If Wishes Were Earls (24 page)

“Don’t be ridiculous, Aunt Eleanor,” he replied. “I directed Mingo personally on what to pack, and housebreakers were not on the list.” He grinned at her. “They take up too much room.”

“I
cannot believe I missed all the excitement last night,” Miss Murray declared as she was finishing up her breakfast the next morning.

“Yes, your absence was most unfortunate,” Lady Eleanor remarked as she glanced up from a letter she was reading and shot a pinning glance at Harriet—which she had no desire to interpret.

While Lady Essex was so easy to read—her mercurial shifts of mood revealed in her expression like a barometer, her twin, Lady Eleanor, was such a mystery.

At least, so Harriet thought.

“Miss Hathaway, is it be true you stitched up Lord Roxley’s friend?” Miss Murray asked.

Harriet tried to follow Lady Eleanor’s example and kept her face as bland as possible, even when her every instinct was to march to the end of the table, pin this impostor to the floor and beat her with the silver salver until she talked.

Well, perhaps nothing that drastic, but she certainly didn’t like having to keep her promise to Roxley.

He’d pulled her aside the previous night, after she’d finished closing the wound on the back of Mr. Hotchkin’s head.

Harry, you mustn’t do anything to risk your life. You stay well clear of Miss Murray until I can determine who she is. Promise me.

Then the wretched man had leaned over and stolen another kiss from her lips—a slow, tantalizing brush of his lips, followed by a heated glance full of reminders of what had transpired between them.

And of delights to come.

So like a fool, she’d nodded in agreement.

When he kissed her like that, she was incapable of thinking straight.

Still, Harriet thought the salver would make short work of all this madness.

Then, as if sensing the imminent danger she was in, Miss Murray abruptly got up from the table. “My! Look at the time. The morning has quite gotten away from me! And I promised Mrs. Plumley I would drop by first thing so we could have a decent coze.”

Harriet rose, as a good companion ought, but Miss Murray shook her head and waved her off. “Oh, Harriet, but you’ve only just gotten to your breakfast. I wouldn’t dream of making you accompany me on such a dull visit, and so early. I can manage quite well on my own.”

“Yes, but you shouldn’t go alone,” Harriet told her. She wasn’t about to let this gel out of her sights. “What would Mrs. Plumley say?”

“How right you are, Miss Hathaway,” Lady Eleanor agreed. “But Miss Murray is also correct—you must finish your breakfast. You need your nourishment after the night you’ve had, or you’ll faint dead away before tea.” Harriet was about to point out that she’d never fainted in her life, but Lady Eleanor continued, “You can take Nan with you, Miss Murray. She’s a silly little flibbertigibbet—not an intelligent thought in her head, but she does know her way around Bath.”

“She sounds perfect,” Miss Murray said, smiling graciously, before she left the room, all elegance and poise.

“Yes, she is,” Lady Eleanor muttered under her breath as the last of Miss Murray’s skirts turned the corner.

Harriet moved to follow her, but was stopped by a quiet command. “Sit, Miss Hathaway.”

“But I—”

“Sit and finish your breakfast.”

Harriet did so, most reluctantly. She could hardly tell Her Ladyship why exactly it was pure folly to let Miss Murray out of the house unsupervised, but then she discovered that she didn’t need to.

Even so, she hurried along to consume her toast and bacon and the lovely dish of fruit compote Lady Eleanor instructed the footman to fetch her, all the while listening to the voices and footsteps overhead that indicated Miss Murray, accompanied by the aforementioned Nan, was leaving.

Slipping away, as it were.

When the firm thud of the front door closing behind her, Harriet let out a sigh of exasperation.

“There is no need to worry, Miss Hathaway,” Lady Eleanor declared, putting down the letter she’d been calmly reading. “While Nan might appear to be the stupidest girl alive, she also gossips like a fishwife. She’ll relate everything Miss Murray has done, gone and seen when they return.”

Harriet gaped.

“Truly, do you think I believe a word that comes out of that gel’s mouth? Heiress, indeed! She might have gone to Mrs. Plumley’s, but anyone of consequence goes to Miss Emery’s School. Not Mrs. Plumley’s School for the by-blows.”

Her mouth fell open further.

