If Wishes Were Earls (22 page)

He made a rather inelegant snort, even as he reached up and caught hold of a loose tendril of her hair, twining it around his fingers, letting the dark strand slide through his grasp like silk.

It was an intimate, dangerous moment. Wasn’t this how it had all started at Owle Park? One moment they stood just so, perilously close, and the next they’d been kissing.

That was just fine with Harriet, for now all the barriers that had been holding them at arm’s length—most notably, Miss Murray—were no longer there.

If she wasn’t an heiress, not even a
cit
’s daughter, then Roxley was free to be hers.

Well, nearly.

Still, doubts bubbled beneath the surface of her desires. He wanted her, didn’t he?

And then much to her dismay, he unwittingly answered her uncertainties. For instead of catching hold of this spark between them, whispering words of encouragement and promise on it, letting it rekindle and catch anew, Roxley abruptly set her out of reach.

“Vexatious, I say,” he repeated, glowering from his solitary post.

“Vexatious, indeed!” she shot back, crossing her arms over her chest and holding back the shivers of regret threatening to rattle her out of her slippers.
Now who was being vexatious?
“I prefer helpful. Useful. Remarkably resourceful.”

Roxley laughed quietly. “Excellent traits in a hunting hound, but in a lady, I would point out that such characteristics are usually described with one word: meddling.”

“You know me so well, Roxley.” Too well, she realized, recognizing this dance—the one where he put this cold, horrid distance between them.

Like the wall around a convent.

Save Harriet wasn’t the convent sort, and had been climbing walls since she was old enough to toddle.

“Harry, I’m doing all this for you. You’ve got to see that.”

See what? She was still furious with him—for leaving her vacillating between hope and despair all these months. And, well, for just leaving! Of all the rotten, ruinous, horrible—

And then she glanced at him. For all his lofty ways, for all the times he’d been rakishly charming, right now the only word that came to her was vulnerable. She’d never seen him look so cast off—as if the entire world rested on his resolve, his wits.

Bother, Roxley! When was he going to see that this was their burden, not his alone?
Theirs
.

Worse, it was nigh on impossible to remain righteously angry with the man when he was in the same room. He quite tore at her heart standing there, looking like a lost highwayman in his dark clothes and dull boots.

So she did what she could to revive him.

“You got yourself attached to Miss Murray for my benefit?” she teased. “Roxley, you have an odd way of showing a lady you care.”

“Harriet, stop being difficult. Leave this all to me.”

She threw up her hands. “You can bluster and complain and scold all you want, but I am going to help you. We both know how well you’ve done with all this on your own.”

His features darkened. “I don’t want your help, Harry.”

“What you want and what you so obviously need—”

“I can manage all this on my own—”

Now it was her turn to snort.

His gaze narrowed. “What does that mean?”

“Have you thought of just asking your aunts where the diamonds might be?”

He laughed. “They are already convinced I’m a complete jinglebrains; whyever would they turn over a fortune in diamonds to me? Besides, I’ve already done that,
Miss Darby
, and Aunt Essex nearly fell over in a fit of laughter at the suggestion.”

She blushed a little bit at his teasing. Still, she held her ground. “Why not tell them the truth?”

Roxley went back to his perusal of the shelves. “What? That some madman believes my father won a fortune that has remained hidden all these years.”

“You know exactly what I mean.” She nodded her head as if to nudge him. “About your qualifications for such a venture. That they should trust you as the Crown does.”

Resorting to his usual London manner, he tipped his nose in the air and said, “Miss Hathaway, I have no idea what you are implying.”

“Oh, good God, Roxley! Really? Are we going to play this game now? If I must spell it out, then I know very well that you work as a secret courier for the Home Office. That this”—she waved her hands at him—“this ridiculous character you play about Town and for your aunts’ benefit—”

“You must agree it does have its advantages,” he interjected.

“Do not change the subject.” Once again, she stood firm. “You work for the Home Office.”

She said it as one might comment about a man’s tailor. Plainly and to the point.

