If Wishes Were Earls (6 page)

Of course she hadn’t, and Lady Kipps knew that. Harriet had limited means, and hired companions and expensive gowns were luxuries she couldn’t afford.

“I could recommend an agency,” Miss Murray offered kindly. “I would be lost without my Miss Watson.” She turned to Lady Kipps. “A lady should never be without the steady grace of a proper lady’s companion.”

Both ladies laughed, and when no one else did, Lady Kipps explained. “It was one of Miss Plumley’s most oft-repeated admonitions. No? No one else has heard it? But of course not. It is only at such a dignified and discerning establishment that one learns the true graces of society.”

Harriet heard Daphne groan behind her fan. Lady Kipps had spent the entire house party last summer going on and on about her incomparable education at Mrs. Plumley’s and using her lofty and expensive education to compare herself to the other ladies in the company.

Miss Murray turned to Tabitha. “Your Grace, I don’t recall seeing you about Bath. Which establishment did you attend? Miss Emery’s, perhaps?”

The Duke of Preston snorted and looked about to double over at the suggestion that his wife was the product of a Bath education.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

“I was educated at home,” Tabitha replied.

“How remarkable!” Miss Murray declared, as if anyone of any consequence could have married a duke without the requisite pedigree of a Bath education.

Harriet noted that the girl didn’t bother to ask her or Daphne where they went to school. She probably assumed there was no need to bother.

Their answer was self-evident and unimpressive.

“Lord Roxley,” Miss Murray said, having edged herself over to the earl’s side, as if that was her rightful place. “I cannot believe this is your Aunt Essex. You described her so differently and yet here she is, and so utterly delightful.” The girl smiled as if her words both were both a scold and a compliment.

“Indeed,” Lady Essex remarked with a bit of a sniff. “How odd that he hasn’t mentioned you. Not a single word.”

There was no mistaking that her words
were
a scold.

“I am certain, in the future, Lord Roxley will be mentioning Miss Murray most often,” Lady Kipps said, smiling at her dear friend.

“How long have you known the earl, Miss Murray?” Harriet asked, trying to sound sincere.

“Oh, my, what is it now? A fortnight,” she said, blushing slightly. “Why, I feel as if I have known dear Roxley forever.”

Of all the smug and presumptuous statements. Harriet’s hands fisted at her sides, that is until she spied Tabitha giving her a nearly imperceptible shake of her head.

Not here. Not now.

Bother, Tabitha!
But she was right. Harriet did her best to paste a smile on her face, but it probably looked more like a snarl.

Which it was.

“Only a fortnight, and already . . . Well, we’ll leave that for another time,” Lady Kipps cooed. “And how long is it that you’ve known the earl, Miss Hathaway? Ages, isn’t it? Aren’t you
old
acquaintances?”

To Harriet’s surprise, it was Roxley who answered. “Miss Hathaway and I have known each other since we were children—her and her brothers,” he replied, his eyes never straying over toward Harriet.

Look at me
, she wanted to demand.
Look at me and tell me that you could marry her after a fortnight and abandon . . . everything we . . .

Harriet couldn’t even bring herself to finish the thought.

“So long?” Miss Murray replied. “You don’t truly look
that
old, Miss Hathaway.”

Her hands fisted once again, and Harriet did not dare look at Tabitha. Or Daphne. Or Lady Essex.

But the old girl had her own way of helping. “Ah, yes,” she said, her lips twitching, “I remember well when Roxley and Miss Hathaway first met. So very memorable.”

And because everyone else knew the story, they laughed.

Save Miss Murray. And Roxley. And most of all, Harriet.

“Oh, you must tell!” Miss Murray declared. “I know so little of my—” She stopped herself as if she had said too much.

“Yes, do tell,” Lady Kipps urged. The woman had the instincts of a shark. The story hinted at a bloodletting and she certainly wanted to have her portion of all the gory details.

“Yes, do tell, Roxley,” Lady Essex urged, closing her fan and smiling at her nephew.

“I don’t really remember—” he demurred. “It was long ago and is not worth repeating.”

Harriet was going to rush to agree, for she hardly needed her childhood transgressions being repeated in front of the likes of Lady Kipps.

