If Wishes Were Earls (11 page)

Again. And again.

Harriet looked up, the London sky clear enough so she could see a smattering of stars peeking through the haze. She was rising toward them, about to climb upward with them, Roxley carrying her along with his kisses and his touch.

And then it was heaven, breaking over her, inside her, all around her. Roxley pulled her close, kissed her deeply and continued to tease her through wave after wave of rapture.

Yes, indeed, once again, Miss Darby was ever so right.

Chapter 5

I’ll be the judge of that.

Miss Darby in response to Lt. Throckmorten

from Miss Darby’s Daring Dilemma

London, 1811

T
hat night, over a year ago, in Sir Mauris’s garden had ended as quickly as it had begun. Once Harriet had sighed with such utter happiness, the back door had swung open and Sir Mauris himself had come out into the garden, blunderbuss in hand.

Even as foxed as he was, Roxley knew this wasn’t a time to overstay his welcome. He’d slipped into the night, while Harriet had managed some hastily crafted excuse about Mr. Muggins needing a trip outside.

Sir Mauris’s loud complaint, “I thought I’d locked you all in,” had made Roxley grin.

As if there was any lock that could hold back Harriet.

His determined minx.

Then the baronet had turned his ire toward Mr. Muggins, complaining that the “wretched beast was digging at his roses again” and to get inside. And thus, their scandalous interlude ended, with Harriet and Mr. Muggins being hustled into the house and Roxley wandering through Mayfair in a state of wonder, a newly ignited spark burning his chest.

Nay, he’d be honest this time. Inside his heart.

Even now, that kiss, which was naught but a memory, refused to do anything other than spark and smoulder inside his heart, reminding him of what he was missing, what he desired more than anything.

Harriet. Always Harriet.

It had pushed him forward the night at Owle Park, teased him into believing that having Harriet was just the beginning of a lifetime. And now it left him with the certainty that having her close would only endanger her life.

His enemy—whoever he was—seemed determined to take and ruin everything Roxley held dear.

And there was no one more dear to him than Harry.

He glanced around Lady Knolles’s ballroom, for with the supper ended and the dancing resumed, the room had returned to the sort of crush that made a hostess beam with pride. He’d have to find her before he decamped to White’s to meet up with her brother Chaunce, but then he heard his name being called.

“Lord Roxley? Pardon my interruption, my lord.”

The earl turned around and found Lady Knolles’s butler awaiting him, an expression of long-suffering dismay pasted on the solemn man’s face. “Yes?”

“There is a person at the door who is demanding to see you.”

Roxley winced. Another bill collector. Or one of the less reputable characters he owed money. A determined lot if they were willing to wait until the wee hours of a soirée to make their presence known. “What sort of someone?”

“He claims to be your valet.” The stuffy fellow’s words rang with disbelief and a hefty measure of disdain. “He insisted.”

Ah, yes. Such disdain could only be inspired by Mingo. Still, Roxley probed a little further just to make sure. “Unsavory sort of fellow with a crooked nose and one eye?”

The butler’s brow furrowed. Probably because the earl had described the man to the letter. “Yes, my lord.”

“Lead on, my good man,” Roxley told him. “Mingo is a bit of a shock at first, but he’s a demmed fine valet.”

“Yes, my lord. If you say so,” the butler agreed in tones that suggested he was merely being polite because he must.

Sure enough, there was Mingo standing in the front foyer, looking as out of place as a blacksmith in a milliner’s shop. Shifting from one foot to another while he cracked his knuckles, he looked more like a housebreaker than a nobleman’s valet.

That, in Roxley’s estimations, was one of Mingo’s more endearing traits.

“Ah, it is you, my good man. You have poor Lady Knolles’s butler in a stew,” Roxley said, stopping in front of his employee. “Coming to call at the front door. Badly done.”

“They turned me away at the back,” Mingo complained, chucking up his chin at the haughty butler, followed by a glare that would probably be considered a deadly challenge in the rough streets of Seven Dials where Mingo hailed from. “So came around front. Had to see you, I did. Right smart.”

