Free When Harry Met Molly by Kieran Kramer Page B

hill. “It’s lovely,” she added.
    And it was. She’d quite like to churn butter here. Or knit. Not that she knew how to do either. But she could borrow a good book from the library. And she could eat biscuits and drink milk while reading it.
    She found herself smiling.
    Harry offered her his arm, and she took it gingerly.
    “We keep a very limited retinue of servants,” he said. “All men, except for Cook. The house isn’t particularly grand, but considering what will go on here, it needn’t be.”
    Molly paused, her cozy daydream dissolving like mist. What would actually go on here? She was supposed to be Harry’s mistress. And all the other women here would be mistresses, as well, which meant there would be lots of dalliances, and she knew what that involved—bare skin being exposed in private nooks or even bedchambers, secret kisses in the garden, and…and worse than kisses, according to all the little tidbits of information she’d picked up from Penelope.
    “There’s a stream that meanders through the forest, and ends up in the lake on the other side of the hill,” Harry added, and strode to the front door.
    Molly hesitated there. “Really? I adore lakes.”
    Harry threw her a sly glance. “I always swim in it naked. And I never come here without swimming in it at least once. I’ve told my guests they have that option, too. It’s quite private.”
    “Harry.” She scolded him with a glance, but she felt a bit breathless. “Aren’t you the least bit concerned that a lady such as myself might be exposed to unseemly sights?”
    “You’re the one who took off to Gretna, did you not?” he said with a grin that made him look like a devilish boy in need of a comeuppance. “Should I sacrifice a chance to remain free for another year because of your harebrained idea?”
    “I’m not the first person to attempt an elopement to Gretna,” she said, her chin rising a fraction, “nor the last.”
    “It wasn’t the elopement that was harebrained—it was whom you decided to elope with that makes me doubt your judgment.”
    “As your choice of lightskirt makes me doubt yours . Fiona never said a word, that whole time in the inn. What kind of woman doesn’t speak? Ever? It’s unnatural. Perhaps all her teeth were missing. Was that it?”
    He gave her an impenetrable look. “Truce, Molly. We can’t afford to argue. There is much at stake here.”
    She sighed. “Oh, very well.” Arguing with Harry took her mind off more pressing concerns, such as how she was going to be a false mistress. And how she was going to stop thinking about him swimming naked in that lake.
    He opened the door. “Anybody home? We’re rather informal here,” he told her over his shoulder.
    Molly walked in behind him and saw a butler walking at a snail’s pace up the hallway toward them.
    Before he arrived, Molly glanced around and saw a man’s evening shirt flung on top of an ornate blue Chinese vase on the hall table, red patches of paint shaped like a pair of lips on the sleeve.
    “Harry,” she whispered, pointing at the shirt.
    “Up to no good already, I suppose.” He chuckled and stuffed the shirt deeper into the vase.
    Typical man.
    Molly forbore to huff, as the butler reached them and bowed. “Good day, Lord Harry. It’s good to have you back. It might interest you to know that just this morning, we received a cask of exceptional brandy delivered by a messenger from His Royal Highness with his best wishes for a successful week.”
    Molly drew in an appalled breath. A whole cask of brandy? The men would be constantly drunk, constantly drunk and pawing at the women. She knew this for a fact because Penelope had warned her that husbands, when they drink, sometimes do naughty things to you with their hands under the supper table when you have company, especially if the company are old schoolmates who are equally drunk.
    Molly yawned into her fan and then began to wave it languidly in front of her face to disguise