Nearly Ruining Mr. Russell

by Emma V. Leech

  Of course, it was inevitable that a run of luck that included the ruin of his good name and being called out by Viscount Debdon would not change for the better any time soon. The moment the imperious voice skewered through his tender brain, however, he knew fate had a very twisted sense of humour.

  “G’morning, Grandmother,” he said as the glossy black carriage drew to a halt beside him. The slightly blurry image of his terrifying matriarch came into focus as she leaned out of the window and looked him over, cool grey eyes glinting with disgust.

  “Get in,” she barked, sitting back against the squabs.

  Aubrey groaned inwardly but did as he was told. Lady Seymour Russell had that effect on people.

  “You’re drunk,” she said, with what Aubrey felt was unnecessary volume, as he arranged his unwilling limbs into something that wouldn’t get him shouted at for slouching. “Sit up and stop slouching!”

  Aubrey muttered under his breath but tried harder to sit straight which was difficult as his stomach felt mighty uncertain now. He prayed he wouldn’t vomit in his grandmother’s carriage, the idea of which was so horrifying that he felt sicker than ever.

  “Well then, what have you got to say for yourself?”

  Aubrey looked over at the measuring eyes of the woman opposite him and shrugged. This woman had been the closest thing he’d had to a mother once his own had died, and he knew well enough that her sharp tongue hid a kind and loving heart. You just had to suffer a few lashes to get to it.

  “I’m drunk as a wheelbarrow, Grand-mama,” he admitted, with a crooked smile, trying hard not to slur. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

  Lady Russell snorted and shook her head. “I can see that, foolish boy,” she scolded, though not unkindly. “Not like I’ve not seen a man in his cups before. But it’s not like you to go on the cut, not to this extent, anyway. What’s wrong with you? Been hearing the most ridiculous rumours spreading, you know.”

  Aubrey groaned and put his head in his hands. Not now, please God. He could not stand a lecture about the sanctity of the family name, not now.

  “That revolting mushroom, what’s her name ...” Lady Russell, demanded, waving one lavender kid leather gloved hand in his direction. “Ashley? No, that’s not it ... Ashton, that’s the one! Lady Ashton, vulgar, inching creature that she is, had the audacity to suggest you’d fathered a bastard child and left it with its mother to rot in the Dials.” Aubrey watched in astonishment as the old lady’s face lit with righteous fury. “Well, I told her a thing or two,” she said, eyes that were eerily like his cousin Falmouth’s glinting with the kind of cold fire that made both her and Alex so formidable. “She’ll not be spreading that little on dit again,” she added with a sniff of disdain.

  “Y-you ... you didn’t believe it?” Aubrey said, lifting his eyebrows.

  Seymour banged her walking stick upon the floor of the carriage in fury. “Course I didn’t believe it!” she barked in fury. “Fool boy! I brought you up better than that, and so I told your idiot, good-for-nothing father.”

  Aubrey choked and wished with all his heart he’d been a fly on that particular wall. “You spoke to my father?”

  “Of course I spoke to him. The ignorant creature was about to cut off your allowance.” Seymour grunted and turned her head to look out of the window. “What I ever did to deserve a feckless, gutless fool like your father, I swear I don’t know,” she muttered before turning back to her grandson, her eyes filled with warmth.

  “Gutless?” Aubrey repeated, quite certain his eyes were on stalks.

  His grandmother gave a laugh of contempt. “Oh, he’ll fight his cronies at Jackson’s, alright, never been shy of a mill. But he’s still gutless. Got no substance, your father, never been the man your grandfather was, God rest his soul. If I didn’t know otherwise, I’d think he was a blasted changeling.”

  “Grandmother!” Aubrey exclaimed, not quite sure if he was really more scandalised than delighted at his grandmother’s decimation of his parent’s worth.

  Lady Seymour snorted and shook her head. “To think there’s Sinclair blood in his veins,” she said with a dejected sigh. “I can’t see it,” she added with a sniff. “Not in him. But I see it in you.”

  Aubrey blinked, too astonished to say anything, not that the old lady seemed to need him to.

