If Wishes Were Earls Read Free Page B

what had brought him here. To the City. To the offices of one Aloysius Murray.
    “So you see, my lord,” the merchant was saying, his hands folded atop a pile of notes, “you have no choice but to make my daughter your wife.”
    The earl looked across the wide expanse of the man’s desk at a fellow he hadn’t even known existed until two days ago when he’d received Mr. Murray’s summons. Still, despite the gravity before him, Roxley could not resist smiling.
    It was all he could do. A Marshom through and through, he knew he was trapped, but he was certainly not going to let this mushroom, this Mr. Murray with his most likely equally uncouth daughter, know that he had Roxley in a corner.
    Mr. Murray pushed the papers across the top of the desk. “I’ve managed to buy out all your vowels, all your debts. You’re solvent, for the time being. I think a kindly given ‘thank you’ would be in order.” He paused for a moment and then added belatedly, “My lord.”
    Roxley looked at the pile of notes and scribbled promises and realized that his hopes of reclaiming all that he’d managed to lose over the past eight months—his money, his position with the Home Office, his standing (what there had been of it)—was for naught.
    His legendary luck was gone.
    If he were inclined to be honest—which he rarely was—he could point to the exact moment when Fair Fortune had abandoned him.
    Eight months ago. The third of August, 1810, to be exact. The night he’d kissed Miss Harriet Hathaway.
    And since we’ve established that the Earl of Roxley possessed very little honesty, kissing had been the least of his sins that night with the aforementioned Miss Hathaway.
    He’d demmed well ruined her.
    But enough of contemplating an evening of madness—it wasn’t his insatiable desire for Harriet that had gotten him into this mess.
    Oh, Harry what have I done ? he thought as he looked at his all his wrongdoings piled up atop this cit ’s desk and knowing that no matter how much he . . .
    Well, admitting how he felt for Harriet Hathaway was just too much honesty for one day. Especially this one.
    When he was having to face his ruin. A reckoning of sorts.
    If it was only the money, only his own ill-choices, that would be one thing. But there was more to this than just a gambler’s reversal. His every instinct clamored that this was all a greater trap, a snare, but why and how, he couldn’t say.
    More to the point, he couldn’t let this calamity touch anyone else.
    As it had Mr. Ludwick, his man of business. Roxley’s gut clenched every time he thought of the fellow—disappearing in the middle of the night with a good portion of Roxley’s money.
    Yet Ludwick wasn’t the sort. And that was the problem. There was no explanation for his abrupt departure. None.
    Further, the man’s vanishing act had been followed by the revelation of a string of soured investments. Wagers began going bad. Files for the Home Office stolen from his house. None of it truly connected, yet he couldn’t help feeling that there was a thread that tied it all together, winding its evil around his life.
    But who was pulling it, and why, escaped Roxley entirely.
    Sensing the earl’s hesitancy, Mr. Murray pressed his case, pulling out a now familiar document.
    The mortgage on Foxgrove.
    The one property of his that wasn’t entailed. The one with all the income that kept the Marshoms afloat. Without Foxgrove . . .
    Mr. Murray ran a stubby, ink-stained finger over the deed. “I’ve always fancied a house in the country. How is this village? This Kempton?”
    “Kempton, you ask?” Roxley replied, wrenching his gaze up from the man’s covetous reach on his property. “Oh, you won’t like it. Cursed, it is.”
    Mr. Murray stilled at this, then burst out in a loud, braying laugh. “I was told to expect you to be a bit of a cut-up, but that! Cursed, he says.” He laughed again, more like brayed.
    Good God, Roxley could only hope Murray’s