If Wishes Were Earls Read Online Free PDF

years now. So sudden it was,” the other woman said, shaking her head, leaving the yellow plumes in her turban all atwitter. “Dreadful situation still.”
    “Lady Charleton is dead?” Harriet shook her head. “I must have the name wrong.”
    “You must.” The old lady turned back to her cronies and began clucking about yet another misfortune.
    “Speaking of sponsors, where is Lady Essex?” Tabitha asked, glancing around them as if to gauge who else was eavesdropping on their conversation.
    “Have you missed her as well?” Harriet teased.
    Daphne and Tabitha both laughed. The spinster was a bit of a holy terror, not that Harriet minded.
    “Some old roué swept her off her feet the moment we arrived,” Harriet said. “Called her ‘Essie.’ ”
    “No!” Tabitha gasped.
    “Yes!” Harriet nodded. “A Lord Whenby, I think his name is.”
    The three of them looked over at the eavesdropping old lady, but the name didn’t elicit a response.
    Daphne leaned closer. “Who is he?”
    Harriet shrugged. She’d never heard Lady Essex mention the man. “I don’t know. Perhaps that’s why she’s been at sixes and sevens for weeks now.”
    At this, Tabitha and Daphne exchanged a wary glance, one that suggested they might have quite a different explanation.
    Harriet kept going, for now her interest was piqued. “I didn’t think she was even going to come up to London this Season, but she arrived a few days ago at the Pottage and insisted my mother pack my bags.”
    There was yet another silent exchange between Daphne and Tabitha, but before Harriet could dig deeper into whatever on dit they were hiding, they were joined by a less than welcome guest.
    “Miss Hathaway? Is that you?”
    Harriet cringed at the familiar masculine voice.
    “Do my eyes, nay, my heart, deceive me?” An elegantly dressed man in a dashing coat and well-glossed boots stopped before them.
    She pasted a quick smile on her lips. “Lord Fieldgate,” she acknowledged before dipping into a curtsy.
    When she rose, he immediately caught hold of her hand and brought it to his lips. “My long-lost Hippolyta.”
    Daphne leaned over to Tabitha. “Hippolyta?”
    “Queen of the Amazons,” the duchess whispered back.
    Daphne snorted.
    “Roughly translated it means ‘an unbridled mare.’ ” Tabitha’s education by her vicar father always came in handy in situations like this.
    Daphne pressed her lips together to keep from laughing.
    “Yes, exactly,” Tabitha remarked. “If only the viscount knew how close to the mark his title for Harriet is.”
    Harriet shot them both a sharp glance. It isn’t as if I can’t hear you.
    “I must beg a dance of you,” Fieldgate continued. Nor had he let go of Harriet’s hand. “No, make that two.” Oh, no one could say the viscount lacked charm, for his smile smoldered with promise, a sort of smoky glance that could make a lady go weak in the knees.
    “Two?” Harriet shook her head at her ardent suitor who had pursued her so steadily the previous Season. Apparently absence had not dimmed Fieldgate’s ardor.
    “The supper dance, at the very least,” he pleaded.
    The supper dance? Harriet’s pique returned. Roxley would deplore that. He had hated it every time she’d danced with the viscount last Season.
    Then again, it would serve the earl right to have to partner some leftover debutante to supper, especially after all these months of silence on his part.
    Her heart gave a familiar leap into that horrible abyss over which she’d been teetering for months.
    He loves me, he loves me not.
    Well, tonight, she’d discover the truth. If she had to carve it out of the cursed man with one of the ancient broadswords mounted on the wall. Manacle him to a sideboard and . . . why, she’d  . . .
    And then Harriet stopped. For indeed the entire world seemed to stop all around her. For across the room, off to one side, she saw him.
    Roxley .
    He was here. Had been here for some time, for there he was