“Which gown belongs to whom?” Molly asked, and immediately regretted her words.

The other mistresses stopped oohing and ahhing over them. Then Athena sprang at one chair and snatched up a gown. “This one’s mine!” she cried.

“And I’ve got this one!” echoed Joan, pushing past Bunny to get to a gown.

Hildur sat on a pile of jewels and crossed her arms over her ample bosom. “Mine,” was all she said.

Which left Bunny and Molly to choose a gown.

“I don’t mind which one you take, Bunny,” Molly said.

Bunny looked doubtful. “Are you sure I can choose first?”

“Of course I’m sure.” Molly forced herself to smile. It was sad, really, how unused to kindness the other mistresses were.

Hildur looked at Molly suspiciously. “No friends. We are enemies.”

“Why?” Molly’s voice cracked. “Why can’t we be friends?” It had been a difficult few days. Friends made things so much easier, didn’t they?

Joan shook her head. “I wonder how you’ve ever survived as a mistress,” she said to Molly, her mouth twisted in scorn.

Athena sighed. “There’s your explanation, Delilah. It’s a matter of survival. Mistresses can’t afford to befriend one another. We are all one another’s competition. One can never assume one’s protector will remain faithful. There are always…other women.” She looked Molly up and down as if she found her wanting. “Of course, some are more competition than others.”

“But can’t we—for this one week—let down our defenses?” Molly asked.

“When we are competing with each other not just in the usual underhanded way of women but openly, as well?” Joan shook her head. “I should think not.”

“This is war,” said Hildur. “And I sink all of you.”

Bunny sighed. “Come now, ladies. The truth is, we’re silly to fight about the gowns. We’re of varying sizes. We may need to swap.”

“Let’s try them on now,” Athena said, and shimmied out of her garish scarlet gown.

Molly tried not to stare. Athena’s bare body was perfect, as sculpted as a goddess’s. Hildur and Joan disrobed, too, and they were equally voluptuous, although Bunny’s natural beauty outshone everyone’s. She also appeared just as comfortable as the others being naked in the drawing room.

Molly bit her lip. No wonder all her competitors had found protectors! They seemed born to be mistresses!

“Delilah?” Bunny pointed to the gold gown that had become Molly’s by default, still displayed on the chair.

“Oh, yes,” Molly said. But her heart beat faster. The curtains weren’t drawn, and the doors—

They most definitely weren’t closed, and not one minute before, two footmen had walked by!

Joan laughed. “Delilah? Why do you hesitate to disrobe?” She was standing beneath the gown of her choice and pulling it over her head. When her head popped out, she said, “You are the oddest lightskirt I’ve ever known.”

“There’s not a thing wrong with modesty,” Bunny said, shimmying into a new gown. “Some men prefer their mistresses that way.”

Molly tossed Bunny a grateful smile. “I’m perfectly amenable to disrobing,” she said, as if she peeled off her clothes in a gentleman’s drawing room all the time. “Once I even ran naked through a field.”

“Did you?” Bunny looked most impressed.

“Yes,” Molly lied, and casually made her way to a corner protected from prying eyes by a potted palm. She laid her new gold gown on a small table and began to remove her old one. “And a whole hunt party saw me,” she said through an armhole.

If she were going to lie, she might as well make it an exciting one!

Joan rolled her eyes. “Why do I have trouble believing you would run through a field naked?”

“She lies,” said Hildur.

Athena laughed. “Of course she’s fibbing. My guess is you’re trying to intimidate us, Delilah. But it won’t work.”

“I’m not trying to intimidate anyone,” Molly said, naked now behind her old gown, which she held in front of her like a shield.

“Is that so?” Joan strode over and ripped the garment out of her hands. “I dare you to run around the outside of the house and back here again. Now.”

“Yes,” said Athena. “If you don’t, you’ll look like a fool.”

“Wait.” Molly blinked hard at both of them and racked her brain for a reply. “You’re trying to intimidate me.”

“So?” Hildur chuckled. “You’re scared. You hide.”

Barely shielded by the potted palm, Molly shivered and—this being August—definitely not from the cold.

Bunny looked at her, concern in her eyes. And perhaps, Molly worried, even some questions.

“Something’s funny about you, Delilah,” Athena said, tilting her head to the side, her shrewd eyes assessing her.