He crossed the room and took her by the elbow, guiding her over to a chair and setting her down in it. “Demmit, Harry! Is there no end to your meddling? No one is supposed to know. Especially not you.”

“Well, of all the insulting—” She glared at him. “I can help.”

“Which is exactly why I didn’t want you to know. You’d insist on meddling.”

He had her there. She crossed her arms over her chest and looked up at him. “I still say you should tell your aunts about your heroics.”

“What? And give them the slightest excuse to be excessively proud of me? Not to mention the inherent interference that would follow. Why, they’d never leave me alone.” He shrugged and went back to his aunt’s desk, rifling through another drawer. “Besides, I don’t do that much.”

This time it was Harriet’s turn to scoff. “
Harrumph
.”

He looked over his shoulder at him. “You know nothing of what I do, Kitten.”

Harriet tipped her head and smiled. “Several years ago, you came to Kempton with Chaunce for Christmas. I overheard the two of you trying to come up with an excuse to go down to the village to take some papers to a Lord Mereworth who was to meet you at the John Stakes. Not that you needed an excuse. Maman was quite used to Papa venturing over to that disreputable place for a ‘moment’s peace.’ ”

Roxley closed his open mouth. But only for a second. “You misheard—”

“Hardly,” she scoffed. “And not long after you debated your reasons for seeking the public house, Chaunce warned you not to stray too close to the mistletoe hung in the foyer, or else I’d demand a kiss—”

He blanched a bit as if the memory had suddenly come back to him. Still, he wasn’t above making a joke. “Sounds like you—still looking, if your refusal to leave tonight is any evidence.”

She ignored the jibe and continued on. “And after Chaunce warned you, you said . . . you told him—”

“I’d rather kiss a monkey,” he finished for her. “And I meant it. Back then you rather favored the one Lady Bindon used to keep.”

Pushing up and out of the chair, Harriet sauntered over to him. “Would you say that now?”

“Yes.”

Oh, bother the man.

“Roxley—” She hoped the warning note in her voice reminded him of the last time he naysayed her.

“Well, a very fetching monkey,” he admitted. “Besides, I’m better off thinking of you as that monkey-faced, eavesdropping minx than as—”

“As what?”

He backed away. “Harry, don’t—”

“Don’t what?”

“Tempt me.”

“But, Roxley, I must.”

“The only thing you are tempting me to do is wring your neck.”

She turned from him and wandered back to her chair. “That wouldn’t help matters.”

“Depends on your point of view.”

Harriet shifted her plan of attack. She needed to show him that she was essential to his work.

Essential to
him
.

“As I see it,” she began, “you need to find the diamonds—”

“If there are any to be found.”

“Determine who Miss Murray really is—”

“Pistol and all,” he reminded her.

She ignored him. “And determine who it is that has been behind this from the beginning.” She paused and looked over him. “You’re certain there is someone behind your misfortunes of late?”

Her implication was clear—
that you didn’t manage to muddle this up all on your own.

Leave it to Harriet not to dance around the issue.

“Not even my luck is that bad,” he told her.

“If you say so—”

“I do,” he insisted.

Harriet nodded. “Then we must simply find whoever it is who has orchestrated all this mischief and stop them.”

There it was. Three simple steps to their happily-ever-after.

Roxley, however, was quite determined to make it difficult. “Harriet, all your sunny, Miss Darby–inspired optimism has no place in my work. You are going back to London on the early morning coach.”

Now it was Harriet’s turn to lose her temper. “Oh, no, I won’t. Not after you abandoned me last summer—” She closed the space between them in a thrice and put her hands on his chest and gave him a shove. “How dare you suggest such a thing.”

He opened his mouth to protest and then very wisely closed it.

This wasn’t an argument he was going to win.

“Did you ever once consider asking me what I wanted?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. There was no need. They both knew the answer.
No.
“Did you think to come to Kempton and make this my choice?”

