A Gentleman's Position (Society of Gentlemen) (24 page)

L
ONDON,
A
UTUMN 1818

On the morning of his destruction, Lord Gabriel Ashleigh woke up with Satan’s own head.

He lay in bed, eyes shut as he swam dizzily into consciousness, trying to control his rebellious stomach. It roiled with nausea from the wine, the brandy, the gin, and then, as waking crept over him, from the terrible cold-sweat memory of what he had done last night.

Surely he hadn’t….It was a dream. It had to be a dream. Please let it be a dream.

It wasn’t a dream. Vomit rose in his throat.

What have I done, what have I done?

He was ruined. It was as simple as that. He had wagered everything at the gaming tables and lost it all, had left himself only the choice between fleeing to the Continent or ending it here, now, alone in this room, with a pistol.

The devil fly away with that. Ash was ashamed, and angry, and despairing, but he was also just twenty-six years old. He didn’t, despite the throbbing pain spearing his eyeballs, want to die.

No, he would leave the country. Take passage to France, find a place among the other men that England had broken, and live with the disgrace. It would be better than the alternative.

But to have ruined himself in a single night. To shame his sisters—Eleanor’s engagement would soon be announced. If he made a bolt for it, what would that do to her? Her intended was the Marquess of Buckstead’s eldest son, and that family was as high in the instep as his own. Surely the Ashleigh blood would count for more than the peccadilloes of one black sheep?

He could go to his father, he supposed, but the thought was chilling. The Duke of Warminster was not a kindly man. His limited affections were mostly reserved for his heir, Lord Maltravers, leaving very little for the other children and none at all for Ash, whom he openly despised. It was the duke’s will that his unsatisfactory youngest son join the army and remove himself from the family, and without Great-Aunt Lucinda’s legacy to make him independent, Ash would have had no choice but to obey.

Aunt Lucie’s legacy, which he had gambled away last night. His home, his comfortable life, his freedom from his father. Everything staked on the turn of a card, and lost.

His father would probably buy him a commission, if only to prevent Ashleigh’s joining up as a private, but Ash knew that was the most he could expect from that quarter, and God help him, he didn’t want to join the army. No soldier, he: Ash was a wastrel, a rattle, and a damned fool to boot.

He attempted to sit up. That was a mistake. It took a moment of carefully shallow breathing to control his stomach as his brain bumped gently against the inside of his skull. He slackened his muscles again and lay back on the bed, grappling with his predicament.

Might Mal intervene on his behalf? Was that a chance? Unlike their father, Mal enjoyed the tables. He would understand how Ash had come to this pass. But he would not understand, would never understand, why his brother had chosen to play against Francis Webster.

Maybe he could be made to see it as an act of loyalty instead of defiance. Ash rehearsed the arguments:
The fellow was insolent. I could not let him win. I staked everything rather than accept defeat.

I lost anyway.
That was the sticking point. Mal disliked being on the losing side.

Still, it was worth a try, although at best he would be sent back to Warminster Hall, deep in the country, for months or years under his father’s joyless, watchful eye. Death might be preferable.

Any hope of Mal’s support wisped away like smoke when his brother thundered up the stairs at the ungodly hour of noon.

“God
damn
you, Gabriel!” Mal’s voice was never pleasant, but to a man with a head like Ash’s, it was downright grating. “You gull, you sapskull, you addle-pated fool. I hope you don’t expect me to help you. You brought this upon yourself, mixing with that wretch Webster….”

Ash shut his eyes. He had managed to get out of bed and to consume some of a plate of ham and eggs, but he was still in his dressing gown. It was silk damask, most gorgeously embroidered, and had given him great pleasure at its purchase. His pride in it withered under his brother’s contemptuous gaze.

Contemptuous gazes seemed to be his lot in life, Ash reflected as Mal bellowed on. That was what he remembered about last night. Well, no, he remembered the clouds of smoke, the brandy glass by his elbow, constantly refilled. He remembered, as though it had happened to someone else, the strange passion that had gripped him to wager and wager again, disregarding Freddy’s urgent representations, and the dizzying panic once he understood what he had done, which had led him to consume much of a bottle of Stark Naked. But most clearly of all, he remembered the steady, scornful regard of a pair of hazel-green eyes opposite him, their gaze spurring him to defy the cards and Fate itself rather than walk away, and that memory made him sweat as much as the gin that oozed its way from his skin.

