by Tamara Allen
Ash had made himself respectable, sweating out the gin 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 unwanted 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 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. He was Lord Maltravers’ 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 his fellow pupil 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, thrust into Lord Maltravers’ company every day, was nothing more than the 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 at his forced association with such a fellow and had not missed any opportunity to make him learn his place.
They’d dubbed him “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 at school. 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 or gentlemanly behaviour. 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 instead of himself.
No: there was no great reason that Webster should feel affectionate towards 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: 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 dishevelled 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, 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 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 dining table, the 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. There were rugs on the floor, of vaguely Oriental look to Ash’s uninformed eye, and, oddly, more rugs, or at least some sort of cloth, hanging on the wall in place of pictures. The one opposite was woven stuff of some kind, with a pattern that he didn’t trouble to make out because Francis Webster’s elongated, spindly shadow stretched across it, blackening the 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 riffled 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 favoured. “Do you normally wager so extravagantly, Lord Gabriel?”
Webster’s cool tone seemed to dwell 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 unaware of 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 backwards and another round, and pulled out the chair opposite to 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 with 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, where 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 under the constricting cloth around Ash’s neck. Of course Webster held a grudge. Why wouldn’t he?
The older boys had left Eton long before Ash, and without Mal’s abrasive presence he found he rather enjoyed the place. Time and the tide of education swept him to Oxford, where he discovered wine, cards, and, furtively, the pleasures of the flesh. Then he had moved into the ton, a callow young lout of twenty-one, and that was when he’d met Francis Webster again.
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br /> It had been in Quex’s, a club in St James’s, and Ash had been on the mop, of course. He’d been foxed six days out of seven then. Arm round his friend Freddy’s shoulders to stay upright, hopelessly disguised, he’d stumbled into the room and come face to face with a man . . .
He was tall, a good four inches above Ash’s own medium height, with a narrow, assessing face and hazel-green eyes that locked onto Ash’s own with an intensity that forced him to look away. And as he’d dropped his eyes, he’d registered the long limbs.
Webster wasn’t spindly any more. The ludicrous lankiness of the adolescent was all gone in the grown man, replaced by a lean, rangy build deliberately accentuated rather than concealed by his extremely well-cut coat. But his long arms had triggered Ash’s memory and there, in the middle of one of London’s most exclusive gaming hells, face to face with the fellow, he’d blurted out, “By Jove, it’s Spinning Jenny!”
And worse. It had got worse. He’d drunkenly tried to reminisce—why, why?—about Mal’s various nicknames, insults, as if they were a shared joke. His friends, as foxed as himself, had roared with laughter. Webster had stared him down, expression icing over, until Ash had belatedly realised that nobody else in the room was laughing and finally stumbled to a stop. Webster had waited for the silence, let it grow to an unbearable pitch, spoken only when every man in the place was listening with undisguised interest.
“If I wished to hear the squalling of toothless brats,” he had said with cold calm, “I should pay a call on my sister’s nursery. I commend it to you for a visit, Lord Gabriel. You would feel quite at home.”
And then he had turned on his heel and walked away.
Webster was watching him still, and Ash was sure he was thinking of that night. He shifted uncomfortably.
Mal had made the fellow’s life hell at school, and Ash knew damned well he felt no regret, and that even if he did it would go unexpressed. If Mal had ever admitted himself at fault, Ash hadn’t heard it any more than he’d heard their father apologise to anyone. He had been raised in the knowledge that the pair of them were infallible, that any disagreement placed him in the wrong.
He didn’t much like it, and he didn’t suppose Webster did either.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted out.
Webster’s brows shot up. “I beg your pardon?”
Ash cursed himself. He hadn’t intended to say that. For him to apologise, in this situation and years too late, smacked of toad-eating at best. But he had been in the wrong, there was no denying it, and it needed to be said.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “That night in Quex’s. The fact is, I was badly foxed, and I had no intention of being so cursed rude, and I apologise. I should have said so long before.”
Webster’s eyes were fixed on his face, unreadable in the candlelight. His mouth looked a little tense. “I see,” he said. “Are you under the impression that I am holding a grudge, Lord Gabriel, or that I can be blandished into giving you an easier ride?”
“I’ve no idea what you think,” Ash retorted. “And I’m well aware you hold the whip hand here. I was in the wrong and I owe you an apology, and you have it. That’s all.”
Webster’s expression didn’t change that Ash could see. He was still a moment more, then he said, again, “Will you play?”
“I told you, I’ve nothing to stake.”
“Have you a shilling?”
Ash took a deep breath. But, after all, he had nothing more to lose.
“A shilling. Against which you stake, what, Chamford House?”
“Hardly.” Webster seated himself with a flick of coat tails and picked up the pack to deal. “But let us say ten pounds, for now.”
It was quite the new thing, écarté, a fast-moving game played with a limited pack, much simpler than piquet and more dependent on chance after the initial exchanges of cards that allowed both men to improve their hands. Ash doubted that Webster considered it a serious game, but his face was keen and intent in the candlelight.
“Spades are trumps.”
“I propose an exchange.”
“How many?”
