If Wishes Were Earls (23 page)

He entered her—hard and fast and it was shocking and exciting all at once.

She began to cry out and found herself silenced by his kiss.

Whatever she’d been going to say—
Roxley! Oh, good heavens! Oh, please yes!
—she couldn’t remember because already she was on that dancing precipice and Roxley was pumping himself into her, stroking her, sending her careening toward the heavens.

With each stroke, with each movement of his rock-hard manhood, she was tossed upward.

And it was a path she willingly climbed, clinging to his shoulders, searching for steady ground as he filled her.

Then his movements began to rush forward, hard, short thrusts, and she could hear the deep rumble rising in his chest as he began to find his way over the edge.

For one frantic moment, she thought he was going over alone, but with a deep final thrust, one that left her gasping, she tumbled headlong after him into oblivion.

A
fter a few moments, Roxley opened his eyes and looked down at the tumbled mess he’d made of things—Harriet’s hair fell in a riot of curls down around her shoulders. Her gown was only half on and her head lolled back, her breath coming in labored gasps.

“Oh, God, Harriet!” he whispered. “What have I done to you? God, I’m such an ass.” He went to pull himself out of her but she caught hold of him and pulled him closer.

Her hooded gaze studied him before she made a
tsk, tsk
sound. “Roxley, if you start apologizing for your boorish behavior, I swear I will march upstairs and put Miss Murray’s flint back in her pistol.”

And then use it myself.

“So do us both a favor and be a bit more of an ass, will you?” she teased, nibbling at his ear and whispering just exactly how she’d like him to ruin her again.

Right here on his aunt’s desk.

Chapter 10

Your heart was not what I was worried about.

Miss Darby to Lt. Throckmorten

from Miss Darby and the Counterfeit Bride

M
r. Hotchkin arrived late to the mews behind Lady Eleanor’s house. He muttered a mild curse (the only one he could claim in good conscience) and realized he might have made a mess of things.

But in his defense, he’d been following up on a lead on Moss, one of the Calais gamblers, and so intent had he been on finding the man, he’d lost track of the time.

Taking up a position in the shadows, he watched the house and wondered what the devil he was supposed to do next.

Lord Roxley had promised to meet him here just after midnight, and yet now it was half past and there was no sign of the earl.

This was his first field assignment and since Mr. Hathaway had recommended him for the task, the last thing he wanted to do was let down his mentor.

Well, he supposed he could wait a few minutes and see if there was any sign of the earl.

Mr. Hathaway had warned him that since Roxley wasn’t a career agent, he could be inconveniently unpredictable.

Unpredictable
. Such a distasteful notion, Hotchkin mused.

Taking a deep breath, he did as he had so many times since the first time he’d stumbled across the dusty files on the Queen’s Necklace: he ran through the facts that could be verified.

The diamonds had been part of a necklace that was to be a gift to Marie Antoinette from Cardinal de Rohan.

The intermediary, Madame de la Motte, had instead broken up the necklace and given the diamonds to her husband, a self-proclaimed comte, to bring to London to be sold.

He paused, for everything after that was all conjecture and rumor.

Hotchkin shuddered.

He found assumptions abhorrent, preferring facts.

Then there was the notion that the stones themselves were cursed.

Cursed.
The word echoed in his thoughts and for no rational reason, he moved deeper into the shadows and scanned the mews and gardens around him.

There wasn’t a bit of movement in the small garden behind Lady Eleanor’s house, nor in the mews that ran behind the houses on Brock Street.

And yet . . . Hotchkin stilled. There was someone close at hand. He could feel it.

And even as he scolded himself for such an irrational notion, there in the corner of his eye he sensed movement.

Someone was there. Watching Lady Eleanor’s house, much as he was.

’Tis Lord Roxley
, he told himself, and was about to step out and make himself known to the earl, when a stern lecture from Mr. Hathaway echoed in his thoughts.

Think twice, Hotchkin
, his mentor always said.
And look once again before you leap.

So Hotchkin paused and looked again, realizing almost immediately that the cloaked figure edging down the alley wasn’t near as tall as the earl.

Hotchkin’s hand slid slowly and quietly into the pocket of his jacket and he drew out his pistol, his heart hammering.

For there was one line in all these reports that had woken him up more than one night of late.

Someone wants these diamonds more than the French. And the evidence is clear they are most willing to kill for them.

And then he nearly found out how true those words were, when he was struck from behind.

A
sharp retort of a pistol tore Harriet and Roxley apart.

