If Wishes Were Earls (30 page)

For there it was, she wasn’t quite right. And it had happened when she’d trusted the wrong man in her youth. Rather than discard her as many families would have when her young life was shattered, his great-grandfather had brought her home to Marshom Court and given her free rein over the grand house, to live her life. As Oriel when she wanted, or as Ophelia, the personality she had created to hide behind when the memories of what had happened or what she had lost became too difficult to bear.

Roxley knew her no other way. The two of them, Oriel and Ophelia, had been there all his life, and most of his father’s, so to Roxley they were two people.

Yet her dual existence had given new credence to the expression “mad as a Marshom.”

A designation he would most likely claim if this insane plan failed.

The carriage turned and as it did, Roxley didn’t even need to look.
Home.
He could feel it the moment the wheels crunched down upon the long drive.

Harry, I’m almost there. Be patient.

But this was Harry he was talking about.

The carriage pulled to a stop, and the three of them got out. “He won’t know the difference,” Batty assured Roxley, handing over the pouch. “He’d need a jeweler to know these stones aren’t the real ones. And where the devil would he find one out here?”

“M
y father was Monsieur Bassanges.” Madame Sybille paused for a moment and looked around as if this alone should give her some sort of standing, but when no one seemed to recognize the name, she huffed a bit and continued. “He was one of the jewelers who created the Queen’s Necklace. When it was lost, he and his partner were ruined. We all were.”

Harriet exchanged a wary glance with Lady Eleanor. Now they realized just how Madame Sybille was connected to all this.

And how much she had invested. How much she had lost. And what she hoped to gain.

“When the revolution came, it didn’t matter that we were living in ruin, my father had been the queen’s jeweler and that was all it took for them to arrest us. Flore was so small, I had to carry her into the prison.” Her eyes closed as if she were fighting back an entire legion of grief, but when her lashes fluttered open, there was nothing but raw fury in her eyes. “Then
he
came.”

“Mereworth,” Harriet supplied.

She nodded. “Yes, but I did not know that was his true name until today.” After a few moments, she continued, “He arrived not long after that murderous rabble cut the queen’s head off. They had already taken my mother and father, but they had left us. Me and Flore. He bribed our way out—”

Harriet glanced over at Lady Eleanor and the lady shrugged slightly.

“—he promised much. Claimed he knew who had half the necklace. Half was better than nothing, he said. I knew the stones—I had helped my father select their placement.” She glanced down at her hands. “He said I had a talent for the work.”

“Then you would know the stones better than anyone,” Harriet muttered aloud, seeing what Mereworth had.

“Of course I would,” Sybille snapped back. “I can still see them. They were the most perfect diamonds my father had ever procured. A necklace fit for a queen.” Her chin arched up as if she were to carry their weight around her neck.

“So what did Mereworth expect you to do?” Lady Eleanor said, lending a sensible, commanding air to the woman’s rising tenor.

“For a time he let us be. We had a small house outside of Bath and we lived a quiet, private life. But then he returned and made his demands. He wanted Flore.”

“Miss Murray,” Lady Eleanor prompted.

“Yes.” This came spitting out. “
Miss Murray
. He transformed her. She was trained, sculpted, and arranged at that horrid school to be the perfect bait. A lure. And in the process, he destroyed her.”

Harriet couldn’t argue with that. Not that she’d ever been all that impressed with a Bath education.

“He promised to restore us. With the diamonds, we could start a new life wherever we wanted. All Flore had to do was entice Roxley to find them.” Her gaze drifted off and then suddenly snapped back to clarity, focusing on Harriet. “And it all would have worked if it weren’t for you—”

“Me?” Harriet edged back, for the woman was starting to frighten her.

“Yes, you,” Sybille said, her voice rising once again. “You turned his head. Lured him away.”

Whatever was it about these diamonds that had everyone associated with them going short a sheet? Harriet slanted a glance over at Lady Eleanor and the woman was looking not at Madame Sybille but just over the woman’s shoulder—where a large silver salver sat. The sort a butler might use to carry up wine bottles. Then the old girl shot a poignant glance at Harriet.

And the plan behind Lady Eleanor’s steady gaze lay out before her. There would be no escape with this madwoman at their heels.

