When Harry Met Molly

Chapter 17

At breakfast, Hildur was delighted when Molly told her about the Byron volume.

“Your alphabet is rather similar,” Molly said to her, as she broke her fast with some coddled eggs, bacon, and toast. “Although your pronunciations differ in some ways, of course. But I think that if we practice enough, you can succeed at reading one of Byron’s poem in English. We’ll find a shorter one. I know you admire him, don’t you?”

“I love him.” Hildur slapped her on the back and chuckled. “And I will win. The men hear my voice and want to bed me. Who cares I’m no actress?”

Molly almost choked—but didn’t—on her toast.

Athena glared at Hildur then back at Molly. “You’re being rather generous with your time, aren’t you, Delilah?”

Molly smiled. “Why not?”

A vertical line formed on Joan’s forehead. “Because you are setting up other people to defeat you, obviously.”

Molly felt her cheeks redden. “I’m sorry you’re unhappy about my arrangement with Hildur. But I shan’t change my mind.” She took a large bite of toast and gazed first at Athena, then at Joan, while she chewed it.

So much for trying to make headway.

Joan slammed her teacup onto her saucer. “I can’t take any more of this nonsense.” She pushed back her chair and left.

But then a loud exclamation came from the drawing room.

Hildur slipped a piece of bacon into her bodice, pushed back her chair, and hurried to the drawing room, Athena on her heels.

Molly exchanged an amused glance with Bunny, and then together they followed to see what the fuss was about.

“Well, blow me down,” Hildur said.

“I told you,” said Joan with a smirk.

“You did not tell. You screamed,” corrected Athena.

But Joan, thank goodness, didn’t bother to answer. She was staring, along with everyone else, at five chairs arranged in a semicircle. On the chair seats were small heaps of glittery baubles. And behind them, displayed on the chair backs, were five spectacular—and truly scandalous—gowns.

Molly could already tell all the bodices were too low. Her nipples would show, which was a problem she’d have to take up with Harry, although she knew what he’d say: she’d have to wear the luscious creation anyway, nipples be damned.

Joan waved a note. “We’re to wear the gowns and the jewelry during the dramatic reading. Prinny’s orders.”

Damn Prinny and his blasted kissing closets and his blasted gowns! thought Molly treasonously.

Athena picked up a matching ruby necklace and bracelet and tossed them aside. “They’re paste. We use them in the theater, so I should know.”

Hildur let a pair of emerald earrings slide through her fingers and drop to the chair. “I have many jewels in Iceland,” she said with contempt.

“But we can still have fun with them, can’t we?” Molly held an earring to her ear.

“Indeed.” Bunny stretched out her arm, adorned now with a diamond bracelet. “I feel like Cleopatra. And look at the gowns!” She picked one up and examined it. “This one’s exquisite. Made by His Royal Highness’s own seamstresses, no doubt.”

Each gown was of a different design and color, all made with the finest silk and lavishly ornamented.

“Which gown belongs to whom?” Molly asked, and immediately regretted her words.

The other mistresses stopped oohing and ahhing over them. Then Athena sprang at one chair and snatched up a gown. “This one’s mine!” she cried.

“And I’ve got this one!” echoed Joan, pushing past Bunny to get to a gown.

Hildur sat on a pile of jewels and crossed her arms over her ample bosom. “Mine,” was all she said.

Which left Bunny and Molly to choose a gown.

“I don’t mind which one you take, Bunny,” Molly said.

Bunny looked doubtful. “Are you sure I can choose first?”

“Of course I’m sure.” Molly forced herself to smile. It was sad, really, how unused to kindness the other mistresses were.

Hildur looked at Molly suspiciously. “No friends. We are enemies.”

“Why?” Molly’s voice cracked. “Why can’t we be friends?” It had been a difficult few days. Friends made things so much easier, didn’t they?

Joan shook her head. “I wonder how you’ve ever survived as a mistress,” she said to Molly, her mouth twisted in scorn.

Athena sighed. “There’s your explanation, Delilah. It’s a matter of survival. Mistresses can’t afford to befriend one another. We are all one another’s competition. One can never assume one’s protector will remain faithful. There are always…other women.” She looked Molly up and down as if she found her wanting. “Of course, some are more competition than others.”

“But can’t we—for this one week—let down our defenses?” Molly asked.

“When we are competing with each other not just in the usual underhanded way of women but openly, as well?” Joan shook her head. “I should think not.”

“This is war,” said Hildur. “And I sink all of you.”

Bunny sighed. “Come now, ladies. The truth is, we’re silly to fight about the gowns. We’re of varying sizes. We may need to swap.”

“Let’s try them on now,” Athena said, and shimmied out of her garish scarlet gown.