But it wasn’t Lady Essex who dove in. No, to Harriet’s horror, her brother Chaunce paved the way. He’d come up upon them in that barely noticeable way of his that made him such an asset to the Home Office. “I hardly think, Miss Murray, you want to learn how Roxley was floored by a little girl.”

Harriet whirled around. Did everyone know about Miss Murray except her?

Apparently so.

“I was only ten,” the earl was protesting. “And I hardly expected a little girl to—”

Then everyone had to add their own version of the story.

Wasn’t that the first time you ever visited Foxgrove?

. . . summoned up for inspection and . . .

Harry’s temper . . .

Our mother was horrified.

“Whatever happened?” Miss Murray asked, stopping the flow of chatter and catching everyone by surprise with the authoritative tone in her voice.

“Nothing,” Roxley and Harriet said at once.

Miss Murray turned her smile toward Chaunce. “Will you tell me, Mr. Hathaway?”

Harriet hoped her dark glance at her brother told him all too clearly that Roxley’s long ago fate would soon be his if he dared open his mouth.

But being a Hathaway, Chaunce dared.

And while he did, Roxley remembered.

Kempton, Surrey

1792

“L
ady Hathaway and her offspring, ma’am,” the butler at Foxgrove intoned in ominous tones. “All of them.”

“
All of them?
” Lady Essex muttered under her breath with a mixture of horror and indignation as she glanced around her perfectly ordered salon and then at the bustling mother hen—all ribbons and bows—who was shooing her brood into the room.

The mistress of Foxgrove was not happy, and her brows arched imperiously as she sent a withering stare down at her nephew, the Earl of Roxley.

He might be only eleven, well, nearly eleven, but Roxley knew the necessity of this visit was going to be counted against him.

Aunt Essex was most likely worried about her collection of china figurines or the chinoiserie vase she held in such high esteem.

Not that Roxley cared about a few painted shepherdesses or that ugly dragon of a pot. He was rather more dismayed by the horde of children lining up in front of him.

Six of them. All tall and rather strapping.

So this was what the doctor had meant when he’d told Aunt Eleanor that a summer in the country would help him catch up with the other boys his age.

Roxley gulped. What did he know of boys his own age? He’d lived with his various maiden aunts most of his life.

The aforementioned Lady Hathaway bobbed a curtsy to Lady Essex and launched into the long process of introducing the children, the names whirling off her tongue. “George, Chauncy, Benedict, Benjamin, Quinton, and my dearest, darling daughter, Harriet.”

The boys all chortled a bit, and then remembering themselves—that is, after a quelling glance from their mother—they straightened in unison.

Roxley looked down the line of Hathaways searching for which of them might be the girl.

He’d seen girls in the park and they were frilly affairs with fluffy petticoats and ringlets. From what he could see, the one at the end was wearing breeches and a patched coat. Certainly there was no sign of tidy ringlets in the dark strands of hair that stuck out at all angles. “You’re a girl?”

“I’m Harry,” she corrected. “My name is Harry.” A replica of her brothers, right down to the coal black hair and startling green eyes, she stepped forward, arms crossed over her narrow chest, her nose crinkled up as she looked him up and down. She sniffed and turned her gaze toward the suit of armor standing in the corner.

Roxley shifted. What the devil did he care if he’d been all but dismissed by a little girl?

But for some reason, what this little girl thought mattered.

He’d worry about the
why
later.

“You don’t look like a girl,” he told her, a statement which brought a hearty round of guffaws and laughter from her brothers.

“Well, I am a girl. And one day, Mama says you’ll want to marry me. With any luck, that is.”

A stunned silence filled the large parlor. Had this wretched little imp just said what he thought she’d said? She must have, because the heat of mortification rushed to his cheeks.

And he wasn’t alone—Lady Hathaway was also sporting a rather bright shade of pink.

Marriage? To a country ragamuffin? He’d rather marry Aunt Ophelia’s mangy cat.

Standing a little taller, which still left him infinitely shorter than the rest of the Hathaways, he said in his most noble of tones, “I hardly think so.” Then he looked down his nose at her and added, “No, decidedly not.”

