If Wishes Were Earls (27 page)

She nodded and curtsied.

Not to be outshone, Lady Kipps all but moved Harriet aside to make her own curtsy. “Madame Sybille, what a delight and honor to meet you here in Bath. Perhaps you don’t recall being introduced”—and then realizing she was talking to an occultist, she laughed—“oh, but of course you do, you see everything, don’t you? But as I was saying—”

Madame Sybille waved her off with a dismissive air. “I came to speak to Miss Hathaway. To warn her—”

“Warn Miss Hathaway?” Lady Kipps pressed forward, determined, her pushy mushroom roots showing. “How droll. But as I was saying, you might recall—”

“Miss Hathaway is in grave danger,” the woman continued, again casting a warning wave of her hand over Harriet.

“In danger?” Lady Bindon squawked. “Are you certain?”

Madame Sybille nodded, her grim expression focused on Harriet.

“In danger? How ridiculous,” Lady Kipps declared. “The only danger facing Miss Hathaway is the very certainty that she’ll remain a spinster the rest of her days.”

But since no one was really listening to her now, her mean-spirited jest went unnoticed.

“Warn me?” Harriet managed. “I don’t see why—”

Madame Sybille caught her by the hand and turned her fingers palm up. “I can see it more clearly now. You are in terrible danger.”

Of course, these dramatics caught the attention of everyone nearby and it wasn’t but a few moments before half the room was watching the scene unfolding before their eyes.

“Your life,” Madame Sybille continued ominously, “is at a very dangerous crossroads.”

“So she needn’t cross the road,” Lady Eleanor said, but not even her dry wit was heard.

“Miss Hathaway, I implore you, return to London immediately. Or better yet—to your home. To Kempton, is it not?”

This left Lady Bindon goggle-eyed. Even Lady Kipps seemed taken aback, her thin lips gaping open.

Whispers hurried around the room, sharing Madame Sybille’s latest proclamation as if it gave more credence to her unearthly powers, for she knew where Harriet came from. Or rather, where she should go.

Anywhere but here. Which given the rumblings around the room, Harriet suspected by morning the general population would be clamoring on Lady Eleanor’s doorstep demanding she leave Bath immediately.

“Please heed me, my dear girl! I see danger all around you.” Dropping Harriet’s hand as if it were suddenly poison, Madame Sybille backed away and then left in much the same theatrical manner in which she’d arrived.

It was all too much for the usually staid assembly crowd of Bath, and fans everywhere began to flutter nervously. One silly old widow, known for her flighty ways, gave in to a case of vapors and collapsed onto her poor hired companion.

“Oh, my,” Lady Bindon declared, taking two steps back from Harriet.

Indeed, most everyone around them cautiously eased away, and those who didn’t stared at her with equal measures of dismay and fear.

Oh, bother. This was hardly what Roxley had in mind when he’d admonished her to be unobtrusive. Harriet drew a deep breath and put on what she hoped was a brave expression.

For it wasn’t Madame Sybille’s declaration that she was in danger—good heavens, Harriet already knew that—but that the woman knew so much about her and had chosen now, of all times, to come warn her.

“Well, that was rather unsettling and most odd,” Lady Kipps said loudly. “More to the point, I find her ever so intrusive—just inviting herself into our party and ruining the evening.” She shook out her skirts and once again took command of the conversation, by scanning the room for something else to discuss.

Unfortunately for Harriet it was something worse than Madame Sybille’s lurid predications.

“Yes, well, isn’t that Lord Fieldgate coming across the room?” Lady Kipps announced. It wasn’t as if she was looking for an answer, rather that she wanted to continue where she’d left off bedeviling Harriet. “I do hope you are avoiding that rogue, Miss Hathaway. He is bad
ton
.”

Lady Eleanor made a rather inelegant snort, and if Harriet had been a wagering sort, she would have laid down her last guinea that the older woman’s sentiments could be translated as follows:
takes one to know one
.

“You haven’t continued to show him your favor, have you?” Lady Kipps pressed. “Not that I understand in the least why he bothers with you, when everyone knows he is under the hatches. He needs an heiress, which you are not.” With that point made, she smiled, until suddenly her expression widened. “Ooooh, perhaps he is the danger that dreadful woman was nattering on about. And here he comes—and looking determined. Shall I ward him off?”

