Kieran Kramer: When Harry Met Molly

“ I’m not, Your Highness.” Liza cast him an adoring glance.

Prinny curled his chubby hand around hers. “The first year’s wager shall be in your honor, my dear. I shall call it the Most Delectable Companion contest. The ladies shall be rigorously tested according to my exacting if unscrupulous standards—and the lucky bachelor who brings the finest mistress shall win a cherished year of freedom.” He looked up. “Are you ready, gentlemen?”

Harry swallowed hard. Follow Prinny’s orders, and any one of them might very well be legshackled by Christmas if they lost the wager!

“Your Highness,” Arrow said in his authoritative naval captain’s voice. “According to my ship’s sailing schedule, I shall be rounding Cape Horn at that time.”

“No, you shall not, ” Prinny insisted. “I shall see to it that you’re reassigned, Captain Arrow.”

Harry caught the slightest hesitation before Arrow spoke. “Very good, sir,” he said.

But Harry could see the red creeping up his friend’s well-tanned neck. He wasn’t happy about this wager, either.

Dear God was written all over Maxwell’s usually implacable face.

Lumley exclaimed something like “Wha’?” before remembering to shut his mouth.

“I shall send each of you details of the circumstances of the bet imminently,” Prinny said sternly. “You’ll follow it to the letter.” He snorted. “I’m quite sure I’ll be entertained.”

Harry’s spirits sank even lower. Prinny and his compulsive need to be entertained! Couldn’t he simply reinstitute the tradition of the court jester?

Prinny’s gaze narrowed. “Harry, you’re to host. Maxwell, record. Arrow and Lumley, you shall form the arbitration committee. Keep me informed as the wager progresses, gentlemen. And that’s an order.”

“As you wish, Your Highness.” Harry forced himself to sound amenable, although he’d no desire to be under the strict watch of His Royal Highness in a caper over which he had no control. He’d already undergone five years of imposed military service, courtesy of his father, and then he’d stayed in long enough to do his damnedest to help Wellington win at Waterloo.

He’d been home only a year, hardly long enough to enjoy his freedom.

Liza stood and handed the decree to Prinny, who immediately passed it off to Harry. “See that it’s hung to the right of the fireplace in the front room of the club.” He chuckled and took the candle from the mantel. “Congratulations. You’re all the Prince Regent’s Impossible Bachelors now. Except Wray, of course.”

He nudged Wray with his foot. Wray flung out an arm and snorted.

“I believe I shall name one more Impossible Bachelor,” Prinny said. “To fill the vacant spot Wray would have occupied had he not been vanquished by feminine forces already.” His brow creased in thought. “Possibly that rat Sir Richard Bell. He’s seduced so many virgins that it’s time he sweated a bit, eh?”

And before anyone could respond, he swooped into the hidden passageway, pulling Liza by the hand.

The bookcase shut upon them both.

There was total silence in the room until the creeping footsteps of Prinny and his lady were no longer audible.

“Dammit all to hell,” Lord Maxwell said, his voice dangerously low.

Arrow ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t want to be reassigned! And I most certainly don’t want to be called an Impossible Bachelor. It doesn’t have nearly the ring to it admiral has.”

Lumley threw himself into a chair. “I’ve nothing to do except oversee my estates. And perhaps acquire a few more. So I think I shall quite enjoy this wager. Especially if Sir Richard shows up. I’d like to pound his face for ruining the Glasbury girl last year. She’s a nun now, did you know that?”

“Yes, I knew that,” Harry spluttered, “and I agree with you about Bell. But really, Lumley. Enjoy the wager? What are you thinking? One of us will wind up married at the end of it!”

“I forgot about that part.” Lumley sighed. “I don’t even have a mistress at the moment, much less a delectable one. Which means, right now, I’m favored to get legshackled!”

“You and I both,” said Arrow. “We must get cracking. Maxwell’s Athena is sublime, and Harry’s girl is—who is she now, Harry? The blonde, or have you moved on to that redhead you met at the Cyprian Ball?”

“That’s beside the point at the moment.” Harry had difficulty keeping up with all the women in his life. He’d rather not think of them unless he had to, which was usually right before he saw them—when he’d open a drawer near his bed table and pull out a little bauble from a collection of baubles his jeweler had put together for him to save him the tedium of selecting little gifts himself. “We’re Prinny’s puppets. He’s shrewd when he wants to be, but the only thing that interests his addled brain these days is mindless entertainment.”

“There’s nothing more annoying than an intelligent person who’s gone to seed,” Maxwell said with a hint of contempt. He raised his brandy glass and drained it—then filled it again.

Wray sat up with a groan. “I’m awake.”

“Obviously,” said Maxwell. “And no doubt with the devil of a headache already.”

“Gawd, yes.” Wray’s hair was sticking up all over his head.

Maxwell poured another brandy and handed it to his soon-to-be-married friend.

Wray took a large gulp. “I daren’t let Prinny know,” he rasped, “but I came to when he opened that demmed bookcase. No telling what shenanigans he would have had me participate in before the wedding tomorrow had I been any more lucid.”

He raised himself to sit on a leather chair, wincing as he did. “Don’t be so down, gentlemen. Imagine…one of you at Almack’s, looking over the girls, and no one—not even Lady Jersey—being permitted to say a word to you about their gowns, their pedigree, or their worthiness as potential wives.”

“There is that,” Arrow said hopefully.

“So before you go feeling sorry for yourselves,” Wray said with a grimace, “remember, I’d give anything to be in your position.”

He was right, of course. And if Harry were truthful with himself, he must admit that beneath the resentment he felt about being pulled into Prinny’s scheme, there was a spark of hope…

That he would win the wager. And be able to walk into any ballroom in London and not have to worry about someone trying to marry him off.

He patted Wray’s shoulder. “You’re a good man.”

It was his way of saying farewell to a noble bachelor, and everyone there knew it.

Wray tried to buck up and grin, but it turned into another wince. He got up and stumbled toward the door. “I’ve got to go, gentlemen. I—I’ll see you”—he hesitated—“ after I’m married. At church. Or a musicale. Or something equally boring.”

And he shut the door behind him.

There was a grave silence, but Harry turned to the others. “I’d like to raise a toast,” he said.

Arrow, Lumley, and Maxwell each wore almost identical somber looks, but they lifted their glasses anyway.

“To the Impossible Bachelors,” Harry said with spirit. “And this impossible wager. May we survive it handily, with our freedom intact.”

“Here, here,” the others said in chorus.

Everyone drained their glasses.

“One more thing,” Harry said with a grin. “I propose the damned bookcase is nailed shut before we leave tonight. All in?”

“All in!” they cried.

Just as he knew they would.

Thanks to the Providence School for Wayward Girls, which took her in hand at age thirteen, twenty-one-year-old Molly Fairbanks was no longer a silly romantic—she was a silly romantic with superb posture. She sat perfectly straight in her chair at the rather seedy inn where she and Cedric Alliston were taking a bit of nuncheon before eloping to Gretna Green.