So they needed to silence her.

For the time being.

“—he promised us the diamonds,” Sybille was once again ranting. “We were to have a new beginning.”

“And you believed him?” Lady Eleanor said, adding a bit of a
tsk
,
tsk
, as if she’d never heard anything so foolish.

“Of course, I didn’t,” Sybille told her, her focus now on the lady and not Harriet.

Taking the opportunity afforded her, Harriet moved around a shelf and along the wall, sliding her slippered feet across the stone floor.

“Then whyever would you agree to any of this?” Lady Eleanor persisted, holding the woman’s rabid attention.

“Because he was useful,” Sybille spat out. “And when the diamonds were discovered, he would no longer be so.” Her sneer suggested she wasn’t too far above the rabble that had killed the poor queen.

“Whatever would you have done then?” Lady Eleanor inquired.

“You might return to France, I imagine,” Lady Oriel offered. “It is lovely this time of year. Do you remember, sister, when Papa took us? It was in April, wasn’t it?”

“France! Never,” Sybille told them with such vehemence that the housemaid crossed herself and began to weep.

“Then where?” Lady Eleanor asked, catching the woman’s attention again, while Harriet continued to ease her way around the wine cellar, until she was right behind Madame Sybille.

“Spain, perhaps. Copenhagen,” the woman was saying, giving a very Gallic sort of shrug. “Anywhere I could be a jeweler again. Flore would work in the front for she has a way about her.” Then she caught herself. “Flore,” she sobbed. But her grief lasted only a moment. “I will have what is mine by right. He promised. He promised me.” Once again her gaze was unfocused and far away.

“Men make many promises they have no intentions of keeping, my dear,” Lady Oriel told her sadly.

“The diamonds were never paid for. They were stolen from my father. And when I get out of here—” She rose up, a towering, raging bull of a woman, her madness swirling around her like a grand court dress. In her hand was a knife—the sort used to cut the wax off a wine bottle.

When she’d picked it up, Harriet had no idea. Not that it mattered. It was a knife nonetheless.

“I will kill him. I’ll kill you all for what you have done. I will make you all—”

Harriet had heard enough. She caught up the salver and with all her might brought it down on the woman’s head.

Clunk.

Madame Sybille wavered, her unfocused gaze searching for something, someone to lash out at, and then she collapsed, a puppet lost without its strings.

“Horrible story,” Lady Eleanor said, getting up and brushing off her skirts.

“I rather liked it,” Lady Oriel told her. “So very tragic.”

Harriet was already on her way to the door, pulling one of the pins left over from last night’s arrangement of her hair.

One down. One to go.

“Sir,” she said to the butler. “Is there an extra key?”

“No, miss. Just the one he took.” He being Mereworth.

“Good. Then he thinks we’re trapped.” Harriet knelt down before the door and studied the lock for a moment.

“I take it we aren’t?” Lady Eleanor asked.

“Not if I have any say in the matter,” Harriet told her as she quickly and effectively opened the door, just as she had once before when Sir Mauris had locked her and Daphne and Tabitha inside their room in London.

And countless times when she wanted to annoy her brothers.

Besides, on the other side of that door—somewhere, somehow—was Roxley. And the very thought made her heart beat that much faster.

R
oxley walked alone up the steps and into Marshom Court.

The stillness of the house had his every nerve on edge. Nor did it do his heart any good that his first sight was that of a woman’s body crumpled in a corner.

Harriet!
The air rushed from his lungs as he rushed to her side, pulling her over.

But it wasn’t Harry. Relief flooded through him, but still, the sight of the girl’s wide blue eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling was haunting.

“Miss Murray,” he gasped. Then after a moment, he reached out and closed her eyes.

Whatever she’d done, whatever secrets had led her to this place, Roxley would be hard-pressed to believe she deserved such a fate. Justice perhaps at the hands of a magistrate. Lawful justice.

He looked up and around the foyer, searching for clues, but he knew what he was looking at.

This was nothing less than murder.

Murder.
His chest tightened again, and he was all the much more frantic to find Harriet and his aunts.

He rose, and even as he did he heard the voice he’d been expecting.