After another uncomfortable moment of silence, the Hathaway brothers burst out laughing, as if they couldn’t contain themselves any longer.

As for Harry, she shot one vengeful glance over her shoulder at the lot of them—traitors all—and then turned to Roxley and unleashed her wrath. She launched into him like a cannonball and tackled him to the floor, small fists flying and her knee gouging toward his private parts.

Roxley had no idea what to do, other than howl in dismay. His fencing master had made it abundantly clear: a gentleman never harmed a lady.

Then again, he doubted Monsieur Coquard had ever encountered the likes of Harriet Hathaway.

“You take that back!” she cursed. “You’ll marry me one day or so help me—”

“Owww—” the young earl wailed as the little vixen atop him continued to mercilessly pummel him. “Get off me!”

“Oh, gracious heavens!” Lady Hathaway sputtered, losing all her poise and flutter. With the air of a woman who could herd cats, she reached into the fray and hauled the two up to their feet. There was a clunk of heads and a good shake before they were set on their feet.

Having already inherited, Roxley was used to being deferred to, to being advised, to being told what and how a gentleman did. Now here he stood, humiliated, ruffled, and his head ringing from the little girl’s blows as much as it was from being knocked into Harriet’s thick skull by Lady Hathaway.

He straightened his coat and waited for the apology that he knew was his due.

Lady Hathaway did none of that. “Now, there, the two of you stop this, or grant me patience, I will knock your heads together yet again.”

Again? What had he done? He was about to protest the matter, when he noticed that Harriet just shrugged and wiped her nose on her sleeve, before settling back into line.

Apparently this was how such matters were decided among the Hathaways, so Roxley followed suit, but he still felt as if there was a cloud of humiliation over his head. But when he glanced down the line of children, one of the boys—Chaunce, he thought—winked at him.

As for Lady Hathaway, with the mayhem managed, she was once again all gracious smiles and elegant manners, as if her daughter hadn’t just knocked a future member of the House of Lords to the floor.

“Children, this is the Earl of Roxley,” she said, nodding at them to make their greetings.

They all did, giving him varying degrees of bows, including Harriet.

Yet it was Lady Hathaway who held his attention, giving Roxley a once-over from head to toe and then dipping into a curtsy for his benefit.

Roxley glanced over at his aunt, who was watching the proceedings with her jaw set and her gaze hooded. Then he looked back at Lady Hathaway, and in her eyes was something so poignant, so sad.

It wasn’t pity—that he’d seen enough of in his young life. Orphaned at four, and having spent the last six years being shuffled between his aunts, pity he knew in spades.

It would take years for Roxley to decipher that memorable glance, and when he did, he came to the unshakeable realization that in that moment, probably a little before that, Lady Hathaway had added him to her brood without a second thought.

That she’d seen what had been missing from his life and knew exactly what needed to be done.

Even if it was the occasional sharp rap to his head. Earl or not.

“Lady Hathaway,” he said, just as he’d been taught, and made a perfect bow in return.

Which garnered another raft of guffaws and coughs from the gallery of groundlings known as the Hathaway children.

“Yes, well,” his aunt said, still giving a wary eye to this horde in her salon. “Perhaps the children would like to walk in the gardens.”

This was not a question, but a suggestion. Nay, an order.

“A walk,” Lady Hathaway echoed. “Yes,
a walk
sounds like the perfect activity.”

“Can we take that?” little Harriet asked, pointing at the suit of armor.

Aunt Essex gaped in horror. “Certainly not!”

“Maybe just the breastplate so he doesn’t get hurt?” she asked, nodding at Roxley.

So he didn’t get hurt? Roxley’s gaze went in a frantic sweep to his aunt.

“You may walk in the park,” Lady Essex told them. “Armor will not be necessary.”

Again, this was answered with duly nodding heads, which were followed by carefully hidden chortles and guffaws.

Roxley knew right there and then, his demise was imminent. And that armor might be the only thing standing between him and some gory end.

Which should have been evident to his great-aunt when, without any further urging, the Hathaway children went surging toward the French doors that led to the gardens as if thrilled to make their escape.

“A walk, boys, nothing more,” Lady Hathaway repeated.