“If you are here to warn me that my Aunt Essex has descended upon us, I have already had the pleasure of discovering that little
on dit
.”

Since his Aunt Essex rarely if ever gave him advance notice of her arrival, it was up to Mingo to come up with His Lordship’s excuses even as he packed Roxley’s valise and snuck it out the back for an extended stay at the earl’s club or, if his friend Preston was in an obliging mood, a hasty move to Harley Street.

“Didn’t come about that,” Mingo said. “But if you must know, your aunt is here. And she brought that smart bit o’ muslin with her.” Which translated into Miss Manx. Mingo held the gel in high esteem because it was rumored about the house that she had beaten the crafty valet at
vingt et un
. “Oh, and that tall, dark-haired mort you fancy,” he added with a bit of a sniff.

Mingo held highborn spinsters in the same category as teats on a bull. Unexplainable and entirely useless.

“Miss Hathaway,” Roxley corrected. “And thank you very much for the warning, but I’ve already had the pleasure of running into Aunt Essex and Harry tonight.”

“No trouble, guv’ner,” Mingo said, sending him a sly wink. “But that isn’t what I come about.” He slid closer and nodded for the earl to lean in. “Some rumdrubbers done broke in.” When Roxley just blinked and looked at him, the man continued. “A cracksman—more than one—done got in the house. Slipped past me and Fiske and rummaged about above. Made a bit of a mess of things. Did a real number on Her Ladyship’s trunks . . . Fiske is fetching Bow Street and I came to get you.”

Roxley stepped back, taking it all in. His house had been robbed? Again? What the devil?

And here he thought everyone in London knew he was rolled up. They might have bothered to tell these thieves, so they needn’t waste their time in another fruitless search for anything of value.

Then again, it struck him that this wasn’t just some random break-in.

“Got the carriage outside—” Mingo was saying.

“I’ll go get my aunt and Miss Hathaway,” Roxley told him, steeling himself for the moment when Lady Essex had to be told that her belongings had been rifled through by a pack of ruffians.

He only hoped Miss Manx had her oversized reticule of smelling salts and miracles close at hand.

Mingo shook. “Won’t be necessary, guv’ner—”

“Why not?” Roxley asked, looking around for his aunt. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen much of her or Harriet since the supper dance.

“It was herself that discovered the blokes,” Mingo told him. “Near screeched down the roof when she found ’em in her bedroom.”

A
s his carriage turned right onto Hill Street, leaving behind the calm of Berkley Square, the anger that had been filling Roxley all evening boiled over.

He hopped out of the carriage before the driver even stopped and strode up the steps, the servants and strangers alike parting without a word for him. He crossed the threshold to find most of his household assembled there—his butler Fiske, the housekeeper, even the cook, while the maids and footman hurried and up and down the steps, lighting every candle in the house.

Just out of the chaos, Harriet stood halfway up the stairs, her expression flat, guarded. When she spied him, her expression shifted slowly and deliberately to that dangerous glower he remembered from their childhood.

It was a warning no one ever forgot.

So he made a note to avoid the stairs at all costs, no matter that his heart tugged at him to gather her close, to reassure himself that she was safe.

Not that his aunt was about to let him go anywhere.

“Roxley! Good heavens! There you are!” These exclamations exploded out of Lady Essex and she was a flurry of feathers and ribbons as she bustled to his side. “Where have you been?”

“At Lady Knolles’s, as you well know,” he told her. “Whatever mischief is all this?”

“This? This? Why we’ve been robbed! Violated! In my very house.”

His
house, he would remind her, but it hardly seemed the time.

As Aunt Essex continued to wail and rant, he had no choice but to turn to Harry. “Can you explain this?”

She straightened and related the facts much as her brother Chaunce might. “It is as your aunt says, my lord. We came home and when we went upstairs we found a trio of rough fellows in Lady Essex’s room.”

“Imagine the horror!” Lady Essex said. “They were in my room!” She shuddered, and for the first time in his life, he saw his aunt as others probably saw her, an aging relic of another time.