Lady Eleanor made a
tut-tut
, and continued to tidy up her place setting and the letters she’d been reading. “Does Roxley know?”

“Know what, ma’am?”

“That his Miss Murray is most likely some fiend’s natural child?”

Harriet drew a deep breath and chose her words carefully. “He isn’t sure who she is.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” she replied. “I was starting to think he was as useless as most men.”

“How did you know?” Harriet posed, her natural curiosity winning out over any practical thoughts.

Lady Eleanor smiled. “It is obvious she isn’t of a good birth, nor has she any true English breeding. That, and she tries too hard. If I were to venture a guess, I’d say she is French. Or half French, which isn’t any better.”

Sitting back in her seat, Harriet shook her head. “That’s it. She’s French.”

“Yes, makes sense, doesn’t it,” Lady Eleanor agreed, pinning another one of those looks on Harriet that suggested she expected something in return for this offering.

But Harriet had another question if she was to connect the threads of this mystery. “Lady Eleanor, may I ask you a question?”

The lady nodded.

“What is in the box?” Harriet ventured. She’d spent the remainder of the night puzzling out where the diamonds might be. Well, that and remembering Roxley.

And as it was in the wee hours of the night, she’d spent a good deal of time worrying.

For not once had Roxley said he’d loved her. That he’d marry her. That he wanted her properly.

Oh, good heavens, had she once again tried in the entirely wrong way to jump the fence that separated her from Roxley?

What was it her brother George had once said about the earl? Oh, yes, that he was different from them.

Toplofty, where we are just . . . well, us.

Harriet had tossed and turned on that notion. The earl being so above her, he could take whatever his heart fancied—and didn’t know anything different. That was what came of being born above nearly everyone else.

He doesn’t need to love you . . .
that errant voice of doubt had whispered.

But he does
, she wanted to shout, reveling in the memories of being in his arms just a few hours earlier.

I want you, and only you
, he’d whispered as he’d entered her. Taken her. Possessed her. It had been so breathless, so ruinous. So very wonderful.

It left her a little breathless even now.

“The box?” Lady Eleanor was saying, nudging Harriet from her woolgathering.

She blushed a little under the lady’s piercing gaze and went back to the subject at hand, lest she discover Lady Eleanor possessed Madame Sybille’s alleged skills and could read minds. “Um, yes. The one your sister sent to you.”

Lady Eleanor’s brow quirked upward, much like Lady Essex’s often did when she was both amused and chagrined. “You didn’t look?”

Harriet shook her head. It wasn’t her place. She’d been entrusted by Lady Essex to carry it to Bath and she’d done so.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t immensely curious.

Lady Eleanor picked up her napkin and dabbed her lips. “Not the diamonds, if that is what you are asking.”

“You know?”

“Of course I know,” she said, making a
tsk
,
tsk
, as if she’d never heard such a foolish question. “Wretched things, diamonds. As cursed as Kempton.”

“No more,” Harriet told her.

“No more what?”

“Kempton. It isn’t cursed any longer. There have been two marriages of late. Miss Timmons married the Duke of Preston—”

Lady Eleanor snorted at this, as most people did, for Preston had a terrible reputation as an unrepentant rake.

“—and Miss Dale. She married Lord Henry Seldon.”

“A Seldon and a Dale? Married? I’m surprised the Tower of London hasn’t toppled over.” Lady Eleanor once again waved her hands at Harriet. “Still, if neither groom has turned up with an inconvenient fire iron in his chest, I suppose any number of things is possible.”

“And the box?” Harriet nudged.

“Ah, yes,” she said, and rose, Harriet rising as well.

Lady Eleanor nodded for her to wait and left. A little while later, she returned, box in hand. This time, she took the seat next to Harriet, and Harriet could see the lady had a misty look to her eyes.

Gone was the lofty daughter of an earl.

And for a moment, Harriet almost regretted asking such an obviously personal thing—for she could see quite clearly this was a difficult thing for the lady.

With trembling fingers, Lady Eleanor undid the sturdy string that tied it shut and went to remove the top, but she stopped and had to dash away a tear.

Harriet put her hand over Lady Eleanor’s. “If you don’t want to—”

She brushed her effort aside. “Yes, well, I think this is best.”

Setting aside the lid, she slowly withdrew a small leather portrait case, which, once she carefully opened it, revealed a miniature.