“Harry, I couldn’t let you take the risk—”

“Risk what? That I’d say yes, or that I’d refuse you?”

There was a bit of truth in both versions, but it was the very vision of what could befall her that had kept him far from her, far from Kempton.

Not that it had been enough. She’d come to London, she’d followed her heart, his heart, and now was embroiled, entangled . . .

The vision returned.

Harriet still and pale, the light gone from her glorious green eyes. Like spring suddenly doused in a late frost.

This was a price he couldn’t, wouldn’t pay. Not when he, of all people, knew the tally so well.

He caught her by the shoulders and rattled her a bit. “Demmit, Harry! I don’t want you to end up dead on the side of some road like my parents did.”

There it was. The real truth behind his reticence. His deepest, most earnest fear.

Her eyes widened, as if she saw the agony ripping through his chest in his heartbroken expression—the long-simmering pain, the tormenting grief to keep her well out of the fray, his desolation, so raw and tenable. She moved closer until she was standing right in front of him.

It was, after all, where she belonged.

She was right about that. But oh, no, he couldn’t have her if it meant risking losing her.

He couldn’t.

And then she did what she did best. Oh, not the vexing part, but the part where she stole away his reason, his fears, his hesitation. She cupped his face in her hands and guided him toward her.

No, he couldn’t resist.

Nor should he have.

R
oxley’s frustrations gave way as Harriet slid against him.

He didn’t know what was worse, admitting he wanted her so badly or that there was never a demmed bed around when he had her in his arms.

Not that they had needed one before.

Her fingers curled into the lapels of his jacket and she tugged him closer, teasing him with her kiss, the tip of her tongue enticing him to open up to her.

Determined puss. She was resolved to drive him mad.

Roxley shifted and caught hold of her rounded bottom—his hands cradling her, drawing her right up against him—for he was already hard. Hard and ready.

So it seemed was she.

Ready, that is.

Demmit, she hadn’t anything on beneath her night-rail and dressing gown.

Nothing.

Which suited him perfectly.

He caught hold of her and carried her over to his aunt’s desk, still kissing her, their lips fused, exploring each other, tasting each other.

He set her atop the desk—hitching up her night-rail as he did so she was bare to him.

Madness, utter madness.

And Harriet, madcap, determined Harriet, seemed to know exactly what he planned.

She caught hold of the front of his breeches and opened them, freeing his cock and smiling as she stroked it.

Nor could he stop. He wanted her. He wanted to be inside her, easing this madness inside him.

And so he did, catching up her leg, hitching it around his hip, and then with little ceremony entered her.

Hard and fast.

Her pink depths were wet and ready for him, and she gasped as he filled her, a moan brimming with desire and frustration and need that he didn’t stand on ceremony.

He buried himself inside her, again and again, silencing her cries with a deep kiss that matched his thrusts, letting himself slide into a passionate delirium from which there was only one path to freedom.

F
rom the moment Roxley’s lips slammed into hers, Harriet knew she’d unleashed a demon—his frustrations and fears washing over her, mingled with a heated desire.

This wasn’t just a kiss, it was need.

And that Harriet understood.

She’d longed for months to be back in his arms and from the moment she brushed up against him, from the second their bodies had touched, her hips against his, she’d been breathless for him.

To have him inside her again.

There was no need for soft touches, teasing kisses—Harriet wanted to be joined to this man.

Wanted him so deeply that she didn’t care if he took her up against the wall and dallied with her like some upstairs maid.

She wanted to feel Roxley. To claim him.

He wanted her, and that was all that mattered.

That, and relieving this deep, restless itch of longing that had tossed and turned inside her for months.

He loves me. He loves me not.

All she wanted right this dizzy moment of madness was to be loved.

Furiously so.

And when he picked her up, cradling her backside, and hauled her over to his aunt’s desk, she wanted to cry out in triumph.

Her body was already taut and ready, wet to the core and tangled up with need.

Love me, Roxley. Unleash this madness.

He caught up her leg, and before she could draw a breath, he answered her silent plea.