The Penniless Lords

A moment later a small bench to one side of the salon caught her attention, a row of flowering plants placed before it allowing a temporary shelter. Glancing around to see that no one observed her, she pushed the greenery aside and slipped through, sitting down to stretch her legs. A row of windows before her overlooked a garden.

She had escaped, if momentarily, from the inane and preposterous world of being presented to society and she planned to enjoy every fleeting second of it.

‘Ten more weeks,’ she enunciated with feeling. ‘Ten more damned weeks.’

A slight noise to one side had her turning and with shock she registered a man standing there. Not just any man, either, but the foppish and conceited Earl of Wesley.

Without being surrounded by admirers and sycophants he looked more menacing and dangerous. Almost a different person from the one she had been watching a few moments earlier if she were honest. The pale gold of his eyes was startling as he looked towards her.

‘Ten more damned weeks, until...what?’

A dimple in his right cheek caught the light of a small flickering lamp a few feet away, sending shadows across the face of an angel. A hardened angel, she amended, for there was something in his expression that spoke of distance and darkness.

‘Until I can return home, my lord. Until this dreadful society Season of mine is at last over.’ The honesty of her response surprised her. She usually found strangers hard to talk to. Especially men who held all of the ton in thrall as this one did.

‘You do not enjoy the glamour and intrigue of high courtly living, Miss...?’

‘Miss Adelaide Ashfield from Northbridge Manor.’ When question crossed into his eyes she continued. ‘It is in Sherborne, my lord, in Dorset. I am the niece of the Viscount of Penbury.’

‘Ahhh.’ The one dimple deepened. ‘You are rich, then, and well connected?’

‘Excuse me?’ She could not believe he would mention such a thing. Was that not just the very height of rudeness?

‘My guess is that you are a great heiress who has come to the city on the lookout for a husband?’

‘No.’ The word came harshly and with little hidden.

He turned. Up close he was even more beautiful than he was from afar. If she could have conjured up a man from imagination personifying masculine grace and strength, it would have been him. The thought made her smile.

‘You find society and its pursuit for sterling marriages amusing?’ A bleak humour seemed to materialise on his face.

‘I do not, sir. I find it degrading and most humiliating. The only true virtue in my list of attributes is wealth, you see, and as such I am...an easy target for those with dubious financial backgrounds.’

The returned laughter did not seem false. ‘Such a description of desperation might include half the lords of the ton then, Miss Ashfield. Myself included.’

‘You are...penniless?’ She could not believe he would be so candid.’

‘Not quite, but heading that way.’

‘Then I am sorry for it.’

The mirth disappeared completely. ‘Do not be so. There is a freedom in such a state that is beguiling.’

Again Adelaide was perplexed. His words were not those of a vacuous and dandified lord. Indeed, this was the very first conversation that she had actually enjoyed since leaving Dorset.

He glanced around. ‘Where is your chaperon, Miss Ashfield? I could hardly think she would be pleased to see you alone in my company.’

‘Oh, Lady Harcourt is back amongst the crowd, complaining of the crush and the noise. I am supposed to be in the retiring room, you see, but I slipped off here instead.’

‘A decision you might regret.’

‘In what way, my lord?’

Now only ice filled the gold of his eyes. ‘A reputation is easily lost amongst the doyens of the ton, no matter how little you do to deserve it.’

‘I don’t understand.’

He smiled. ‘Stay close to your chaperon, Miss Ashfield, or one day you surely will.’

With that he was gone, a slight bow and then gone, only the vague scent of sandalwood remaining.

Adelaide breathed out deeply and pushed back the shrubbery, aware that others were now moving in her direction. Suddenly the room seemed larger and more forbidding than it had done before, an undercurrent of something she could not fathom, a quiet whisper of warning.

She had seen these weeks in the ton as both a game and a trial, but perhaps it was not quite either. To be roped into marriage on a mistake would be disastrous and life changing. Without pause she hurried back to Lady Harcourt.

* * *

She should not have been alone, Gabriel thought, watching as the unusual Miss Adelaide Ashfield rushed past him and back towards safety. She was so far from the usual run of those new to society he had barely believed she was one. Older for a start and much more...beguiling. Yes, that was the word. She did not seem to harbour the cunning and duplicity of almost every other débutante he had met. She was tall, too, her head rising to his chin, and at six foot four that was something that seldom happened. She was not blonde, either, her hair a mix of sable and dark chestnut and her eyes the colour of a winter stream running over limestone. Deep clear blue with shadows of hurt. He doubted the spectacles she wore were for any reason other than a way of making her appear more studious, less attractive. He could not remember seeing another woman ever wear spectacles to a ball. A further oddness that was intriguing.

Men who came for the Season with the hope of finding a docile and curvy blonde would not be interested in Miss Adelaide Ashfield from Sherborne.

‘God,’ he swore, but his eyes still followed her, pushing past other patrons, barely pausing.

He had frightened her. A good thing that. If one’s reason for being in London for the Season was truly not marriage then she should be glued to the side of the harridan she had finally reached. Another man came to join her and Gabriel recognised him as the hapless Bertram Ashfield, no doubt newly come from the card rooms on one end of the salon. He looked defeated and luckless.

