If Wishes Were Earls by Elizabeth Boyle

that you had something you wanted to discuss with me.”
    Roxley looked over at the girl and knew what he was supposed to do. Propose. Charm her into accepting him. To save his aunts. To save his estates.
    But out of the corner of his eye, he saw Harriet, or rather her riotous ebony curls cascading over her shoulders and falling nearly to the middle of her back, and something inside him shifted. He saw that hair as he’d seen it once before, loose and long. So very inviting. He knew what it felt like sliding like silk through his fingers.
    And he heard her.
    You’d come after a lady, if you ruined her. You’d never abandon her.
    In an instant, he remembered that night, how her faith in him had been unshakeable.
    It had all begun that very night, this madness in his heart. It had begun with naught but a kiss.
    Harriet’s kiss. Binding him to her.
    Then. And still.
    Roxley glanced over at Miss Murray. “Discuss? Hmm. I fear I’ve forgotten what that might have been.”
    For his thoughts were far too full of visions of a moonlit London garden. A night so very unlike this one.
    Half foxed, he’d stumbled into Sir Mauris Timmons’s garden with nothing but a dodgy plan to cast up stones at windows, searching for what he knew not, but discovering everything he’d ever desired in a kiss.
    London, one year earlier
    I t had been the most scandalous night of the Season, and one would think that the Duke of Preston’s example of getting himself entangled with Miss Timmons and ruining the gel in the middle of Lord Grately’s ball would be enough to warn Roxley off from his current course of action.
    Actually, it was because of the quagmire from this evening that he was here—in the garden behind Sir Mauris Timmons’s London house—tossing stones at the windows hoping to find Harriet, or at the very least, Miss Timmons, to see how the poor lady fared.
    Oh, bother, if he was being honest, he’d readily admit he was looking for Harriet. And Harriet alone.
    What with her long dark locks and emerald eyes . . .
    No! No! No! That wasn’t going to do. She was Harry. He chided himself to remember that.
    Roxley shook the lingering vision of a lithesome, utterly desirable woman from his memory and reminded himself why he was really here. Given how furious Sir Mauris and Lady Timmons had been when they’d left the ball with their disgraced niece and her friends in tow, Roxley wouldn’t have put it past the rather furious baronet to have locked them all in the attics or worse.
    Yes, that was it. He wanted to ensure that Harriet was safe and sound. His moonlight and most scandalous visit was not the least bit motivated by how her dark lashes fluttered so demmed invitingly. Or the way she’d looked tonight in that new gown—lush and tempting.
    He shook his head and picked up another small stone. Lush and tempting, indeed! This was Harry. Harry Hathaway. That wretched little minx who always tagged along after her brothers, all scrawny elbows and knees and always demanding her fair share of whatever trouble her brothers and Roxley had managed.
    And then, just before he was about to cast up yet another hope-filled stone, like a wish into a pond, the door from the kitchen down below opened and out she stepped.
    Still trouble, yet now ever so tempting. He blinked and looked again. More so.
    Like a nymph she came up the steps, wearing a pink wrapper over a white muslin night-rail that peeked out at the hem. Her hair was simply bound in a long braid that fell over her shoulder down nearly to her waist.
    Squeezing past came Miss Timmons’s wretched brute of a dog, the infamous Mr. Muggins.
    “Roxley, what the devil are you doing here? Do you mean to get me in more trouble than I already am?”
    He grinned. He couldn’t help himself. When she scolded him like that, it warmed his heart in ways he didn’t understand. “That’s why I’m here. Wanted to make sure Sir Mauris hadn’t drowned the lot of you in the Thames like a litter of