He didn’t know what came over him, but he began to fold the old girl into his arms, much as she used to do to him. He glanced up at Harriet, but she had looked away, a shimmer of tears at the corner of her eye.

Drawing his aunt closer, he was stopped by a hard, cold object in her grasp. “Whatever is that, Aunt Essex?” he asked, holding her out arm’s length and examining the treasure she held.

“Why, Pug, of course,” she told him, the large china figure there in her arms, cradled like a baby. “What if those foul villains had taken Pug?”

If only they had
, he mused, looking at the hideously ugly and battered china figurine that his aunts held so dear. The eccentricities of the Marshoms knew no bounds, and Pug was one of them. Chipped and faded though it was, the old girls fought over Pug as if it were the most valuable possession the Marshoms held.

Sadly, it probably was.

“Dear Pug,” Lady Essex was explaining to no one in particular. “He’s been in the family for ages. So beloved, and it would have been a tragic loss. My sisters would never have forgiven me. Why, I just left him out on the mantel where he could have been . . . might have been . . .”

Smashed. Stolen. Dashed into the street.
All of those were perfectly satisfactory fates for the demmed thing, for it would have meant Roxley would no longer have to receive complaining letters from Eleanor or Oriel or Ophelia that Essex was once again keeping Pug all to herself.

Before he could find an appropriate reply for Pug’s spared fate, out of the shadows stepped Lord Whenby.

Roxley took a second glance, unsure how he’d missed the fellow. But here he was soothing Aunt Essex as if they were old and familiar friends.

“There, there, Essie, you are a brave lady in the face of such circumstances,” he was saying.

Essie?
Roxley looked to Harriet to see if he had heard the other man correctly.

I told you so
, the rise of her brows, the turn of her lip told him.

“My own
maman
had a dear figurine she was quite fond of—” Whenby was saying. “It is a sign of elegance and distinction when one favors such craftsmanship.”

At this, Lady Essex shot an arched expression at her nephew as if to say,
See! Someone understands.

Roxley was more taken aback by the realization that Lord Whenby was here. In his house. With his arm around Aunt Essex. This mousy, cozening nobleman obviously had a way of blending into the walls.

And, the earl decided, he was blind as a bat. For anyone looking at Pug would never call it elegant or notable for craftsmanship. When not even a thief will take something . . .

Rather than spend any more time debating Lord Whenby’s inexplicable presence, the earl turned to his butler and valet. “What the devil happened here? Where was everyone?”

“The servants’ night off. Me and Mr. Fiske were going over the accounts.” Mingo coughed a bit and then added a belated “my lord.”

The earl translated this explanation into the more likely scenario that the pair of them—Fiske and Mingo—had been playing cards and drinking whatever decent vintage Fiske had stashed well out of his aunt’s notice.

Not that he blamed Fiske in the least. With Aunt Essex under the same roof, he’d be tipping the bottle as well.

Before Roxley could probe further, the Runner from Bow Street arrived and he took over, asking one and all to relate what had happened.

Lady Essex chose this moment to be overcome by the “shock of it all,” so it was up to Mingo to provide the facts.

“All we heard was herself, er, I mean, Her Ladyship hollering enough to wake the dead, and by the time Fiske and me got upstairs, there was a trio of cracksmen running out the front door, bold as brass. Then here comes the mort there chasing ’em with a candlestick in ’er hands and herself not far behind.” He sent an approving nod toward Harriet, who just shrugged away her part. “Once they were out the door, I seen that they had a diver out front. No lot of Fidlam Bens these, for they had the niftiest set of glyms I’ve ever seen—dropped one of them on the way out.” He nodded toward a small battered lamp sitting on the receiving table. “Then they were off afore Fiske and I could stop them, not that they got anything. Dead cargo is all they made off with, from what we can find.”

Roxley shook his head and turned to the Runner. “Can you translate any of that pedlar’s French?”

“You’ve been robbed,” the man told him blandly.

“That’s what I said,” Mingo complained, and then turned on Roxley. “And don’t you go making a show like you can’t patter flash.” He frowned and then belatedly added, “My lord.”