If Wishes Were Earls (20 page)

His eyes opened wide.

So, she’d read from the top shelf as well. Which was good, because she had a number of matters she wanted to explore, starting with this one.

She ran her tongue from the base of his cock all the way up to the tip, where he was slick and throbbing.

She continued to explore him, taking him in her mouth and sucking him, much as he had suckled at her breasts, pulling from him the same sort of pleasures.

Desires.

When he started to groan, a growl really, he stepped back and out of her reach, his breath shuddering for control. Then as his hooded glance landed upon her, he smiled and came stalking forward like a lion.

Desire, hot and irresistible, ran through her as he approached.

He pressed her down atop the blanket, their mouths finding each other, joining again in a dizzy, hot and wet dance.

And now it was his turn.

His hand found her—that delicious spot between her legs—and began to tease it, rubbing against it, exploring the folds that kept it hidden and then going further, until again he was inside her, stretching her, sliding over her.

It was torment, demmed torment, for she was throbbing, her hips rising to meet him, chasing after something that couldn’t be seen, couldn’t quite be touched.

And yet, how she wanted him to find it.

“Kitten, I need you,” he whispered, as he shifted, and now it was no longer his hand pressing into her, but his manhood, as hard and reckless as his fingers had been, but so much more demanding.

So much larger.

“I’ve always been yours,” she told him, opening her legs, her body, her heart to him.

And Roxley filled her. Thrust himself into her and filled her.

Harriet gasped at this urgent, sudden entry. He’d been there and now he was inside her, and she was full, stretched, and breathless.

At least she thought she was until he moved.

Slowly, carefully, he pulled back and then moved inside her again, deeper, thrusting into her, and suddenly it wasn’t so much that he was filling her, but that he was teasing her.

Stroking it slowly out and then thrusting against her. The rhythm hard and soft, tease and push.

Her heels dug into the blanket as her hips rose to meet him, to feel his length slide against her nub as he rode back and forth, cantering over her senses.

His mouth caught hold of hers and he kissed her anew, his tongue matching his thrusts, lapping at hers, teasing hers so it was impossible to tell where his touch began and ended.

Roxley was everywhere—inside her, stroking her, bringing her to the edge of madness.

“Roxley,” she gasped as the first wave hit her, and hearing her cry, he thrust inside her harder, casting her over the edge, harder and faster and over and over.

Harriet heard him say her name, a ragged cry that caught up with hers, as his thrusts became more wild, more determined, and then he too was shuddering, quick, short thrusts as he came, breathless and hot and wet.

Tangled and entwined, their limbs, their hearts, bound all together in this vast abyss.

One might have fallen and found oneself alone in such a vast ocean.

But Harriet had Roxley, and he clung to her as if he would never let her go . . .

Bath, 1811

Y
es, Roxley remembered every moment of that night. How could he not? It had stolen his heart.

She’d stolen his heart.
Harriet
.

Oh, if you asked any one of Roxley’s friends and his acquaintances in the
ton
, they would laugh at the notion that the earl knew anything about love, but one of his few memories of his parents was from the night they left for that last ill-fated trip to the Continent—and it had taught him everything about that precious tangle.

Even now he could see his mother kneeling beside his bed, a glaze of tears in her eyes as she leaned forward to kiss his forehead.

Her hand had been soft and warm as it had brushed his hair back so she could look into his eyes.

Then his father had sat on the edge of his bed, murmured something about him being a gentleman for his aunts, to be the man of the house for his Aunt Oriel and Aunt Ophelia.

And as the two of them had risen—together—all Roxley could remember was how their hands reached for each other, their fingers twining, as if pulled together like a seam that had come loose and was once again stitched together.

That was always how he remembered them. Together. Bound so.

And even as a child, he’d known what it was that held them so—love.

And as he’d grown up, he’d discovered how rare that spark, that binding emotion was in a marriage.

It was probably why he’d helped Harriet in her designs to see Preston win Tabitha’s hand. And why he’d teased her about Lord Henry and Miss Dale’s elopement.

