that everyone in the house expected them to make love in her bed. And then
his
bed.

Perhaps a chair next.

Then against the wall.

Her legs wrapped around his waist.

His body loving hers in a mindless pleasure game.

All night long
.

Harry sighed. He wanted to make her his. Primitive of him, yes. But in this house filled with men and their mistresses, he felt an illogical need to put his stamp upon her, a need that came straight from his groin and not his head.

“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” he said. “I always thought Bell rather weak, but he apparently means business. I’ll talk to him. And if he bothers you again, I shall call him out.”

“No.” She laid a hand on his arm, and he was tempted to bring her palm to his mouth and press a hot kiss on it. “Sir Richard’s not worth taking a bullet for. Although he really hates you, doesn’t he? And he’s attempting to get to you through me.”

Harry released a fraction of his tension by taking both her hands. “You’re certainly someone he might pursue for the sake of pursuing.”

It was the gallant thing to say.

But she saw through his flattery right away. “Oh, Harry. I’ve been a little Miss Nobody here, hardly someone worth chasing through the garden. But he did say he found me mysterious. He said he knows I’m hiding something.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. So I rather think you were right. Men like mystery.”

Harry looked into her eyes and saw no mystery there—her gaze was open and earnest, as comforting as a feather bed. A swift pang of guilt shot through him because he felt an overwhelming urge to put something else in her eyes—

A blue flame of desire.

“You’re not a little Miss Nobody,” he said, and raised her chin with a gentle hand. “No one with any sense or character could think that of you.”

And suddenly, he meant it. He rubbed his thumb across her bottom lip, and there was a beat of silence. He thought he saw an awakening in her eyes. A flicker of need.

But she’s just had a scare,
an annoying part of his brain chided him.
Step back
.

So he did, albeit reluctantly. And began to pace.

“I don’t understand Bell,” he said. “Tonight at the voting, he once again made insulting comments to me alone. No one else. I wonder why I offend him so? It’s not as if I wield any power within my family. I’m the second son. The spare.”

“Stop thinking about Sir Richard for a while,” Molly said, and patted the bed. “Sit, why don’t you?”

He paused and looked at her. Did she mean to look so provocative, patting the bed like that? Or was his lust-filled brain imagining it?

Good God, of course it was. Molly didn’t play coy games. She was his neighbor. He’d visited her at her father and mother’s house the very day she’d been born!

He made the decision once more to behave, to sit next to her and draw comfort from the sensation of his shoulder touching hers. It meant she was safe.

“Harry,” she ventured, swinging her legs the way she used to when they were children sitting on the ledge of the grand fountain outside his father’s house.

“Yes?”

“You talk of yourself as if you’re not important.” Her legs stopped swinging.

He felt his chest clench, but he gave a huff of laughter. “I’m terribly important, Molly. I’m the son of a duke.”

“Yes, I know.” He was hoping she would have laughed with him, but her face was somber. “There was something in your voice when you said you were only the spare. What was it? Did you ever feel being the second son made you not important to your family?”

Harry met her open gaze. “I’m certainly not going to complain. I had a brother who doted on me, and a mother who did, as well. And as far as I know, they still do.”

“What about your father?”

Harry’s heart beat faster. “He’s like most fathers,” he said. “Immersed in his duties. Aloof.”

Molly was silent a moment. “My father, too. I know he loves me. And he’s a wonderful person. It’s just that…once my mother died, he seemed to stop noticing me. Penelope was usually there for me, but not Papa. Especially after—”

Harry grinned. “The Christmas incident. You were sent away to that horrible school, so you saw your father even less.”

“Yes. And the same for you. Although being forced to join the army was probably the best thing that could have happened to you, don’t you think?”

“Why would you say that?”

She smiled. “I followed your progress. You did quite well for yourself. Even after…” She trailed off rather awkwardly.

“Even after my disgrace, you mean,” he filled in for her.

She nodded. “Do you want to talk about it? I don’t know exactly what happened. Papa’s never told me.”

“Ah. So he’s alluded to it, then.”

Molly lowered her eyes. “Yes.”

Harry’s chest tightened. “He probably told you to stay away from me. Be courteous, but don’t spend too much time with me.”

Molly looked up then. “He never said so directly. And as I’d already made clear my…my
disdain
for you”—she bit her lip—“I suppose he never felt the need to warn me off.”

“It really doesn’t matter what happened to me in the army.” Harry strove for a light tone. “My father never notices my successes
or
failures.”