For a second, both of them stood there, half dazed, still lost in that breathless frenzy they’d just shared.

A crash and a shout wrenched them farther apart.

The world—and its inherent dangers—had come calling.

When Harriet looked about to say something, Roxley’s hand shot up, covering her mouth, shaking his head at her even as he did so.

He cocked his head and listened. Already upstairs, he could hear his aunt’s cries and the shuffle of feet on the stairs above them. But it was the tramp of feet below that held his attention.

Someone was trying to get into the house.

Or had already breached it.

Roxley whirled around, cursing as he turned and hastily straightening out his clothing. Then he moved Harriet behind him, shielding her with his body.

For a moment, he listened a bit more, and then turned to Harriet. “Stay here. Close the door behind me and don’t let anyone in.”

“I think not,” she said, following him as he opened the door.

Nor was there time to argue the matter as there was another large crash and a flurry of shouts from downstairs.

“Demmit,” Roxley said, dashing out into the hallway. All through the house, there were the echoes of feet hitting the floor, doors opening.

Going down the back stairs toward the ground floor behind the house, he met Thortle coming up from his room in the cellar, a candle in one hand and a fire poker in the other.

“My lord!” he cried out.

“Roxley! Good heavens! What is the meaning of this?” Aunt Eleanor cried out from the top of the stairs.

“My lady,” Thortle said. “Stay where you are! There are housebreakers afoot.”

The intrepid lady came boldly down the stairs anyway. “The only thief I see is my nephew. Roxley! Again, I ask you what is the meaning of this?” At the sound of a creak on the stairs, they all turned to find Harriet standing there. “And Miss Hathaway. My, my, you are most fleet of foot—why you’ve made it downstairs before any of us. I am all astonishment,” she said, her brows rising as she sent a scorching glance at her nephew.

Harriet slid back a bit and did her best to appear as unobtrusive as possible. Which given her height was rather impossible.

“Aunt Eleanor, please go back upstairs and take Harriet with you,” Roxley told her, moving out of the stairwell and down the narrow hall toward the breakfast room where there was still a bit of a clatter.

“I will remind you, I am a Marshom,” she replied hotly, following him, with Harriet right on her heels.

“ ’Tis hard to forget,” Roxley muttered as he approached the double doors to the room.

Aunt Eleanor caught up with him just then. “Whatever are you doing?”

“I’m going to investigate,” he told her. “Now, please stay back.”

“And have you killed in my house? Hardly,” she replied. “Essex would never forgive me if you were murdered and we were left to the mercies of Cousin Neville.”

Roxley glanced over his shoulder and wondered if he should remind her that Cousin Neville had passed away over a decade ago and he, Tiberius Marshom, was all that stood between them and the title being lost.

Probably not.

But it wasn’t like he could hold her back either, for they had reached the open door and inside lay a figure sprawled out on the floor before them.

“Who are you?” Roxley demanded, pointing his pistol at the man.

Aunt Eleanor shoved his arm aside, the pistol firing and sending an errant shot into the wall. Undeterred, she hurried forward. “Good heavens, Roxley! What have you done? You’ve gone and killed my dear Lord Galton.”

“I
t is nothing, Lady E, nothing,” Lord Galton said for the twentieth time, as the lady fussed over the bruise on the back of his head. “I’m quite certain I sent those ruffians away with far worse.”

Roxley shot a glance at the ceiling and sent up a little prayer for patience. “Tell us again, Lord Galton, what you were doing lurking about the back of my aunt’s house?”

“One might ask the same of you,” Aunt Eleanor pointed out, sending a censorious glance over at Harriet.

Roxley had a reply at the ready. “I was returning from a late meeting—”

His aunt’s eyes widened with horror. “Oh, heavens, Roxley, don’t tell me you’ve gone and joined that noisy bunch of Methodists up the street?”

“Not that sort of meeting,” he told her. “But as I was saying, I was passing on Brock Street and noticed a light on in the study—”

“I fear it was me, my lady,” Harriet interjected. “I . . . I . . . I couldn’t sleep, so I came down to the library.”

“Yes, well, when I peered in the window, I nearly scared Miss Hathaway out of her wits—”

“And then when I realized it was Lord Roxley, I allowed him in—”

Lady Eleanor looked from one to the other. “Yes, I daresay that’s how it happened,” she replied dryly. “Yet none of that explains why someone would want to break into my house.” Again, those hawkish features bored into Roxley.

“You are known to be a lady of quality,” he offered.