If ever there was a moment that Harriet regretted in her life, it was this one. She should have put her pique aside and allowed the countess to send the rakish fellow packing, for it was what she truly wanted.

But Lady Kipps had gotten under her skin, leaving her itching to be contrary. Her pride, pricked and prodded, got the better of her.

“My dear Miss Hathaway,” Lord Fieldgate enthused, catching up Harriet’s fingers and bringing them to his lips. “Such a dire scene. I came immediately to offer my assistance.”

“Dear Fieldgate!” Harriet replied with an equal measure of enthusiasm, copying Lady Kipps’ grand, overblown manners. Not that the woman noticed. “There you are. I thought you’d never come rescue me. I have been subjected to the most dreadful and uncouth company.”

Words to regret, for certain, but at that moment they made Lady Kipps look as if her fan had been stuffed somewhere rather unpleasant.

I
n Roxley’s estimation, an assembly at Bath was the last step before one descended into Dante’s circles of hell.

Oh, the place might have been fashionable forty years earlier, but now, the city was filled with mushrooms, poor gentry, invalids, and those who claimed infirmities which were more imaginative than substantive. Then there were the ladies like his aunt, who could hold a place of rank in the smaller world of Bath, whereas in the London milieu, she’d be shuffled to one side as a spinster of good birth, but sadly of no consequence.

He’d dodged teetering old ladies and creaky swains as he’d danced with Miss Murray. But his trip to the punch bowl had taken forever as he worked his way through a milling tide of aging Corinthians and bewigged widows. Steering a course past anxious mamas and their gaggles of ungainly daughters, relations and wards who had been sent to Bath in hopes of an advantageous match that would be difficult at best among the glittering Originals and Diamonds of London.

And speaking of anxious relations, Aunt Eleanor descended upon him in a whirlwind when he returned, nearly overturning the punch cups he was carrying.

“Gracious heavens, Roxley! Where is Miss Hathaway?”

The question appeared to loft past Miss Murray like the music from the alcove. She glanced over at Roxley, smiled and accepted one of the cups of punch.

He scanned the room but saw no sign of Harry, which seemed unusual since she was impossible to miss in that outrageous red gown.

“Where the devil has she gone to?” he muttered aloud before he realized it.

“She’s dancing,” Miss Murray supplied. “Yet again.”

“Oh, I’ll take that,” Lady Bindon exclaimed, catching up the other cup of punch.

Roxley hadn’t noticed her standing there next to his aunt.

Lady Bindon sent a glowering glance at the dance floor. “My, my, Miss Murray, your Miss Hathaway is cutting quite the swath tonight.” It wasn’t a statement of approval.

Nor was Roxley in an approving mood. So it had been all night—with every man in the room seeking an introduction to the divine lady in red.

Red
. Harriet should not be allowed to wear such a gown. It was more scandalous than that seductive silk she’d worn to the theater the previous night.

And hardly, he wanted to point out, contributing to her promise to remain unobtrusive.

Miss Murray, meanwhile, had gulped down her punch and was even now setting the empty glass on the tray of a passing server. “Really, Roxley, you should mind yourself. The way you are carrying on, one would think you have a
tendré
for Miss Hathaway.” She looked at him, once again with that businesslike assessment, while much to his chagrin, behind her, his aunt was making much the same inspection.

Well, do you?
her quizzical expression said.

He hoped his said in return,
None of your demmed business
.

“You missed all the excitement, my lord,” Lady Bindon said. “Madame Sybille paid us a visit. And such terrible news she bore.”

Yet the baroness sounded ever so delighted to share the grave tidings.

“Madame Sybille?” That charlatan from London?

“You must have heard of her! She’s an occultist. She sees things,” Lady Bindon whispered too loudly for it truly to be a whisper.

“I would hope she sees things,” Roxley told the lady. “Otherwise she’d be bumping into everything. Most inconvenient.”

Thwack.
Lady Bindon struck him in the arm with her ever-present fan. “Roxley, you are as droll as they say.”

“And bruised,” he replied, rubbing his arm.

“Do attend, Roxley! Madame Sybille,” Lady Bindon continued, “had terrible news to impart on Miss Hathaway.” She paused and drew closer, again whispering in that terrible stage voice of hers. “Our Miss Hathaway is in grave danger.” She nodded twice, as if to punctuate the true magnitude of the situation, and then stepped back, fan at the ready.