“Spider Webster!” Mal shouted, seemingly noticing that he’d lost Ash’s attention. “Spinning Jenny! That scoundrel! And you lost Chamford House to him! Our family’s property!”

That was Mal’s true objection, Ash reflected, observing his brother’s bulging eyes. He had been furious not to be named Great-Aunt Lucinda’s heir, although he had paid her the least possible lip service, considering her an embarrassing relic of bygone days. Aunt Lucie had sported the ludicrous fashions and blunt manners of her youth well into her eighties, and had lavished on Ash all the affection the rest of his family never showed, or felt. Ash had loved the outrageous old woman dearly. He missed her now.

But Mal was the eldest; everything came to him by right. Despite having a very neat property of his own, and the Warminster estate awaiting him when their father turned up his toes, he had wanted Chamford House too. And he did not wish it to be owned by Francis Webster.

Mal went away eventually, after telling Ash to go to the devil, recommending that he take himself there forthwith, and assuring him that their father would feel the same. It was no more than Ash had expected, really.

He had been staring out the window, wondering what to do, when the note came.

Ash looked again at the paper in his hand.

Mr. Francis Webster begs to request Lord Gabriel Ashleigh’s company at nine o’clock.

It wanted a few moments to nine now, and here he was outside Webster’s home, a town house on Bourdon Street. Elegant, well located, but off the bustle of Grosvenor Street. Just a little set back, a little reserved.

Ash had made himself respectable, sweating out the gin with a few bouts at Cribb’s and in a Turkish bath. He wouldn’t want Webster to believe he was always bosky. In truth, he had kept his potations within reasonable limits over the last couple of years in the hope of shedding his reputation as one who dipped too deep.

Except for last night, of course. Although it hadn’t been the brandy that had made him behave so brattishly. It had been that enraging cold stare.

It was absurd, how he’d reacted. Webster
was
cold, everyone knew that. Unfriendly to his intimates, icy to strangers, never standing up to dance at balls. A chilly, bloodless, callous fellow who had Ash’s ruin in the palm of his hand.

Ruin, or salvation, perhaps. If he chose to give Ash time, there might be a way to salvage the wreck. Though Ash couldn’t imagine why he would. Ash was Lord Maltravers’s brother, and Webster would not have any kindness for him at all.

It had started at Eton, when Webster and Mal had been put in the same house. The young Lord Maltravers was scion of the ancient Ashleigh family, heir to the venerable Warminster dukedom, one of the better-born men in England, and certainly one of the most puffed up about it. Always conscious of his own superiority, Mal had felt instant contempt for Webster, a gangling, bookish youth, and the contempt had sharpened into profound dislike when he’d learned that the fellow was the worst sort of commoner. Francis Webster, attending a school for the sons of gentlemen and thrust into Lord Maltravers’s company every day, was nothing more than a son of trade, his father’s wealth coming from some weaver in the Midlands who’d invented a new kind of loom. Mal had been enraged and offended by his forced association with such a fellow and had not missed any opportunity to make him learn his place.

They’d dubbed the weaver’s brat Spinning Jenny, of course. Mal had told his younger siblings that frequently, and they’d laughed every time. Spinning Jenny, Web Spinner, Spider Webs, Money Spider, and a hundred other variations besides. The insults had been relentless, the ostracism general, and the kicks and punches would have hurt.

Ash had not been involved in the matter. He was six years younger than Mal and Webster, and the affairs of older boys were not his business. Of course, he’d been on Mal’s side, because Mal was his brother and Webster was a dashed commoner, but in truth he’d felt sorry for the fellow. For all Mal’s pride, he had cursed little idea of fair play. Ash had felt his fist and boot, and earned the rough side of his tongue, quite often enough to be grateful that someone else was Mal’s target.

No, there was no great reason that Webster should feel affectionate toward an Ashleigh.

