Molly by M.C. Beaton Page A

sheep’s eyes at Lord David. I don’t know what has got into her. She seemed to be
such
a sensible girl. And what does Lord David mean, pray, if his intentions are not honorable?”
    “Don’t know,” muttered her spouse in a voice that clearly meant “Don’t care.”
    “Toby! Come to attention! You are to go ’round there this morning and ask Lord David what he thinks he’s playing at.”
    But for once her husband stood firm. “No, I won’t. He’s done nothing wrong. He hasn’t
courted
Molly. Only taken her out driving now and then. Not the thing at all, Fanny,” he added severely. “You should know better.”
    “I suppose you’re right,” conceded Lady Fanny sulkily and then said, “I’ve got it!”
    “Got what?”
    “Giles.”
    “Giles? Your nephew? That’s the last person we need,” said Lord Toby, stirred into rare animation. “Sent down from Oxford because of some barmaid. Tomcat around the casinos. What on earth has got into you, Fanny?”
    “I’m sure he has reformed,” said Lady Fanny in a grim voice that clearly meant that if he hadn’t, he was going to. “And don’t you see, he is very attractive. I’ll get him here for the night of the ball and get him to pay court to Molly. That way she won’t have time to notice David’s engagement.”
    Lord Toby gave up. Life had a way of coming between him and the sports pages of his morning paper. He was fond of Molly, but the report of yesterday’s racing at Sandown came first.
    “Do what you want,” he said. Dammit, if there hadn’t been a horse called Broken Heart—a rank outsider that had galloped home—Now, if he had put a fiver on that, he could have won…. He lost himself in pleasant meditation, unaware that his wife had left the room.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Lord David Manley and the Marquess of Leamouth were getting ready for the ball. Both men had also been invited to the preball dinner. “Do you think,” said Lord David, wrestling with a recalcitrant collar stud, “that the ladies realize what we have to go through? Do they for one minute consider the hell and discomfort of a collar stud?”
    “Shouldn’t think so,” said Roddy, lounging elegantly in a chair. As usual, his evening clothes looked as if they had been molded to his form. “Think of what the girls have to go through themselves, what with stays and all that.”
    Lord David suddenly thought of Molly and undergarments, and the thought seemed to be doing something to his breath. “I hope I don’t have to go around punching anyone in the head tonight,” he said. “How did you manage with young Bingham, by the way?”
    “I did what you told me,” said his friend simply. “I appealed to his better nature.”
    “Well, I couldn’t appeal to Cuthbert’s better nature,” said Lord David, pulling on his white gloves. “He hasn’t got one. Don’t worry. That was a master stroke of yours… about me having tuberculosis, I mean. I don’t anticipate any difficulties this evening.”
    But as he and Roddy walked up the long drive toward the Holden mansion, he was once more aware of that feeling of heady excitement. What would she be wearing? Would she look at him
so
? Feathery pink clouds were spread across the heavens, and the formal gardens of Lady Fanny’s estate blazed with color behind their rigid borders of shells.
    The band could be heard rehearsing in the ballroom. There came the sweet, lilting strains of a waltz, and Lord David’s nostrils were filled with all the evening scents of the garden mixed with the exotic smells of French cooking from the kitchen: wine and roses, sweet-smelling stock and garlic, herbs and dew-laden grass, and damp leaves. Lord David experienced a sudden feeling of tremulous anticipation. He wanted suddenly to stay where he was, in the driveway, experiencing this novel feeling, being aware of every scent and sound of the summer’s evening. “I never realized before,” he said quietly, “that England was so beautiful.”
    With