When Harry Met Molly

Chapter 27

Harry vowed to enjoy every minute of his last few days with Molly at the hunting box. Today was the treasure hunt, tomorrow evening was the big finale, and the day after that, the Impossible Bachelors and their mistresses were to go home. He knew what that meant—he and Molly would go their separate ways. And if he won the wager, he’d even have to help her find a husband.

After a filling lunch (with no tarts in sight), he sat on a bench outside the house with Molly and admired the soft, vulnerable tilt of her neck as she smoothed out the first page of directives Prinny’s advisors had devised for the treasure hunt. Each couple had a different set of clues, but they all led to one, final hide site containing the treasure.

“Here goes,” she said, then looked up at Harry. “First, there’s a long word, a string of random letters that doesn’t spell anything.”

She held up the paper:

HTIHSERVOILYLALAHGIGEHNPEUSBS

“Hmmm,” he said. “Gibberish, followed by a short verse.”

“Yes,” she said with a laugh. “Shall I read the verse aloud?”

“Of course. With fervor, please.”

She cleared her throat:

A story of love you’re commanded to find

About Wood house and Knightley and their meeting of minds.

She lowered the paper. “That’s Emma! You’ve read it, haven’t you? It’s not been out long.”

“I can’t say that I have,” Harry confessed.

“Oh, but it’s wonderful!” Molly wriggled in her seat. “It’s all about this girl, Emma, who gets in the middle of everyone’s business because she thinks she knows best—”

“Wait. Are you sure it’s not called Molly?”

She gave him a droll look. “I believe I’ll read the rest of the poem now.”

“Go right ahead,” Harry said, suppressing a grin.

Molly cleared her throat:

To whom does The Author dedicate this book?

Slash through those letters, then take a look

Your next move forward should be plain to see—

’Tis more than a destination—’tis your destiny.

“Our destiny?” Molly arched her delicate brows. “That’s rather dramatic.”

There was a tiny pause.

“And you love drama, don’t you?” Harry grabbed her hand and squeezed.

“Oh, yes!” She squeezed right back.

He laughed. Seeing her so happy was his greatest pleasure.

“I suppose we should find out who Emma is dedicated to,” she said thoughtfully, “and then we’ll eliminate the letters comprising that person’s name from this nonsensical word to find our next destination.”

“You mean our destiny,” Harry corrected her with a wink.

She rolled her eyes, but he could tell she was enjoying herself immensely, judging from the way she kept clasping her hands and speaking in that breathy way she did whenever she was excited. “I don’t remember the dedication in Emma at all,” she was saying. “I went straight to chapter one and began reading.”

“Not to worry,” said Harry. “Let’s head to the library and find the book. No doubt Prinny’s advisors have slipped it onto the shelves.”

They entered the house and searched the library for several pensive minutes.

“Do you think we’re in last place?” Molly asked in a small voice.

“I’ve no idea,” said Harry. “But we can’t worry about the others. We must focus if we want to win.”

Another tense minute passed, and then his jaw relaxed—Emma was squeezed between two books, an older one about farming and the other, a treatise on the rights of man, by Thomas Paine.

“I’ve found it,” he said, and braced himself.

Sure enough, Molly practically knocked him over when she rushed to his side. He turned over a page, and she looked over his shoulder. “It’s dedicated to His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent!”

Harry gave a short laugh. “No wonder Prinny’s advisors chose Emma as a clue.”

He returned the book to the shelf, and when he turned around, Molly had already dipped a quill in the inkpot on the desk and was poised over the long collection of letters that made no sense. “I shall slash through ‘The Prince Regent’ and see what comes up,” she said.

“Good idea.” Harry was now looking over her shoulder. He was quite enjoying all the proximity the treasure hunt afforded.

Molly hesitated. “Wait. There’s no C here, so the solution can’t be ‘The Prince Regent’—”

“Check ‘His Royal Highness,’” suggested Harry.

Molly uttered each letter aloud as she scratched through them in the crazy word. “H-I-S,” she began, and then she went on to scratch out R-O-Y-A-L and finally H-I-G-H-N-E-S-S. After she finished, she put her hand to her mouth and laughed. “Oh, Harry.” She turned her impish blue gaze to his. “So we’re to find our destiny at the village pub?”