“She did sound quite convincing that Harriet is in grave danger,” Miss Murray added.

Only from you
. Roxley put no stock in the fortune tellers who plied their trade amongst the bored members of the
ton
.

So whatever was the lady doing here in Bath? And why was she warning Harriet?

A shiver of foreboding ran down his spine and he glanced quickly, frantically about the room—where to his dismay he still couldn’t spy that outrageous red gown. “Where is she?”

“With Lord Fieldgate,” Lady Bindon supplied.

Fieldgate? Roxley ground his teeth together.

“I so adore how the viscount looks at Miss Hathaway. How a man looks at a young lady says so much. Why I remember when I was young. Bindon looked at me like that and I knew, I just knew he was . . .” The baroness sighed. “I got shivers when he claimed Miss Hathaway’s hand for yet another dance—their second dance—especially when he declared her the most perfect lady in the room. So besotted.”

Lady Eleanor joined in. “Yes, he was quite effusive. I believe he called her gown ‘divine.’ ”

“Perfectly divine,” Miss Murray amended.

“Perfectly divine?” Roxley managed. Perfectly irritating, perhaps. For it was cut too low and it skimmed her lush, tall figure, giving her the appearance of a goddess come to tempt mortal men.

Himself included.

And so it seemed, Fieldgate as well.

What the devil was he up to? The man was farther up the River Tick than Roxley was, so his pursuit of Harriet made no sense.

Unless it was, as Lady Bindon had all but suggested, a case of love.

“Harriet is very fond of him,” Miss Murray confided to the older ladies. “She is always going on and on about the viscount.”

Roxley blinked and then glanced over at the lady beside him. “Pardon?”

“Lord Fieldgate and Harriet. Didn’t you know?” She smiled serenely as if the match was as secure as hers to him.

“Was he an officer, Roxley?” Lady Bindon was asking.

“A wha-a-a-t?”

“Fieldgate—was he an officer?” she pressed. “I only ask because of his bearing—so elegant and commanding.”

He knew it was rude, but he was gaping. “Have you known many officers, Lady Bindon?”

She swatted him with her fan again and laughed. “Of course not! Oh, how you tease, Roxley. How you tease.”

“Perhaps Fieldgate is the danger Madame Sybille spoke of,” Lady Eleanor suggested with a pointed glance at her nephew. Her glance said so much more.
I don’t like this. Any of this.

Neither do I
, he would have told her. But he was demmed sure going to get to the bottom of it. He looked around the assembly rooms but couldn’t catch any sight of the pair.

Lady Eleanor must have been following his line of vision as well. She rose up on her tiptoes and glanced around the room. “Good heavens, they’ve gone.”

“Gone?” Roxley went cold.

“Oh, I’m certain I just saw them over there,” Miss Murray said, nodding toward the punch bowl on the far side of the room. It was the fact that she sounded both practical and confident that jangled his every nerve.

“Perhaps they’ve eloped!” Lady Bindon enthused, sounding utterly delighted by the idea. “Or they are sharing a rare moment of longing.”

“A what?” Roxley asked, pulling his attention away from his frantic search of the room.

“A rare moment of longing,” the baroness repeated. The she paused, lips pursed, fan tapping at them. “My lord, haven’t you read the Miss Darby novels? Perhaps Miss Hathaway is indulging in a rare moment of longing—like dear Miss Darby and her beloved Lt. Throckmorten do.” The lady’s eyes twinkled wickedly. “You do you know what one is, don’t you?”

Roxley nodded. “Yes, Lady Bindon, I do. I’m having one right now.”

The longing to murder a certain viscount.

“F
inally, a moment alone, Miss Hathaway,” Viscount Fieldgate said as he led Harriet out onto the dance floor.

Here she’d hoped to avoid the viscount altogether, but with all eyes on her she could hardly have snubbed the man without being an object of gossip.

More than she was already.

“Now we can continue our discussion about our understanding,” he said, smiling at her.

“Our wha-a-at?” she managed.

He leaned down, close to her ear. “Our understanding.” His words purred over her.

But they hardly served to lull her into whatever spell he hoped to weave. Rather they incited a ration of panic.

He didn’t mean . . . ? She glanced over at him. The viscount shot her a smoldering gaze full of smoky promises.

Oh, dear heavens, he did! He wanted to marry her.