For Harriet was probably the only other person he knew who understood that those marriages were far more than brilliant matches, deeper than a passing fancy.

Then again, what other sort of marriage did Harriet know? Her parents’ union had been a terrible scandal and even now, all these years later, Sir George and his bride were as passionately in love as they had been thirty-five years earlier.

Harriet’s parents were like a beacon to him now. A light he wanted to emulate, carry on, with their equally passionate daughter.

He was of half a mind to catch up Harry’s hand and haul her off to the wilds of Scotland . . . his aunts and those bloody diamonds be damned.

But it was his aunts who stopped him. He’d spent most of his adult life complaining about them—their endless chiding letters, unannounced visits (well, on Essex’s part at least) and their scandalous eccentricities.

But after his parents’ deaths, nay
murders
, he corrected, his aunts had circled around him and seen to it that he’d been raised with love and a steady home.

He owed them much—and their care and well-being, their very safety, was his duty now.

It wasn’t that there was a debt that had to be repaid—it couldn’t have been, not in a century—but his obligation ran far deeper.

The Marshoms, for all their rapscallion ways, never shirked family.

Never.

And that sense of responsibility held him in place. Kept him from turning around and declaring his heart.

But for the first time in weeks, months, there was a spark of hope inside him, that Marshom resolve rekindled, a ridiculous belief that the next hand would be the one that restores all.

If he could find the diamonds . . . discover who this faux Miss Murray might be . . . stop whoever was behind all this . . .

If . . . If . . . If . . .

It was such a Marshom gamble to take. But how could he not?

For Harry.

“My goddess, my Cleopatra,” came a man’s voice from behind them, even as the curtain was drawn for intermission.

Roxley turned and found a grandly dressed old roué making his way into the box.

“Lord Galton,” Lady Eleanor fluttered back. “I had thought you were away from Bath.”

“Nothing can keep me very long from your side, my lady. You are the light of my twilight years.” The fellow caught hold of her hand and kissed it with a great show of manners and overly familiar affection.

Before, Roxley might have just shook his head at the entrance of yet another aging roué into his aunt’s life—she’d always collected admirers in spades—but now he needed to determine which one might mean her harm.

“Come, my dear. I long for a turn about the hall with you.” Lord Galton held out his hand with all the gallantry of a Marc Antony—albeit one who’d managed to live past his prime.

Lady Eleanor’s chin notched up in royal delight as she followed, yet when she was about halfway out the box, she paused. “I trust you can behave yourself, Roxley?”

“On my best behavior, Auntie E,” he assured her, though he wondered if that meant he could dangle Miss Murray over the railing by her ankles and shake the truth out of her.

Probably not.

“Oh, my goodness, is that Mrs. Plumley?” Miss Murray exclaimed as the lights began to brighten. She leaned over the railing, her eyes gleaming.

I will not push her, I will not push her
, Roxley mused. Though a glance over his shoulder revealed that Harriet seemed to be plotting much the same thing—her eyes sparkled with mischief. When she caught him watching her, he winked.

She tucked her nose up in the air as if she was still furious with him, but Roxley knew differently.

Besides, she was also blushing quite prettily, having been caught making her own dastardly plans.

“Yes, it is Mrs. Plumley! How delightful,” Miss Murray said, turning back to the others.

“You were a student of hers?” Lady Bindon asked, glancing down at the main floor.

“I was, my lady,” she replied.

“Of course you were,” Lady Bindon said approvingly. “You have the air of one of her better students. Come along with me and we shall greet her.”

Harriet rose as Miss Murray did, but this only made Lady Bindon frown. “Perhaps, Miss Hathaway, you should remain in the box. To keep an eye on the wraps.” A point she made by glancing at Harriet with a pinched, disapproving expression.

Good God, what had Harry done to Lady Bindon to have her in such a pickle?

“Would you like me to accompany you, Miss Murray?” Roxley asked, rising to his feet, and then made the mistake of glancing down at Harry, and forgot every bit of his manners.