The chime of nine began, resounding from nearby clocks and churches. Ash swallowed hard against the nervous constriction in his throat. He had dressed well in the hope it would give him confidence, and because Webster was noted for his style, choosing attire that was the plainest possible but cut to perfection. The natural curl to Ash’s dark blond hair meant that he could achieve the Brutus fashion of artfully tousled waves without resorting to bear grease. His coat, made by Mr. Cheney, was a masterpiece of tailoring; his linen was spotless, his cravat tied in an unassuming, neat Mathematical, and his superfine breeches, nicely judged for an informal evening, were so tight as to make the best of what he knew, modesty apart, to be excellent legs.

He might be facing ruin, disgrace, his family’s fury, or worse, but whatever Webster might mean to do with him, Ash intended to appear a gentleman, and to take whatever he doled out as a gentleman should.

He knocked at the door. An impassive footman led him into a generously sized room, something between a dining room and a drawing room. There was a mahogany table, its bare wood gleaming, sized for no more than eight; a card table with two chairs; a couch. Wax candles blazed in two candelabra, lighting the card table but little else. The rugs on the floor were of a vaguely Oriental look to Ash’s uninformed eye, and oddly, more rugs, or at least some sort of cloth, hung on the walls in place of pictures. The one opposite him now was woven stuff of some kind bearing a pattern that he didn’t trouble to make out because Francis Webster’s elongated, spindly shadow stretched across it, blackening its brightness.

Webster stood in the middle of the room, behind the card table. Impeccable Hessians, gleaming black. Buckskin breeches on those long legs. Coat of superb cut, flattering his tall, lean build. Mathematical tie, just as Ash sported, but in truth rather better arranged. Straight mid-brown hair brushed back in that severe style that accentuated the narrowness of the man’s face. Hazel eyes, unblinking, on Ash.

“Good evening,” Ash managed as the door shut behind him.

“Good evening, Lord Gabriel.” Webster’s voice was cool. He didn’t invite Ash to sit.

“You, ah, you requested my company.”

Webster’s eyes were on him, assessing. Ash tried not to shift nervously. He wasn’t sure what there was in the way Webster was looking at him, but he didn’t like it.

“Mmm.” Webster moved to the dining table and took up a little pile of papers. “You played rather deep last night.”

“Yes.”

“You wagered”—he flipped through the scrawled notes—“some thirty thousand pounds, and your property, Chamford House.” His voice was without inflection, devoid of concern. He might have betrayed more passion discussing what boot-blacking recipe his valet preferred. “Do you normally wager so extravagantly, Lord Gabriel?”

Webster’s cool tone seemed to linger on that absurd name of his. “My friends call me Ash.”

“I have no interest in being your friend.”

Ash’s mouth dropped open. If the fellow expected him to swallow that tamely—

“I’m not aware that you possess unlimited resources,” Webster went on, apparently oblivious to Ash’s indignation. “You’re at a stand, aren’t you?”

“I’m at point non plus,” Ash said bluntly. A waste of time to prettify it now. “I’ll have to sell out of the Funds to make good. If you will give me time—”

“No. I shan’t give you time. But I shall give you a chance.” Webster moved away, a long step backward and another to the side, and pulled out the chair opposite Ash, on the other side of the card table. “Will you play?”

Ash stared at him. “Are you jesting?”

“Hardly.”

“But—” Why in God’s name would Webster want to play him again? “I don’t understand.”

“There is nothing to misunderstand. If you wish to regain your property…” Webster picked up a pack of cards, split them, riffled the pasteboard through his slim fingers. “You are no better than a flat at piquet. Écarté?”

Ash was, he knew, terrible at piquet, whereas Webster was notoriously good. How he had believed he could play the man at it last night, he couldn’t imagine. “I do prefer écarté, but I’ve nothing to wager.” Webster raised a brow. Ash felt himself flush. “You can see for yourself.” He indicated the heap of papers. “I’ve not left myself a feather to fly with.”

“Your father is very well fledged,” Webster observed.

“He wouldn’t pay my gambling debts, and I shouldn’t dream of asking him to. It’s my own fault.”

Webster’s hazel eyes narrowed slightly. “Good heavens, Lord Gabriel. I had thought the Warminster upbringing did not include such expressions.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Expressions of responsibility or of regret,” Webster said with chilly precision. “I have not been familiar with those from members of your family.”

And there it was. Sweat sprang to his skin under the constricting cloth around Ash’s neck. Of course Webster held a grudge. Why wouldn’t he?