“Roxley, you’ve made good time.”

Mereworth.
So he hadn’t been mistaken.

He’d suspected as much since he’d gone to question Mrs. Plumley. The schoolmistress had been less than forthcoming in her answers, but when Roxley had threatened to bring in the Home Office for a complete investigation, she’d been a bit more helpful. She’d described “Mr. Murray” in detail, save the man she’d painted hadn’t been the brutish figure of Aloysius Murray, but of another.

And then there had been Moss’s mention of a beryl ring.

Like the blood red stone that winked on Mereworth’s hand even now.

“You aren’t surprised,” he commented as he confidently strolled forward.

“No,” Roxley told him, shaking his head slightly and turning around to face his former mentor.

“Good. I would have been a bit disappointed if you hadn’t figured it out. I trained you after all.” Mereworth nodded at the bag in Roxley’s hand. “You’ve brought them, I assume.”

“Yes.” Roxley’s gaze swept the room for any other signs of violence, but there were none. Save Miss Murray.

At least not that he could see.

“They’re safe,” Mereworth assured him. “For the time being. Now let’s discuss the diamonds.”

“W
e need a diversion,” Harriet whispered over her shoulder as she peered around the corner into the foyer, where Roxley faced Lord Mereworth.

“Like in
Miss Darby’s Daring Dilemma
,” Lady Oriel suggested.

Harriet perked up. “You read Miss Darby?”

Lady Oriel nodded. “But of course! Who wouldn’t?”

Lady Eleanor nodded in agreement, but hers was more of a nod of guilty pleasure than her sister’s blatant enthusiasm. “That particular diversion would never work. We haven’t a legion of fusiliers.”

Lady Oriel looked overly crestfallen at this, and then brightened as if she might have one handy and then frowned again.

Once Harriet had gotten the door to the wine cellar opened, Lady Eleanor had dispatched one of the maids, a fleet young girl from the nearby village, to run for help, while keeping Shingleton and the footmen to assist them. The rest of the staff she’d sent on to safety.

Lady Oriel had refused to be shuttled off, her eyes bright with the excitement of an adventure. “Wait until Ophelia discovers what I’ve done.” The lady quivered with joy.

Lady Eleanor shook her head. “I doubt she will be amused,” she pointed out, as she took a peek at the situation before them. “As long as he has that pistol pointed at Tiberius, there is naught we can do.”

Harriet stilled. “Which pistol?”

“Miss Murray’s. Don’t you recall—he picked it up after she fell.”

Miss Murray’s pistol.

That gave her an idea. “This is exactly like
Miss Darby’s Daring Dilemma
.”

Lady Oriel preened at having her suggestion vindicated. “Yes, but dear girl, whoever you are, we can’t allow that terrible artist to shoot Tiberius. That just wouldn’t do.”

“No one is going to get shot,” Harriet said, as she looked as closely as she could at the pistol Mereworth held.

It had to be the one she’d disarmed. There had been only one pistol hidden in the trunk.

Miss Murray must have been lying about having two pistols.

Just as she’d lied about everything else.

Harriet drew a deep breath. There was only one way to find out. For Mereworth could shoot only one person and then he’d be disarmed. And more importantly, stopped.

And while she hadn’t an entire regiment of fusiliers behind her, the more targets that Mereworth must choose between, the more unlikely he was to win.

She went to walk out into the foyer, but Lady Eleanor caught hold of her. “Are you mad?”

“Indeed, I do believe so,” she said, gently removing Lady Eleanor’s grasp and walking boldly out into the fray.

“I rather like her,” Lady Oriel told her sister. “Who is she again?”

Eleanor’s brow furrowed deeply. “If she lives, she’ll be Tiberius’s countess.”

Oriel shook her head. “Only if she passes muster.”

“I think she’s about to,” Lady Eleanor said, following Harriet as bold as brass.

R
oxley’s heart tripped at the sight of Harriet.
She was alive.

Then he realized exactly what she was doing. And most likely why she was doing it.

Oh, good heavens, he was going to kill her. What the devil was she doing walking into Mereworth’s path as bold as a London strumpet?

“Ho, there, Roxley!” she called out, as calmly as if he’d just arrived for a social call.