Who the devil was sitting in Harry’s spot?

He’d merely glanced at her before, but now that he was standing he could take in the entirety of her.

This breathtaking vision. This elegant woman.

This was Harry? His scamp. His Kitten. The minx who’d stolen his heart?

And it was more than just the gown—the dramatic cascade of raven curls falling over her shoulders lured him to reach out and run his fingers through them.

And if he wasn’t mistaken, those were his aunt’s pearls wound through the braid that crowned her head.

What he wouldn’t give to be the one who unwound that strand, pearl by pearl, letting loose the coal black strands beneath.

Roxley shivered a bit and realized she was watching him—and he suspected she knew exactly what he was thinking.

Harry was like that. As astute as a cat—with those clear green eyes that peered so easily into his soul.

“Ahem,” Lady Bindon coughed. “My lord? Perhaps you should join us.” Her brows arched with disapproval.

“Oh, no, that won’t be necessary,” Miss Murray told her. “I fear the entire exchange would bore the earl endlessly.”

“Doesn’t look bored in the least,” Lord Bindon added, before he was shooed from the box by his wife. Miss Murray followed her, and suddenly Harriet and Roxley were all alone.

“What the devil were you thinking, Harry? Wearing that dress! And in Bath no less.” Roxley threw up his hands.

But Harriet didn’t rise to his baiting. She sat down, smoothed at her skirt, and then looked up at him with a level, intelligent gaze. “Miss Murray didn’t want to introduce you to her teacher.”

“So?” Roxley was still a bit mesmerized by the vision she presented to let her words sink in.

“Didn’t you find that odd?”

He stole a glance at the door.

“Not in the least,” he blustered, crossing his arms over his chest, for he knew all too well that Harriet
was
spot on. There was something odd about the entire thing.

Nor was Harriet about to let up.

“I mean, aren’t most of these Bath schools designed to teach young ladies how to marry up and beyond their station?” she pressed. “And here’s Miss Murray reaching quite up to the top shelf and she doesn’t want to parade her success before her teacher?” Harriet shrugged. “I find that rather curious.”

Roxley paused and then looked back over the railing where the girl was greeting her former teacher like an old friend. As if cementing her position as the real Miss Murray.

But if Murray didn’t have a daughter, then who was this imposter?

“Why do you think she didn’t want you to go?” Harriet continued like one of the Home Office’s best agents. If Old Iron Drawers could hear her, he’d have recruited her on the spot.

Put her in the thick of it, as the man liked to say. What was more perfect than someone so very smart, so very close to Miss Murray to report her every move.

Neck and jowl with the enemy, Howers would declare.

Roxley shivered. No. Suddenly it was even more imperative to get Harriet away from all this.

No matter how much she could help him . . .

No, he wouldn’t even consider the notion.

Harriet had continued on with her speculations. “Perhaps she is embarrassed of you, Roxley. Not lofty enough.” She’d said it with the same teasing air that harkened back to when they’d been children and the Hathaways would bow and scrape before him, with a chorus of “my lord” and “His Lordship,” all done to get a rise out of him.

Of course, it worked still. “Not lofty—” Roxley lurched forward and then turned around to face her.

Of course that was an utter mistake.

For one brief moment he considered hauling her into his arms so he could kiss that smug expression off her lips, but then he realized she’d puzzled out the enigma of Miss Murray all on her own, putting his own skills to shame.

And it struck him like a blow to the chest that he needed her. Terribly.

And worst of all? Harriet knew it. Believed it.

And he wasn’t so toplofty that he was unwilling to admit the truth—even if it took being blindsided by it.

But still, it took every bit of nerve he possessed to say those three words.

“Harry, I need you.”

Immediately he regretted his moment of weakness. For by saying them, asking her for help, he knew he was putting her in the firing line.

T
o Harriet, Roxley’s request was music to her ears.

He needed her.

Of course he did.

Oh, and how she needed him. She bit her lower lip and resisted the urge to lean forward and offer him anything his heart desired. Hadn’t she already done that once, and look at where that had left them.