  “You’ve got the spark, same as Falmouth has,” she said, nodding to herself with a smug glint in her grey eyes.

  That he was being compared in the same breath as his illustrious and terrifying cousin quite gave Aubrey a start.

  “Well, don’t sit there gawping at me boy!” Seymour huffed with impatience. “Or I’ll think there’s more of your father in you than I believed. You wouldn’t want to prove me wrong, now, would you?”

  Aubrey forced himself to sit straighter and look the old lady in the eye. He suddenly felt very sober. “No, Grandmother.”

  “Hmph.”

  She sat staring at him from across the carriage, which was a very unsettling experience. At first glance, she simply looked like an elegant older lady of the ton. Taller and straighter than one of her advanced years, perhaps, but the pale lavender silk of her outfit was soft and subtle and yet still didn’t hide the steel beneath and the mind like a damned man-trap. “Tell me about the gel,” she demanded.

  “The g-girl?” Aubrey stammered, wide eyed.

  “Good God, Aubrey, speak up and stop muttering!” she said, stamping her walking stick again and narrowly missing his toes. “Yes, the gel! Greyston, isn’t it? The Marquess Winterbourne’s sister. Alex told me about her. You going to marry her, then?”

  Aubrey gaped at her. “I ... that is, Grandmother, Lord Winterbourne plans for her to marry the Duke of Ranleigh.”

  “So?” she snapped, frowning at him. “There’s many a slip, twixt the cup and the lip.”

  “Well ... yes, Grandmother,” Aubrey said, wondering what on earth she was doing, encouraging him to continue on a path that could only ever end badly. “But I am no duke, and I can barely keep myself on my allowance, let alone a wife.”

  His grandmother shrugged, her frown deepening. “So?” she replied, making his eyes widen further. “She’s an heiress, she don’t need your money. Besides, once you buck up and stop wasting your time with those friends of yours, you’ll be every bit as successful as Falmouth.”

  Aubrey opened his mouth and shut it again before he came to his senses.

  “Her brother will never allow the match,” he said, his tone impatient.

  Seymour frowned. “Thought the brother was dead?”

  Aubrey shook his head. “No, Grandmother, but that’s something you cannot tell another living soul. It’s too complicated to go into now. You’ll have to ask Falmouth if you want the story.”

  Those grey eyes, so like his cousin’s, glittered with interest. “Oho, an intrigue; Alex never told me that bit. How delightful. In that case, I’ll come in and see Falmouth with you.”

  “But I ... I’m not ...”

  “Yes you are,” she said, her smile smug as she knew damn well he wouldn’t argue with her. “And if you’ve got any sense you’ll marry that girl as soon as maybe.” She snorted at the astonished look he felt sure must be on his face. “You have my blessing,” she added with a regal wave of her hand, as if that had been the only impediment. In his grandmother’s eyes, it was likely the only one she counted as significant.

  “Thank you,” he replied, feeling rather taken aback.

  Seymour nodded and looked him over with a frown. “Think I’ll take you back to your rooms before we see Falmouth though,” she added, gesturing to his dishevelled appearance with a revolted sniff. “And you can make yourself look like a gentleman again.”

  Aubrey sighed and leaned back against the squabs and closed his eyes. “Yes, Grandmother.”

  Chapter 17

  “Wherein ... the marquess.”

  Aubrey nodded a greeting to Alex as he bent to kiss his aunt’s cheek.

  “Aunt Seymour, th
is is an unexpected pleasure. Celeste will be delighted to see you.”

  “It’s you I want to talk to, Falmouth,” his aunt replied, allowing him to guide her into the elegant drawing room. She paused and looked around with interest. “Celeste’s been busy, I see,” she said, looking at the new decor with approval. “She’s got good taste despite her French blood, I’ll give her that.”

  Aubrey noticed Alex’s lips twitch a little, but he accepted the rather backhanded compliment on his wife’s behalf with remarkable composure. She turned, then, and stared at Aubrey, making an impatience shooing motion at him.

  “Well, run along then. Don’t you have a young lady to visit?” she demanded, sounding annoyed but with a devilish twinkle in her eyes that gave him pause.

  “Oh, er ... well, yes.”