“Then that’s his loss, isn’t it?” Molly said, edging a bit closer. “Families are funny things. I don’t think your father means to overlook you. He might even feel you are overlooking
him
.”

She smiled, and for some reason, he smiled back. She certainly had an interesting way of looking at things. And if she had any disdain for him, she wasn’t showing it now. Her eyes were alight with an earnestness—a warm intensity—that he found entirely…adorable.

And irresistible.

He girded himself to be strong. Noble. Protective.

She leaned toward him and put a hand on his chest. “Thank me, Harry,” she said in a throaty whisper. “Because if I hadn’t written that lovesick poem implicating you and Penelope while pouring out my undying love for Roderick—”

“No one would ever have known I kissed her mere weeks before their wedding,” he whispered back. “And I never would have joined the army.”

“And fought so well at Waterloo.”

She knew about
that? Of course, the gossip implicating him as a disgrace to the army canceled out any stories he had to tell about Waterloo, but still. She
knew
.

“How did you know?” he asked her.

“Roderick told Penelope. And she mentioned it in a letter to me.”

The clock ticktocked on the mantel, and the wind moaned against the windowpane. Molly’s eyes were wide and the warmest brown he had ever seen—still impish, but sparking with an invitation to—

God help him! Maybe he could simply be strong and noble—and give up on being protective.

“I know we’re like a burr under the other’s saddle,” she said. “But I need the kissing practice, remember?”

“That’s right.” He swallowed. “Practice.”

So he laid her back on the bed and kissed her thoroughly, to the point that he was beginning to take liberties that he really didn’t need to take to prove she and he were together, as it were, at the house party.

But she was sunlight and ambrosia, and she stoked a heat in his veins that he feared would soon consume every ounce of his self-control. He kissed her again, cupping one of her perfect breasts in his palm and caressing its fullness.

“Harry,” she whispered.

“Not Samson?” he murmured back, their lips still joined in deep, seductive play.

She shook her head.

Thank God for that.

He bent his head lower still, his tongue tracing her neckline where it plunged between those amazing breasts. She was intoxicating, and he wasn’t sure why. Of course, he’d always noticed her luxuriant brown tresses, sweet face, and lithe figure, but they hadn’t counted—she was Molly, after all, his neighbor and his nemesis.

When she wove her fingers through his hair and caressed his scalp with her fingers, it felt wickedly good, but not so good as his pushing down one side of her bodice and lavishing her pert and beautiful breast with more kisses.

“You’re gorgeous,” he murmured, and ran his tongue around her rosebud nipple.

“Oh, Harry.” She moaned so loudly that he swiftly moved from her breast to her mouth to keep her quiet. She was driving him wild with her enthusiasm, but for her sake, he wanted no one else to hear her.

She was a lady. And he wouldn’t have the others thinking he and Molly were up to no good in here—

Although that was exactly what he was supposed to want them to think. Wasn’t it?

And they
were
up to no good, weren’t they?

It was all very confusing.

When they came up for air, Molly’s cheeks were pink and her eyes, a simmering brown. She looked incredibly desirable, Harry thought, more desirable than any mistress he’d ever had. But even through the blinding haze of his lust for her, his head was asking, Why? What was it about Molly that made his blood quicken to a fever pitch the moment his lips touched hers?

In light of their bitter history and the fact that he could very well wind up married to her if all went wrong with this caper, his desire for her made no sense. All she would have to do was tell her father and his about their week at the duke’s hunting box, and Harry was a doomed man.

And she’d fare no better. Even he believed she deserved someone with an unsullied reputation, a husband who could hold his head high and make a fitting partner for her.

All the more reason for the fire between them to be extinguished. If only he could resist her soft lips, he’d put it out right now!

But Molly beat him to it. She pulled away from him and stood, smoothing down her skirt. “It was once again a very good practice,” she said shyly. “I think everyone will believe we’re…a couple, don’t you?”

He struggled to recover from the abrupt end to their lovemaking by appearing completely aloof in expression.

“Yes, I do,” he replied, but his voice was still gruff with unspent desire and a need for something he couldn’t name, a vague something that went beyond a lustful bed ding—although he had no idea what it was.

He stood. “Keep your door locked,” he instructed her in the clipped way he would a foot soldier, “and come get me if you’re frightened.”

Molly looked up at him with trust in her eyes. “I’ll knock on your door if I get scared. I know you’d make me laugh, Harry.”

And for some reason, that look of hers—and those simple words—
almost
penetrated the invisible armor he wore, the armor that kept him detached and alone. She actually seemed to need him, and no one had ever needed him before.