Harry grinned. “This is Prinny’s treasure hunt. Are you surprised he might think a man can see his future in a pint of beer?”

“I suppose not,” Molly replied.

“We’ve a good walk ahead of us,” Harry said in the calmest voice he could muster. “Three miles at least, and the going isn’t terribly smooth.”

Molly was like a kettle on the boil. “Then let’s set out immediately,” she insisted.

“Very well,” he said, pulling her close. “And no stopping to—shall we say—enjoy the scenery.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Absolutely not,” she concurred, then drew back. “Wait. Do you mean—”

“Yes.” He nodded gravely. “No kissing. Not if you truly want to win.”

She pursed her lips. “Of course I do. We’ll walk single file. Starting now.”

“Yes, sir,” he answered, and took up the rear position.

Molly was a bit leery but hopeful when they reached the thatch-roofed pub. It wasn’t particularly large or impressive, but there was the jolly sound of a fiddle playing from within. “How could we possibly know where to look?” she asked Harry.

“I’ve no idea,” he said. “The only hint we have is that we’ll find our destiny here.”

“A cryptic clue if there ever was one.”

“Yes,” Harry agreed. “So obscure that I believe we’re to take it literally.”

Molly’s face brightened. “I see what you mean. Perhaps it’s someone’s name.”

“Or a word written on the cover of a book,” Harry suggested. “Who knows?”

Inside, the pub was packed with people. Molly noticed she and Harry got a few looks of curiosity, but almost everyone was focused on a pretty girl and a young man dancing merrily at the front of the room.

“Who are they?” Molly asked a smiling woman standing nearby. She was clapping her hands in time to the music, so Molly joined in.

“A young couple moving to America,” the woman replied. “They sail next week.”

“Oh, how exciting!” Molly hesitated. “Um, would you know if anyone here goes by the name of ‘Destiny’?”

The woman drew in her chin and laughed. “Certainly not. What kind of name is that?” And she went back to her clapping.

Molly looked over her shoulder at Harry, and he shrugged. “So now we look for the word itself,” he said in a reassuring voice. “Written somewhere in this pub.”

But at that moment, the whole crowd, it seemed, began dancing the reel.

“It looks like so much fun!” Molly cried over the din to Harry.

“Then let’s try it ourselves. We can look as we go.” He grinned, led her by the waist, and they joined the two lines of dancers. Eventually, they made it to the top of the line, and together they skipped down the middle of the column and wound up breathless and laughing at the bottom.

And then they started up again.

The dancing went on for at least another ten minutes. Several times Harry hooked an arm about Molly’s waist, spun her around, and stepped back again. Each time he did, Molly wanted to kiss him and keep dancing.

But finally, the fiddle music stopped. Everyone clapped, whistled, and shouted for more.

Molly could hardly breathe, and she was sticky with sweat. But she couldn’t help it. She threw her arms about Harry’s neck. “I loved that!” she said. “The dancing, the music, and—”

You.

She inhaled a little breath.

The room receded, and all she saw was Harry’s golden brown eyes and the crinkle of a smile around them. She couldn’t look away if someone had set fire to her skirt.

He wrapped his arms around her, and they touched noses. “You’re…the most amusing companion a man could wish for,” he said, in a warm, scratchy voice that made her melt inside. “Not to mention delectable.”

“And you,” she whispered, her forehead pressed to his, “you’re—”

Amazing?

Wonderful?

Her one and only true love?

No. She couldn’t say that. But suddenly, she knew that’s what he was.

Her one and only true love.

Forever.

She bit her lip.

“What?” he whispered back, his mouth not half an inch from hers. “What am I?”

“A very good dancer?” she eked out.

And then she saw his mouth moving closer to hers. She felt his hands slide around her waist and pull her close. And he kissed her, right there in the crowd, a slow, luxurious kiss that made her heart beat hard against his chest.

No one seemed to notice—too much beer was flowing—but Molly knew when she drew away from Harry that he was her destiny.

And she wouldn’t be able to stop loving him, even though she knew that someday, very soon…

Loving him would break her heart.

Harry knew he shouldn’t have gotten distracted by the fiddle music. Because now, rather than look for hidden treasure, he wanted to stay here, in this pub, and dance all night with the girl who made him feel genuinely happy—for the first time in years.

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.