  Ignoring the faintly alarmed look in his cousin’s eyes at the prospect of being left alone with his Aunt Seymour, Aubrey made for the door.

  “Aubrey, do tell Celeste that Aunt Seymour is here,” Alex said, and Aubrey smirked at the slightly pleading tone he noted in his large cousin’s voice. “You’ll find the ladies in the back parlour.”

  Grinning to himself, Aubrey made his way to the back of the house and the smaller, rather less elegant parlour where the ladies were indeed sitting by the fire, with Bandit curled up at their feet.

  The moment Aubrey entered the room, the spaniel scrambled to his feet and began to leap at Aubrey with excitement, barking all the while. “Get down, you dreadful creature,” Aubrey complained, trying to keep the idiotic animal’s claws from raking his boots to shreds. “Dash it all, Celeste, control your dog,” he demanded. Celeste simply laughed and ran over to pick Bandit up.

  “Oh, but Aubrey,” she protested. “It is only because ‘e is so ‘appy to see you.”

  Aubrey snorted as he bent to kiss Celeste’s proffered hand before delivering his message. “My grandmother is here to see you,” he said, as he released her fingers. “So take that wretched creature with you and go and do the pretty. Poor Alex looked like a man walking to the gallows when I left.”

  Celeste let out a peel of laughter at this description. “Oh, poor Alex,” she chuckled. “I must go and rescue him.”

  Watching Celeste hurrying from the room, Aubrey was not unconscious of the fact that he had been left alone with Violette. Most remiss of Celeste to have done so, of course, but ... well, he wasn’t about to waste the opportunity.

  He turned back to look at her as she stared at him. Though this room was smaller and rather darker than the large, bright drawing room with all its elegant furnishings, it was comfortable and charming, and very cosy. Aubrey could well understand why the ladies had preferred to spend their afternoon in here on a cold, wet November day. He watched as Violette placed her sewing to one side. She looked nervous now, two high spots of colour rising on her lovely skin.

  “Hello Aubrey,” she said, her voice low and intimate and the use of his given name giving him a warm, possessive feeling that spread throughout his body.

  Suddenly he was across the room, his long legs eating up the space between them in a matter of a few quick strides. He knelt at her feet and took hold of her hands, pressing first one and then the other to his lips.

  “Aubrey,” she whispered, her voice barely audible yet so filled with longing that his heart thrilled to hear it.

  He looked up at her, overwhelmed by the feeling that swept over him. He had never wanted anything in his life before like he wanted this woman. Those dark green eyes gazed down at him, and suddenly he wished he was a duke, wished he was as wealthy as Alex, wished for a dozen more impossible things all at once, but mostly that he could ever be worthy of her.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” he said to her, his voice rough, aching with desire and frustration. “You are safe now, you have your brother back, and if I was any kind of gentleman, I would leave you alone.”

  “No!” she cried, clutching at his hands and raising one to press against her flushed cheek. “I don’t want you to go, Aubrey. You ... you must be aware of ... of my feelings for you,” she added, holding his gaze with a bold expression, though he could see the trepidation in her eyes. “Surely I made myself clear to you?”

  “Yes, Violette,” he said, smiling up at her and watching the rapid rise and fall of her chest. “And I meant what I said too: I love you,” he said, his heart soaring as the breath caught in her throat, her eyes alight with happiness. “I love you, and ... and if your brother would consent, I would make you my wife.”

  As he’d known it would, her smile faltered and he nodded. “There’s the rub,” he said, his voice soft. “He’ll never allow it, nor should he,” he added in fairness.

  “I’ll ... I’ll make him,” Violette stammered, her tone so fierce in her determination that they be happy that he had to smile. “I’ll make him see that ... that you are the only man who could make me happy.”

  Aubrey smiled despite himself and kissed her fingers again. His conscience, though, would not let him remain silent. She must know everything she faced. “Violette, have you thought that, if you marry to disoblige your family, there is every chance your brother will disinherit you?”

  She grew still, her eyes on him glittering with emotion.

  “I want to be happy, Aubrey, not rich.”