Molly tried not to stare. Athena’s bare body was perfect, as sculpted as a goddess’s. Hildur and Joan disrobed, too, and they were equally voluptuous, although Bunny’s natural beauty outshone everyone’s. She also appeared just as comfortable as the others being naked in the drawing room.

Molly bit her lip. No wonder all her competitors had found protectors! They seemed born to be mistresses!

“Delilah?” Bunny pointed to the gold gown that had become Molly’s by default, still displayed on the chair.

“Oh, yes,” Molly said. But her heart beat faster. The curtains weren’t drawn, and the doors—

They most definitely weren’t closed, and not one minute before, two footmen had walked by!

Joan laughed. “Delilah? Why do you hesitate to disrobe?” She was standing beneath the gown of her choice and pulling it over her head. When her head popped out, she said, “You are the oddest lightskirt I’ve ever known.”

“There’s not a thing wrong with modesty,” Bunny said, shimmying into a new gown. “Some men prefer their mistresses that way.”

Molly tossed Bunny a grateful smile. “I’m perfectly amenable to disrobing,” she said, as if she peeled off her clothes in a gentleman’s drawing room all the time. “Once I even ran naked through a field.”

“Did you?” Bunny looked most impressed.

“Yes,” Molly lied, and casually made her way to a corner protected from prying eyes by a potted palm. She laid her new gold gown on a small table and began to remove her old one. “And a whole hunt party saw me,” she said through an armhole.

If she were going to lie, she might as well make it an exciting one!

Joan rolled her eyes. “Why do I have trouble believing you would run through a field naked?”

“She lies,” said Hildur.

Athena laughed. “Of course she’s fibbing. My guess is you’re trying to intimidate us, Delilah. But it won’t work.”

“I’m not trying to intimidate anyone,” Molly said, naked now behind her old gown, which she held in front of her like a shield.

“Is that so?” Joan strode over and ripped the garment out of her hands. “I dare you to run around the outside of the house and back here again. Now.”

“Yes,” said Athena. “If you don’t, you’ll look like a fool.”

“Wait.” Molly blinked hard at both of them and racked her brain for a reply. “You’re trying to intimidate me.”

“So?” Hildur chuckled. “You’re scared. You hide.”

Barely shielded by the potted palm, Molly shivered and—this being August—definitely not from the cold.

Bunny looked at her, concern in her eyes. And perhaps, Molly worried, even some questions.

“Something’s funny about you, Delilah,” Athena said, tilting her head to the side, her shrewd eyes assessing her.

Molly swallowed and fingered a leaf of the palm. She suddenly knew, with a surety that made her tremble inside, that she had no choice. If she wanted to have any sort of chance to win this contest, everyone must believe she was a mistress.

And she wanted to win this contest.

Badly.

London called—plays, new gowns, a husband who indulged her every whim because he loved her and thought she was more fascinating than a broken vase. Or a statue missing an arm and sometimes a head.

If she wanted all that, she must run around the house naked—

Now.

“Just watch me,” she said, and stepped out from behind the palm.

With not a stitch on.

She prayed fervently that the bachelors weren’t nearby and that the footmen were occupied somewhere in the house, and that her mother was busy in heaven playing whist or baking bread, and not observing her daughter at the moment.

“If I do this,” she said to the other mistresses, air swirling about her bare legs and torso, “no more fighting about the gowns, is that clear? Bunny will choose everyone’s. She designs gowns herself and she knows best which of Prinny’s creations would suit whom. If alterations must be made, she can do those, too, right, Bunny?”

Bunny nodded, and surprisingly, everyone else agreed to Molly’s terms, as well.

Molly strode past them, her head held high, out the drawing room doors—she heard the other women run to the windows—and through the main corridor to the front door. She opened the door as quietly as she could, hoping not to draw Finkle’s attention, and descended the three brick steps onto the gravel path.

The wind lofted her hair.

And then she ran. She felt like a deer as she sprinted round the house. She ran as fast as her feet could carry her. She even jumped over a squirrel.

And just as she came around the last corner of the house and had only a few seconds to go, she heard the sound of men talking and laughing, somewhere behind her, somewhere in the woods.

But she dared not look.

So she rushed through the open front door and back into the drawing room.

Her lungs were bursting. She took one, great breath through her nose and lowered herself slowly onto the settee. Then she crossed her legs and began to swing the top one slowly, like the pendulum of a clock.

“See?” she said.

All the women stared at her.

“She did it,” said Bunny with a grin. “Just as I knew she would.”

“Bitch,” muttered Joan.

Hildur’s shoulders sagged.

“Congratulations, Delilah.” Actress though she was, Athena couldn’t disguise the dismay in her eyes. “You’ve proven yourself.”

Molly inclined her head. “Thank you,” she said, her face straight. But inside she was grinning. Whooping, actually. And dancing.

She had rather proven herself, hadn’t she?