If Wishes Were Earls by Elizabeth Boyle Page B

he’d thought. Not that he’d tell her. It would only give her ideas.
    As if Harry needed the help—good heavens, she was out here in her night-rail, which was giving him terrible ideas. Devious notions. Ridiculous temptations.
    Couldn’t she have tossed on some old cloak over this gossamer bit that clung to her willowy form and left a man with no doubt what his hands, his lips, his body would find beneath.
    He glanced up and realized she was looking at him—an amused little smile playing on her lips, pursed as they were and so ready for . . .
    Don’t look at her lips.
    So Roxley did his best to change the subject. “Actually Chaunce is why I’m here. He was busy, so I offered to come by and check on you.”
    Her brow furrowed almost immediately. “How kind of you to do a favor for my brother. Now that you’ve checked, I suppose I should go back inside.” She turned to leave.
    But he didn’t want her to go just yet. Demmit, this was ridiculous. This was Harry Hathaway, and yet . . .
    “At least you look like yourself again,” he said aloud without thinking.
    Harriet stilled. “Myself?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder. “Whatever does that mean?”
    Roxley moved to block her escape. “Not all done up,” he told her, waving his hands at her hair and the length of her lithe, willowy form that was so perfectly outlined by her wispy night-rail and wrapper.
    The rise of her breasts. The curve of her hips. The line of her collarbone that was so temptingly kissable . . .
    Good God, man! Don’t look at her that way. This is Harry.
    Oh, but Harry had changed. Ever so much.
    And while he was gazing at her, doing his best to ignore the way her night-rail dipped down to reveal the rising tops of her breasts, she was gaping at him. “Are you bosky?” she asked, hands now fisting to those tempting hips.
    “What a terrible thing to ask a fellow, Harry,” he admonished. Because, yes, he was. Slightly.
    Pot valiant, one might say. That, or stark raving mad.
    He had to be mad because he was seeing Harriet in an entirely new light. A tempting one. A ruinous one.
    Gads, this was the same sort of foolish thinking that had gotten Preston all tangled up with Miss Timmons . . . and here he’d ridiculed the duke for haunting the park in search of the vicar’s daughter and following her about at balls and soirées, and now he was making the very same mistake.
    Harriet, unaware of his inner turmoil, had continued on unabashed. “My mother always says if you have to ask a man if he’s drunk, you probably already know the answer.” She leaned in and sniffed, and immediately had her evidence.
    “Your mother is a wise woman,” Roxley agreed, not willing to admit it had taken a good half a bottle of brandy to get his courage up and come over here.
    Not when he knew that one false move, one wayward kiss and the entire Hathaway clan would be hunting for him. Including Lady Hathaway, a veritable Amazon when it came to her children. She might count him an honorary Hathaway, but if she discovered he’d been dallying with Harriet, he wouldn’t put it past her to flay him alive.
    “Wise?” Harriet shook her head. “Maman is determined, you mean. When I left, she was measuring my room for repapering. She said once I went to Town, I’d never come home again. And now . . . it will be all roses and gilt and she’ll have invited Cousin Verbena to come stay indefinitely. I’ll be sleeping over the stables.”
    “She couldn’t have meant it,” Roxley told her.
    “I do believe she was counting on me falling in love and running away like she and Papa did.”
    Roxley had to stop himself from turning and looking at her right then. For if he did, he didn’t know if the suggestion behind her words— run away —would become reality.
    Instead, he saved himself with a lighthearted quip. “Would save your father the expense of a wedding.”
    Not that Harriet was about to let him off the hook. She moved closer to him.