  He let out a breath, knowing she meant it, but not convinced she really understood what she was saying. How could she? Her life had been that of the daughter of a marquess. She’d been cosseted and sheltered and treated with kid gloves and given every luxury available to one of her elevated position, at least until her brother died. “Violette,” Aubrey said, getting to his feet and sitting beside her on the settee. “You do know I have no fortune, no grand house. My father is not yet in his dotage and it may be another twenty years, more perhaps, before I inherit the house and title, and even then, it would be far beneath anything that you would be used to.”

  “You think I care?” Violette demanded, her voice full of heat and indignation. She dropped his hand and got to her feet to stand before the fire, her arms wrapped tight around her body. “I care nothing for grand houses and ... and jewels and excess,” she snapped at him, her eyes looking almost emerald now, lit as they were by anger and reproach.

  Aubrey smiled and looked at the carpet beneath his boots. “I know you are not the kind of woman who covets such things, my love. I would not feel as I do were that the case, but ... but you’ve never been without such things, Violette. You have never had to practise economy, never had to make do with an old gown instead of buying ten new ones. If you married me and your brother was angry ...” He trailed off, not wanting to paint too vivid a picture of what their married life would be. He could see it clearly enough, and it was as far removed from what she was used to as to be way beyond her experience or perhaps her imagination.

  She turned to look at him then, and he was caught once again by the fire and determination in her lovely eyes. His heart clenched at the idea they might not find a way to be together, but if the look she was giving him was anything to go on, his Violette wasn’t one to give up at the first obstacle.

  “Do you truly want to marry me, Aubrey?” she asked, a little catch in her voice that made him ache with the longing to hold her. By way of answer, he sprung to his feet and pulled her to him, crushing her in his arms and taking her mouth in a fierce, hot kiss that made his blood feel molten in his veins.

  “Is that answer enough, love?” he asked, breathing hard and moving away a little, even as she pulled his head back down.

  “Yes,” she whispered against his mouth. “So don’t you give me up, Aubrey Russell. You are right that Edward will likely oppose us. If he does, he’ll do all in his power to keep up apart, and if that happens, I expect you to not to give up. I won’t marry another. Not now that I know what this feels like.” She drew herself up on her tiptoes and kissed him, and he was lost, ready to promise her anything, no matter how impossible. He would agree to scale mountains and defeat dragons,
anything to make her his.

  The kiss grew in heat, in intensity, until his hands drifted down, cupping the lovely swell of her bottom and pulling her hard against him. She gasped, the little huff of surprise allowing him to deepen the kiss further, and heaven alone knew where it might have stopped, had the door not opened.

  “Get your damned hands off my sister!”

  ***

  Violette suppressed a squeal of alarm as Aubrey stepped in front of her, doing his best to shield her from the wrath of a man she hardly recognised as her brother. He was shaved and dressed in a manner befitting his station now, perhaps, and though his arm was in a sling that did not change him in any indelible fashion. Yet the look in his eyes, the rage in his expression - that was something she had never thought to see in her brother’s face. It wasn’t just the anger of a brother having caught his sister in a compromising situation though that was there too. But he looked very much like he wanted to tear Aubrey apart with his bare hands.

  “Lord Winterbourne,” Aubrey said, as Violette tried in vain to step past him. “I must beg your forgiveness, the impropriety was mine, not Lady Violette’s. Only I ... I was wishful of a meeting with you, in any case. I need to tell you that I love your sister, my lord, and I would humbly ask your permission to make her my wife.”

  “You?” Winterbourne sneered, with all the hauteur of a man of his rank and reputation. “Who the devil are you to ask me for her hand?”

  Fury welled in Violette’s heart at her brother’s wilful rudeness, and she pushed past Aubrey. “How dare you, Edward! If not for Aubrey, heaven alone knows what might have befallen me when I arrived alone in London. He took care of me, cared not only for me but for my reputation, and through him I found you! If not for Aubrey, you might still be fighting in the gutters to earn your keep!”

  She realised too late that it was not the right tack to take. Her brother stiffened in rage, white-faced with anger and humiliation.

  “Get out!” he ordered, only growing ever more agitated when Violette shook her head.