“Four.” Ash discarded four cards, took his replacements, and was rewarded by the king of spades and two knaves. Webster exchanged three.
“I stand pat,” Ash said, declining the opportunity for another round of exchanges. If he couldn’t win with this hand, he was in trouble. “I declare king of trumps. Play.”
He did win, taking four tricks to make two points. Webster seemed indifferent.
Though he played a lot, because everyone did, Ash wasn’t one of nature’s gamesters, preferring games of pure chance to those involving skill. He found the tension of piquet rather sickening than exciting, and disliked the silences. He couldn’t keep track of what had been played with any great accuracy, certainly not after the first few hands, and had no sense for what cards were likely to come up.
More than that, though, he was distractible. He should have been concentrating on the pasteboard rectangles, but as Webster swept them up to shuffle, he found himself looking at the man’s hands instead. Long-fingered, pale, and smooth, with well-kept nails except for the left thumb. That was very short and a little jagged. It looked as though someone had attempted to improve a nail that had broken, or been worried by teeth.
Webster didn’t look as though he bit his nails. His expression was calm, even bland. He was not a handsome man by most standards, with his narrow face, thin lips and slanted, saturnine eyebrows. Some people said he looked sly. Ash thought shrewd said it better. It was an intelligent face, a formidable one. Ash wondered what it would be like to be the full focus of Francis Webster’s undivided attention. The thought made him shift uncomfortably.
Ash dealt, which meant Webster could choose to exchange. “I propose. Two.”
The dealer had to accept the first exchange, which was tiresome, because he had an excellent hand. “One.”
“I propose two.”
“I refuse.”
The game went on. Ash won a few points, lost more. Webster’s hands moved with a slightly unnerving smoothness on the shuffle. He poured brandy, and Ash drank it and wagered recklessly, without thought. There was no prospect that he could win against a gamester of Webster’s skill. He was lost and this was merely delaying the inevitable.
It was all his own fault, of course, like so much else. He’d deserved Webster’s enmity, and last night he’d paid the price.
There had been a number of sequels to the incident at Quex’s. Ash had discovered that Webster was generally admired, if not liked, for his wealth, his cool reserve, and his skill at the card tables. More than that, he was an intimate of the set headed by Lord Richard Vane, dubbed by some the Ricardians. These were an oddly assorted group of men, of varied birth, wealth, or brain, including some very queer fish indeed, but they shared qualities of self-possession and a strong mutual loyalty that made them bad men to cross, and with Lord Richard, Mr. Julius Norreys and Sir Absalom Lockwood among their number, few felt able to set themselves up in opposition. The Ricardians set their own fashions and chose their own friends with little care for the world’s judgement, and the world made way for them. Mal remarked on them occasionally with disapproval, even resentment, and now Ash learned why. Francis Webster was a Ricardian, but Lord Maltravers, heir to the Duke of Warminster, his name passport to any other society, was not. And nor, of course, was Ash.
He was advised that he was no longer welcome at Quex’s. Other hells were closed to him, and some men sheered off, avoiding him when the news spread that he had set himself up in enmity to the Ricardians. Ash couldn’t blame them: it was the last thing he’d have chosen to do if he wasn’t such a blasted fool. Gallingly, Webster’s words had stuck. Ash had been dubbed the Toothless Brat for years, a soubriquet that was only just beginning to wear off.
And he hadn’t apologised. He’d wanted to, desperately; he had been bitterly ashamed of himself by the time he woke the next morning—insulting a man to his face for
no reason, good God. But the next few times he’d encountered Webster, he’d received only a blank look that left him tongue-tied and squirming inside. So he’d told himself that the miserable fellow had doubtless deserved it, had accepted Mal’s clap on the back, and had set himself to confront the man when he could. A challenging stare, a few encounters at the gaming tables from which Webster would invariably take his money and excuse himself early. Ash hadn’t wanted to fight—he wasn’t a fighting man—but there was something in the way Webster looked at him or, worse, the way he ignored him, that made him grit his teeth. He resented being ignored by Francis Webster.
It had come to a head last night.
It had been at Quex’s, again, to which Ash had been readmitted at last. He had stood chatting with a friend in the room—perhaps a little distracting to the players, but damme, it was a social club as well—and Webster had lifted his dark head and given Ash a long look that had made him flush from hair to toes. A hard, assessing, invasive sort of a look . . . insolent, that was what it was, Ash had told himself, and for all his faults, for all his shames and peccadilloes and his secret sins, he was the third son of the Duke of Warminster. He would not allow a weaver’s spawn to bring him to the blush. No longer able to tolerate the man, he’d drawn himself up to his full, though not magnificent, height, marched over to the table, demanded to play . . .
And lost, and lost, and lost.
“Five points,” Webster said, sitting back. He swept the cards off the table, glanced at the litter of notes to one side, raised a brow.
“I’m out,” Ash said. It scarcely mattered. He’d come with nothing, he’d leave with nothing. That had doubtless been Webster’s intention; he couldn’t imagine what else it was. “I’ve nothing to wager.”
“I’ll accept your note of hand.”
Ash had no intention of adding to the mountain of his debt. “I couldn’t pay. I told you. You’ve had everything but the coat off my back.”