Kieran Kramer: When Harry Met Molly

Her heart clenched. So what if Cedric and Aphrodite looked perfect together? Looks weren’t everything. Attraction between like minds was much stronger than any physical attraction, wasn’t it?

Of course, Molly and Cedric didn’t have like minds. But perhaps someday they would.

If Cedric completely changed.

It could happen, Molly thought quickly. She’d once heard about a woman who fell off a horse and woke up believing she was the Pope!

But what did it matter now, anyway? Cedric was now firmly ensconced back in his own chair. Crisis over.

“Shall we have some fruit and cheese?” he asked her.

Cedric never asked for fruit and cheese.

“Good idea,” she said, but her heart sank.

She knew. She knew he simply wanted to stay longer at the taproom so he could gaze at the Aphrodite look-alike.

He gave a self-satisfied smile and waved over the barmaid. Molly’s stomach felt raw and anxious. Everything around her was crystal clear in the most uncomfortable way. She could see the pores on Cedric’s nose, the crack in their tabletop, which was filled with an unknown gooey substance. The smell of sour beer and sweat filled the air. Even the aroma of sizzling sausages passing by on a tray above the barmaid’s head overwhelmed her with its…greasiness.

She felt a dull, heavy ache near her heart, an ache that throbbed. And throbbed harder. And wouldn’t go away. She must admit it. Cedric was a conceited prig. And she’d be wasting her life if she ran away with him. Just as she’d wasted the past three years pouring tea for Cousin Augusta and trying to be the scholarly, obedient girl her father wanted her to be—on top of the five before that she’d spent with the teachers at Providence School, who’d done their best to wring every last bit of fun from her soul.

When was the last time she’d been…

Herself?

Free?

And truly happy?

“I need some air,” she said, and stood.

Cedric nodded.

When she walked by the table with Aphrodite sitting there, alone, Molly tried to forget about her own snub nose and untidy hair and drew her shoulders back because she was a fighter, even though most of the time she forgot that fact about herself. But at this moment of truth, when she sensed that she was second-best, she strove to appear strong and goddesslike herself. She would be above the fray.

So she focused instead on the line of dusty deer antlers above the bar and didn’t particularly fathom that she and the man who’d accompanied Aphrodite—and was approaching his table with two tankards—were on a crash course.

Someone soft and sweet-smelling smacked right into Lord Harry Traemore, second son of the sixth Duke of Mallan. And a split second later, something warm and foamy splashed across his chest.

His beer, of course. A sad waste. Being the spare to the heir of a dukedom, Harry was used to squandering time and energy thinking and talking about beer. And loose women. And outrageous curricle races to Brighton at midnight.

It was the duty of the spare to be a sad waste himself, wasn’t it? To give one’s servants something to talk about and one’s unerringly perfect family a mission in life. Of course, it wouldn’t serve for his family to know that since he was a little boy, he’d wished he could be perfect, too, like them.

But it was too late for that. Harry had made his mark on the world, and it was a most imperfect mark—quite damning and irrevocable, impossible to refute. He’d waste no more time grieving over what he couldn’t be . What he couldn’t have . The only alternative was to be as imperfect as imperfect comes.

At least he’d be the best at something .

“Oh, my goodness!” the petite woman in front of him said, the thick brown knot at the top of her head unraveling. “I do apologize.”

“No, no,” he said. “Quite all right. I was trying to get around those two”—he nodded at a couple of old men nearby—“and didn’t see you, either.”

Which wasn’t exactly true. He’d been staring at the sulking Fiona in her revealing pink gown and gloating over the fact that her mere presence at the competition would ensure him a solid win at Prinny’s game—and another year’s freedom from the parson’s noose. He’d soon kiss that ridiculous pout off her mouth. It was only there because he hadn’t allowed her to bring her yapping lapdog on the trip.

Harry didn’t believe in lapdogs. He was all for large, rangy dogs that drooled over sofas, but—

Good God. The brunette woman was looking up at him with impish brown eyes. It couldn’t be. But it was—

Molly Fairbanks. Lady Molly Fairbanks. What was she doing at a seedy inn in the middle of nowhere?

“You,” she breathed.

“You,” he said back.

“It can’t be.” She took a step backward.

“It is,” he said, and backed away, as well.

“Why here?” she asked.

“Why not?” he said.

He noticed neither of them could go far in the maze of chairs and tables. They were trapped, forced into a position of proximity.

“I still hate you,” she said. “Just so you know.”

“The feeling is mutual,” he said curtly. His insides roiled, but he held the tankards in his hand steady.

“Please get out of my way,” she insisted, her round little chin pointing high in the air.

“With pleasure,” he returned.

But neither of them moved. Granted, he was rather more trapped than she was, being larger and surrounded by more jutting angles of tables and chairs.

But then a mass of people surged from behind Molly, spilled around them on both sides, and filed past to join their brethren at the large table. Molly joined the swell, bumping against a large lout who leered at her, his teeth stained yellow and broken, and narrowly evading jostling a rosy-cheeked matron with a grinning babe on her hip.

And then she broke free.

Harry watched her head toward the door to the stableyard. She was escaping him, no doubt, he thought grimly.

As well she should.

Molly had to get out of the taproom so she could breathe and decide what to do. But she already knew what to do. Her wicked self was speaking to her, and she refused to let herself stop it. Her wicked self always came out around Harry.

It was telling her that she must go inside and dump a tankard of beer over his head.

She bunched her skirt in her fists and stared fixedly at John Coachman, who sat patiently atop Cedric’s coach, snoring into his chest. From the corner of her eye, she saw a brood of hens pecking at the dirt beneath an oak tree.

Pouring beer over Harry would, indeed, bring her some sort of solace. But she’d matured, hadn’t she? She didn’t have to be quite so obvious in her disdain for him. Even more deliciously satisfying would be for her to hie herself back to her table—back to Cedric—and make it look as though they were an extremely happy couple in love.

She’d pretend that Cedric was a huge catch. She’d make some remark about an amazing naked statue he’d uncovered and say that Prinny himself was anxious to see it.

Harry would be suitably impressed, and he would rue the day he ever did her wrong.

Which wasn’t necessarily one specific day, now that Molly thought about it. He’d done her wrong on many days—just by being Harry .

Any doubts she had about going to Gretna with Cedric were now completely quashed.

“I’ll marry Cedric, and we’ll be ridiculously happy,” she said out loud to no one and turned back to the inn door.

She resolutely pushed herself through the throng inside to her table, where Cedric sat, moodily plucking at grapes and chewing on something, as slow as a cow at cud.