Molly swallowed and fingered a leaf of the palm. She suddenly knew, with a surety that made her tremble inside, that she had no choice. If she wanted to have any sort of chance to win this contest, everyone must believe she was a mistress.

And she wanted to win this contest.

Badly.

London called—plays, new gowns, a husband who indulged her every whim because he loved her and thought she was more fascinating than a broken vase. Or a statue missing an arm and sometimes a head.

If she wanted all that, she must run around the house naked—

Now.

“Just watch me,” she said, and stepped out from behind the palm.

With not a stitch on.

She prayed fervently that the bachelors weren’t nearby and that the footmen were occupied somewhere in the house, and that her mother was busy in heaven playing whist or baking bread, and not observing her daughter at the moment.

“If I do this,” she said to the other mistresses, air swirling about her bare legs and torso, “no more fighting about the gowns, is that clear? Bunny will choose everyone’s. She designs gowns herself and she knows best which of Prinny’s creations would suit whom. If alterations must be made, she can do those, too, right, Bunny?”

Bunny nodded, and surprisingly, everyone else agreed to Molly’s terms, as well.

Molly strode past them, her head held high, out the drawing room doors—she heard the other women run to the windows—and through the main corridor to the front door. She opened the door as quietly as she could, hoping not to draw Finkle’s attention, and descended the three brick steps onto the gravel path.

The wind lofted her hair.

And then she ran. She felt like a deer as she sprinted round the house. She ran as fast as her feet could carry her. She even jumped over a squirrel.

And just as she came around the last corner of the house and had only a few seconds to go, she heard the sound of men talking and laughing, somewhere behind her, somewhere in the woods.

But she dared not look.

So she rushed through the open front door and back into the drawing room.

Her lungs were bursting. She took one, great breath through her nose and lowered herself slowly onto the settee. Then she crossed her legs and began to swing the top one slowly, like the pendulum of a clock.

“See?” she said.

All the women stared at her.

“She did it,” said Bunny with a grin. “Just as I knew she would.”

“Bitch,” muttered Joan.

Hildur’s shoulders sagged.

“Congratulations, Delilah.” Actress though she was, Athena couldn’t disguise the dismay in her eyes. “You’ve proven yourself.”

Molly inclined her head. “Thank you,” she said, her face straight. But inside she was grinning. Whooping, actually. And dancing.

She had rather proven herself, hadn’t she?

Chapter 18

Later that afternoon, Harry excused himself from the company to oversee a carpentry project at the stables, which left Molly a brief hour to accomplish her secret mission to put everyone in a terrible mood.

“I can’t wait to go to the lake,” she lied to Athena, Lord Maxwell, and Viscount Lumley. They were in the drawing room playing whist. “It sounds like a romantic place.”

She hoped she gave them a somewhat misty smile. Then she dropped a card on the table. Truth was, she was bored with the game. She’d rather be playing charades with the others, but she must act as if she enjoyed whist if she were to prevent the whole expedition to the lake.

She’d go on her own to find blackberries for the tart. She most certainly didn’t want to go with all these people and wind up naked in the water with them. She’d had enough of being naked when she’d run around the house on her own, thank you very much.

The most dramatic person in the room was Athena. So Molly would begin with her.

“Lord Maxwell,” Molly said, “what was the name of the character Athena played last at Drury Lane? I’m sorry it’s slipped my memory, but surely you were present at every show.”

Lord Maxwell’s eyes hinted at mild annoyance. “I’m in the midst of analyzing probability here,” he said, looking at his cards and the cards on the table, and thus avoiding the question.

Athena’s cheeks grew rosy as she stared at her own cards, and her lovely winged brows narrowed over her nose.

Molly blithely smiled at Viscount Lumley.

“‘Twas one of the hags, wasn’t it?” Lumley said to Athena. “In Macbeth.”

Athena grimaced. “I should have been Lady Macbeth. It was a tremendous oversight.”

“Oh, no,” said Lumley. “You made a most excellent hag.”

Molly bit her lip to keep from grinning. Lumley, bless his kind heart, wasn’t particularly adept at flattery.

“An astute observer would recall that Athena was the only witch the costumers couldn’t make appear ugly,” Maxwell said coolly. “And they didn’t give her the part of Lady Macbeth because the scoundrel of a director was bedding the actress who got the part.”