Aunt Eleanor wasn’t a Marshom for nothing. “Balderdash!” she told him, further dismissing his bluff with a wave of her hand. “I think you’ve made this all up to gain an invitation to stay under my roof, not to mention the bullet hole you’ve put in the wall. The entire room is spoiled—it will need to be repapered, an expense I will not bear.”

Of course, any excuse to start redecorating the house, Roxley realized. Even in all the excitement, his aunt was quick to claim an advantage. “I hardly came over tonight to shoot up your breakfast room.”

“Then why are you here, Roxley—” Her voice ended, but her gaze was pinned on Harriet.

A very tumbled-looking Harriet, who backed into the hallway and out of sight.

“Don’t be too hard on your nephew, Lady E,” Lord Galton said, intervening. “He has the right of it. There was someone in the house. It was demmed lucky your nephew came by when he did. I had just arrived when I saw them—two figures going into the breakfast room doors—”

Roxley pushed off the wall and studied the man. “You just arrived? Isn’t it rather late for a social call, my lord?” Now it was his turn to pin a glance on his aunt, who had the dignity to blush and then turn to study the hole in the wall.

Before she could start casting forth some exorbitant amount to repair the damage, a figure came staggering through the open doors which led to the garden.

Roxley swung his pistol up, unloaded as it was, but nonetheless took a deadly stance. “Who goes there?”

Thortle held his candle aloft, and it cast a weak light on Mr. Hotchkin, bloodstained and wavering, a pistol held loosely in one hand—not that he was in any condition to wield it.

Roxley rushed to the younger man’s aid, with Harriet close behind.

“Oh, Mr. Hotchkin!” she exclaimed, helping Roxley guide the man to a chair. “What has happened to you?”

“I was in the mews, and it turns out, I wasn’t alone—”

Lord Galton sniffed when all eyes turned on him.

Though in Roxley’s estimation, it could well have been Lord Galton who orchestrated all this.

Mr. Hotchkin continued on, “—whoever it was, had help. Someone came up from behind and struck me over the head.”

“There’s more than one of these villains?” Aunt Eleanor was all aghast.

The young man nodded.

“So you can stop listing Galton as one of your suspects, Roxley,” his aunt told him. “He always arrives alone.”

Roxley thought it the better part of valor not to point out that this wasn’t evidence in her favor, so instead he turned to Hotchkin. “Where were you standing?”

“Near the arch in the garden,” he replied.

Roxley and Galton shared a glance, and the earl guessed they were both thinking the same thing—whoever had knocked out Hotchkin had come from inside the house. For the only way someone could have crept up behind him was if they’d come from the house.

Someone who could move quietly, efficiently and with near deadly aim.

Glancing up at the ceiling, Roxley had to wonder where his faux betrothed was at the moment. Then he spied Harriet.

She mouthed exactly what he needed to know. “Still in her bed.”

So that’s where she’d disappeared to. To discover where Miss Murray might be.

“I fear I’ve failed you, my lord,” Hotchkin was saying, his misery apparent in every word.

“
Tsk, tsk
.” Roxley waved aside the man’s apology. “You most likely slowed them down and saved the day, Mr. Hotchkin. More importantly, I believe you will need a surgeon to see to that head of yours. It will require a few stitches.”

“I can do it,” Harriet announced.

“Oh, Miss Hathaway, no,” Mr. Hotchkin exclaimed. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

“I’ve stitched up most of my brothers one time or another, I daresay your head isn’t any harder.”

There was a sniff from Lady Eleanor, but whether it was in approval or quite the opposite, it was impossible to discern. Not that the lady was giving any further clues for she was already nudging at the mud that had been tracked into her once immaculate breakfast room, lips pursed and expression guarded.

Oh, there’d be a new carpet out of all this as well.

Meanwhile, Harriet directed her attention to Thortle. “Is there hot water in the kitchen?”

“Always, miss.”

“Fetch a large basin and a clean rag. Then I’ll need a good sewing needle and plain silk thread.” She paused and glanced at her patient, who was once again wavering in his seat. “And a bottle of something. Strong, I think.”

“The bottle of whiskey, Thortle,” Lord Galton added. “The one Her Ladyship keeps on the top shelf of the library.”

Lady Eleanor looked askance at all this, but whether she was grim over the prospect of adding bloodstains to her already ruined breakfast room or her best whiskey being used for medicinal purposes, who knew. She was too busy scolding her nephew. “You have brought this folly from London with you, Roxley. I blame you entirely.”