The army had needed the soldier. His family had needed the second son. But who had ever really needed…Harry? For being
Harry
?

Not a single person.

At least until now.

Chapter 16

The next morning, Molly woke up when the sun was already slanting across her pillow. She sat up and looked at the clock on the mantel. Nine! That was a late hour for her. But she didn’t care. She felt happy for some reason, and then she remembered why.

Harry.

Well, Harry and Samuel Taylor Coleridge actually.

A smile tugged at her mouth. She’d gotten better acquainted with both of them last night. Her body literally tingled at the memory of Harry’s kisses and caresses—and her heart beat faster thinking about the thrilling “Kubla Khan,” which she’d decided to perform at the dramatic reading competition.

She wondered how Athena and Joan could have possibly overlooked Coleridge’s poem, but when Molly had tiptoed down to the library with a candle in the middle of the night (she’d kept waking up and thinking about Harry), she’d found it on Harry’s desk.

Then she’d realized Athena would no doubt read Shakespeare, and Joan—who knew what she’d read?

Molly had also found something she thought Hildur might like to explore with her, a book of poems by Lord Byron. She’d approach her about it today if Hildur were in a better mood than she’d been yesterday evening.

She leaned back on her pillows to read “Kubla Khan” again when a tap sounded at the dressing room door.

She felt a quickening in her middle. It must be Harry! So she shut the book, placed it on her bed table, and threw the covers back. Then she pulled a luxurious wrap over her nightdress and turned the doorknob.

And there he was, leaning against the doorjamb, his arms crossed over his chest, his hair mussed and his eyes bright with mischief.

“My, my.” He took in her state of dishabille and grinned. “Aren’t you looking and acting like a mistress today!”

She blushed. “I’ve never had such, ah, lovely nightclothes. Nor slept so late, I admit.”

“I thought I’d say good morning. The other bachelors and I—save Sir Richard—went out for an early morning ride. I believe he’s still snoring away. And the others might have, um, returned to their beds.”

But not to sleep,
she guessed, and felt heat rise in her face.

There was an awkward beat of silence, and Harry pushed off the doorjamb. “May I come in, please? We’ve a business matter to discuss.”

“Oh.” She fumbled with her wrap. “Of course.”

He entered the room, filling it with his presence. “I’ve been thinking about your dramatic reading,” he said. “Something from Shakespeare might suit. A woman’s soliloquy, perhaps? Or a sonnet?”

“I thought of that,” Molly said. “But I couldn’t hope to compete with Athena. No doubt she’ll read from Shakespeare.”

“Good point.”

“But don’t worry. I’m thrilled at what I’ve found—’Kubla Khan’!”

Harry brightened. “Excellent choice. I was reading it yesterday. Wait—when did you find the time to retrieve it from the library?”

Molly hesitated. “In the middle of the night. I took a candle.”

“Molly,” he chided her. “What about Sir Richard?”

She shrugged. “I had a candlestick in my possession, didn’t I? And it’s not as if you and the whole house wouldn’t have been able to hear me if I screamed. Besides, he’s too lazy to be up and about in the middle of the night. We both know that.”

“Still, you should have come to get me if you couldn’t sleep.” Harry chucked her chin. “I would have escorted you.”

“I wouldn’t dare knock on your door at three in the morning!”

He lifted a brow. “Whyever not? Am I the big, bad wolf?”

She put her nose in the air. “Yes, as a matter of fact, you are. Why should a girl take any chances?”

Harry threw her a wry glance. “Let’s get back to the dramatic reading, shall we? I’d like to hear you practice. Perhaps I could give you some tips.”

“All right.”

He sat in a chair by the window. “I’m ready when you are.”

She took a moment to retrieve the book and find her place. Then, clearing her throat, she began to read aloud:

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.”

Harry held up a palm. “Very nice,” he said. “Although perhaps you could move about a bit while you read. The way a stage performer would. Remember that walk I taught you?”

“Oh, yes.” She moved her hips back and forth.

“Perhaps you could also read the lines slower…and as you do, think about—”

He steepled his hands and thought for a moment.

“About what?” She blinked.

His mouth turned down. “With sincere apologies to Mr. Coleridge, I must say you’ll have more of a chance to win the contest if you pretend Xanudu is the site where you and your lover escape to be together.”

Molly pursed her lips. “That’s rather ridiculous.”

Harry gave a short laugh. “I know. But try it anyway. We want to win, remember. And Mr. Coleridge will never know.”