“Why that’s Roxley,” Harriet exclaimed as she looked down at the very familiar face.

Lady Eleanor shook her head. “It is, but that isn’t Tiberius. ’Tis his father, the sixth earl. Dear, dear Tristan.” She drew her finger around the pearl-studded oval frame. And then glanced away.

“They look so much alike,” Harriet said softly.

“Yes,” Lady Eleanor agreed, “but they are much different in temperament.”

She said this in a way that Harriet suspected meant she was relieved that Roxley, her Roxley, hadn’t taken after his father, no matter how much Lady Eleanor had loved him.

She reached inside the box and withdrew another leather case, identical to the first one. Once opened and set up next to the first, it showed a small boy, with brown curly hair and a mischievous smile.

“That,” Lady Eleanor said, with her own impish smile, “is your Roxley. Terrible scamp that he was. Still is. We had high hopes he would outgrow that, but alas.” She hardly sounded as if she regretted such a state.

Harriet smiled, for she’d met Roxley when he was nearly eleven and he’d seemed grown up then—especially to her younger, seven-year-old self.

Meanwhile, Lady Eleanor had reached in and pulled out the last of the treasures in the box. A twist of honey blonde hair in a memorial locket. A string of pretty beads. A tiny painting of a bridge over a canal. A stub of a candle. A tiny silver button. A scrap of red silk. And finally . . .

“Pug,” Harriet said as the familiar dog made its appearance.

“Yes, so you two have met,” Lady Eleanor said, setting the ugly figurine down in the middle of the collection, where it towered over the other bits and bobs. “Davinia adored that ugly thing. She got it from an aged cousin of her mother’s when she was young and took it everywhere with her.” She shook her head and arranged the belongings with the candle in the middle. “There, that is how she liked to have them arranged.” The lady leaned back and studied the collection of lost treasures. “They—Tristan and Davinia—lived such a gypsy life, but she always said as long as she had her shrine close at hand, she was always home.”

“What a lovely idea,” Harriet said, wondering what claim each of the mementoes held in the lost countess’s heart.

“Rather papist, I always thought,” Lady Eleanor said, “but Davinia had her own way of doing things.” She let out a sigh and rearranged the pieces once again, like a gambler shuffling the deck one more time for luck. “My sisters and I have honored her memory by keeping her shrine with us. We loved her like a daughter. And she gave us our dear Tiberius—” She reached out and touched the little boy’s curls as if she could smooth them down. “Though I can hardly forgive her that name. Tiberius! Whatever were those two thinking?” She shook her head, a sad smile playing on her lips. “Dear Davinia. She never complained, not once; whatever folly came into Tristan’s head, she was at his side.”

Harriet had been looking at the first miniature. “I imagine Roxley has her eyes, doesn’t he?”

This took Lady Eleanor aback and she looked away, silent for a few moments before she turned the tables. Her firm, quiet question bowled Harriet over. “You love him, don’t you?”

There was nothing she could do but answer honestly. From her heart. “Ever so much.”

Lady Eleanor nodded and began to pack Davinia’s treasures back into the plain box from which they’d come. Once she was satisfied they were all nestled in as they ought, she closed it up and tied the string tight.

Then she handed it to Harriet. “I entrust you to take this to my sister Oriel—”

“—but, my lady, we aren’t leaving for—”

The older woman shook her head. “I am sending you along tomorrow. I’d send you along today if I could, but I promised to bring you to the assembly tonight and there would be talk if you and Miss Murray didn’t attend. Then again, this is Bath and there is always talk, even when there is nothing to natter on about.”

She smiled at Harriet, a bit of twinkle in her eyes, and rose, as did Harriet, the box clutched to her bosom. “Go with my blessing, Miss Hathaway. Oriel will help you find what you are looking for.” Then she left, with Harriet gaping after her.

And it was only after a few minutes that Harriet realized the lady had quite nimbly sidestepped her questions about the diamonds. It was an opportunity lost, she thought with some regret, but suspected that no matter how she was pressed, Lady Eleanor would not reveal what she knew.

And was sending Harriet and Roxley on a course that she believed to be fated.

Yet what if all this mystery around the Queen’s Necklace was for naught? Or worse, she and Roxley ended up sharing his parents’ tragic fate?