Sunday Snippet: If Wishes Were Earl’s by Elizabeth Boyle

Every gambler  knows  the  moment  when  his  luck changes.

And not for the good. Luck is too fickle of a lover to whisper in a gamester’s ear to encourage him to double down.

No, when she turns her back on a fellow, he knows it. As sure as all the air in the room has rushed out.

Like a fish out of water, he suddenly finds himself grasping at anything that might return her bright favor to his dark and empty pockets.

So it was with Tiberius Maximus Marshom, the 7th Earl of Roxley.

Roxley, who took wagers that no one else would, and won   . . . The earl who always had pockets of vowels that only needed collecting was now dodging friends and ducking out of White’s to avoid the embar- rassment of his current dire financial straits.

And his shocking turn of luck was 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 mad-ness—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 clam-ored 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 prob-lem. There was no explanation for his abrupt depar-ture. 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 prop-erty. “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 ofa cut-up, but that! Cursed, he says.” He laughed again, more like brayed.

Good God, Roxley could only hope Murray’s daughter didn’t laugh like that. But to keep Foxgrove . . . tokeep his family out of debtor’s prison, Roxley knew he could bear almost anything.

And if he did his utmost to make this mushroom’s daughter miserable for the next forty years, he’d never have to hear that sound again.

That was, if anything, a small condolence.

“I  have  a  mind  to  drive  down  next  week,”  Mr. Murray was saying. “Probably needs renovations like the rest of the piles of stones you gentry keep.”

Roxley ruffled at this. For his residences were his pride and joy. As had been his infamous luck that had kept them in good order. “Yes, well, currently my Aunt Essex lives at Foxgrove and she would be most put out to have strangers arrive at her residence.”

“Isn’t really hers, now is it?” Mr. Murray pointed out, once again running his ugly fingers along the edge of the deed.

He didn’t even want to think about it. Aunt Essex forcibly removed from the house she’d lived in most of her life. She’d have no choice but to move permanently to London.

Into the earl’s house. And without the income from Foxgrove,  Aunt  Eleanor  in  Bath,  and  Aunts  Ophelia and Oriel at the Cottage would soon be forced to follow. All of the Marshom spinsters together. In one house. His house.

Worse than that, he’d have failed them. When they had once rescued him in his darkest hours.

He must have twitched as Mr. Murray chuckled. “Got your attention now.”

“Mr. Murray, you had my full attention when you sent me the list of my debts you were holding. But what I don’t understand is, why have you chosen to invest in me?”

Now it was Mr. Murray’s turn to still, as if he wasn’t too sure which direction to turn. But he had an answer at the ready soon enough. “Always fancied my daughter a lady, and a countess seems the right place to start.” Roxley nearly asked if the merchant was planning on sending him to an early grave, if only to climb the noble ladder again and gain a duke for his daughter the next time around.

“And,” Murray added, as if suddenly finding the rest of his answer, “your situation is not unknown.”