Molly sighed. “Very well. Although it goes against everything in me to imbue his lovely poem with an…an overtone that’s not there.”

“If it’s any comfort to you, no one is sure
how
to interpret ‘Kubla Khan.’ Look at the subtitle. He wrote it in some sort of opiate haze or dream.”

“All right,” Molly said, still feeling reluctant, although she did try to imagine what Harry had asked. But after a moment of quiet thinking, she released a frustrated breath. “I—I don’t think I can do it. I’m sorry.”

He stood. “Perhaps I can help you achieve the right frame of mind.” His tone was kind and brisk. “Come to the window and see the beautiful morning.” He beckoned her with a hand.

She rather doubted he knew what he was doing, but she did as he asked. He pushed the window up, and the sweet smell of morning rushed in.

When she leaned out to look, she saw that the day was, indeed, beautiful. A bit of mist still clung to the treetops. The dew had yet to dry off, as well, and several birds were busy flying from bush to tree, while others hopped about the grass, seeking their breakfasts.

When she straightened, Harry moved behind her. “Now I want you to pretend that just beyond those woods is Xanadu, the place where you and your lover meet.” He pulled her close and wrapped his hands around her middle. “Lean back into me.”

Carefully, she did.

“All right,” he whispered, “pretend that we’re there and that we’re in love. Can you do that?”

Molly nodded slowly.

“I’m going to act like your lover while you read. You won’t be able to move around this way, but you’ll get a better feel for how I want you to sound. Understand?”

“Yes,” she choked out.

He nuzzled her neck. “Relax.”

She giggled.

He ran his hands up and down her waist, slowly, as if he were luxuriating in the feel of her, and she sort of melted into him.

“Better?” he asked her.

She nodded. Wonderful was more like it.

“Now,” he said. “Start reading.”

She took a moment to focus on the words, then began to read the poem aloud again:

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:”

The difference in the sound of her voice was amazing! She went on, and as she read, Harry lifted aside her hair and pressed light kisses on her neck. And then her ear. And all the while, his hands worked their magic on her waist and hips.

At the third stanza, he pressed a hand to her stomach and made lazy circles. At the same time, he slid a shoulder of her gown aside and pressed kisses on her shoulder.

The feeling was heavenly, and her legs could barely hold her up. But she continued reading:

“The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.”

Meanwhile, the circles Harry was making with his hand went lower.

And lower.

“Harry,” she said, overcome with sensation.

And dropped the book.

“You were perfect,” he said in a hoarse whisper, and turned her slowly around. He smiled sweetly and pulled a lock of hair back from her face. “And I’m proud of you.”

She couldn’t look away. “Th-thank you.” She felt the fullness of her mouth and couldn’t make her lips meet, no matter how hard she tried. Her whole body felt open, like a flower. Ready to receive a honeybee’s visit.

And then Harry put his hand at the back of her neck and oh so gently drew her face to his. The kiss was sweeter than any honey, and magical—absolutely magical.

He pulled back from her with a sigh, and she opened her eyes slowly and smiled.

Perhaps Xanadu wasn’t so far away, after all.

“I hate to go,” he said, his voice rough around the edges. “But as host, I’m in charge of the shooting every morning. And I’ve a few things to do in the stables, as well.”

“That’s fine,” she said lightly. She didn’t want him to see how much his touch enthralled her. “I’m famished, anyway. I’d like some breakfast.”

“Good idea.” He tugged on a lock of her hair. “A mistress needs to stay well nourished—not for all the lying about she does during the day, but for her more strenuous nighttime activities.”

“Harry,” she chided him. “You know
I
won’t—”

But before she could think of a delicate way to express herself, he took her in his arms, leaned her back, and kissed her one last time.

“You know I’m only jesting,” he said, a mere inch from her mouth. His eyes radiated heat, along with a healthy dose of good humor.

“I like seeing you happy,” she whispered.

And he tilted her back up. “I’m always happy,” he said, and swaggered toward the dressing room door.

“No you’re not,” said Molly. “Being an Impossible Bachelor isn’t the same thing as being happy.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’ll leave you with the last word this morning.” He opened the dressing room door and went through it, then popped his head back in. “Enjoy yourself with the ladies!”

And he shut the door.

Which meant he’d had the last word. Molly bit her thumb. Somehow she found she wasn’t angry.

“Oh, well,” she said. And sank onto the edge of her bed. It was time to stop thinking about Harry and how vexing and charming he could be, all at the same time, and how utterly disoriented she felt after being with him.

She must make some headway with the other mistresses.