A taller man had also joined the party, his sallow face wreathed in smiles. He was talking to Miss Ashfield in the way of one whose words portrayed more than just the pure sounds. A suitor. Observing the way she leaned away from him, Gabriel gained the impression that any tender thoughts were not returned.

Perhaps she did not lie. Perhaps indeed she was here under duress. The scene became even more interesting when Frederick Lovelace, the Earl of Berrick, joined the small group in the company of the Viscount of Penbury himself. The baby-faced earl had the same look of hope in his expression as the other taller man had.

Gabriel smiled. Could Miss Ashfield be a siren perhaps with the penchant to attract men despite her wishing not to?

Look at her damned effect on him!

He rarely spoke with the new débutantes of the Season and certainly never for so long. Even now he wished he might find her again somewhere isolated so that they could converse further, the low and calm voice that did not hold back feelings placating somehow and sensible.

When the music began to play Gabriel knew it was a waltz and he watched as Berrick took Miss Ashfield’s arm and led her on to the floor. All débutantes needed permission to dance the waltz and he wondered which of Almack’s patronesses had allowed it.

The trouble was she did not seem to know the steps, tripping over her feet more times than he thought possible. Berrick held her closer and tighter so that she might follow him with a greater ease.

Hell. Why did the chaperon not intervene? Or the uncle? Did not others see how very inappropriate such closeness was? He glanced around, but no face was turned towards the couple in censure.

Perhaps Frederick Lovelace was further down the pathway of his courtship than Miss Ashfield had let on? With a curse Gabriel turned for the door. An early night would do him good for once. If only he could sleep.

* * *

Adelaide saw Lord Wesley leave the room, the sure steps of his exit and the quiet observation of others. For one long and ridiculous moment she had imagined that he still watched her and that he might ask her to dance.

Instead the Earl of Berrick held her to the steps, his arms too tight and his body too close. The waltz must soon be finished, surely, and then pleading a headache she could leave, too. She was at that moment glad of such an elderly chaperon and one who would be more than happy for an early night.

Her uncle might not be so pleased, of course, but even he had begun to flag beneath the ludicrous constant social graces and late-night soirées of the ton. Bertie would stay, no doubt, locked into the card rooms in the hope of a win that never seemed to materialise.

‘I should like to call upon you on the morrow if I may, Miss Ashfield.’

He looked as serious as she had ever seen another look. Would he be showing his hand as a suitor? Pray God, she hoped not, but when he squeezed her fingers and looked intently at her she knew that such a wish was false.

‘You are a sensible girl, well endowed with a brain and the ability to use it.’

She smiled, hating her pasted-on joviality with an ache. She could never before remember playing people so false than here in London.

‘My mother, the countess, would like you.’

The music stopped just as she thought she might burst into laughter and Lord Berrick could do nothing but escort her back to her chaperon.

For once the frowns of Lady Harcourt were reassuring and Adelaide took her hand.

‘You are tired, Aunt. Perhaps we might leave?’

The older lady failed to hide the relief that flooded into her eyes as she leant upon her charge and they threaded through the crowded room to the exit.

* * *

Gabriel dreamed that night of colourful dresses and tuneful waltzes, and of a woman in his arms on the dance floor smelling of lemon and hope. Her dark hair was loose and her eyes mirrored the hue of the flowers the greenery around them was bedecked with.

But something was wrong. The ease of the dream turned into worry. He must not kiss her. She would know otherwise. He needed to find some distance from the softness of her touch, a way of leaving without causing question. But she was stuck to him like a spider’s web, clinging and cold, and the only way to be rid of her was to push her down and down until she lay still beneath the marbled font of the destroyed wooden chapel, the smell of sulphur on the glowing fabric of her gown and her feet bare.

Henrietta Clements morphed from Adelaide Ashfield, the blonde of her hair pinked with blood.

He tried to shout, but no words came, tried to run, too, but his feet could not move and the burning ache on his upper right thigh pulled him from sleep into the cold and grey light of dawn.

He could barely breathe, his whole body stiffened in fright and the anger that hung quiet in the daytime now full blooded and red.

Henrietta had come to him out of fear, he knew that. Her husband was purportedly involved in helping to fund Napoleon’s push into Europe and Gabriel had been tailing Randolph Clements for a month or so in an effort to find out more. The Service had had word of the man’s close connections with others in London who held radical views and they wanted to see just whom he associated with.

A simple target. An easy mark. But the small notice he had allowed Henrietta Clements had changed into something else, something he should have recognised as dangerous from the very start.

He laughed, but the sound held no humour whatsoever. Since the fire Randolph Clements had gone to ground, hiding in the wilds of the northern borders, he supposed, or perhaps he had taken ship to France. It didn’t matter much any more. If Clements wanted to exact revenge for the death of his wife, Gabriel would have almost welcomed it, an ending to the sorry saga that his life had now become.

The fire at Ravenshill had ruined him, completely, any intimacy and want for feminine company crouched now amongst pain and fury and sacrifice.

He’d broken hearts and promises for years whilst cutting a swathe through the capricious wants of unhappily married wives. Information to protect a country at war could be gathered in more ways than one might imagine and he done his patriotic duty without complaint.

The rumours that circled around about him had helped as he gathered intelligence whilst a sated paramour lay asleep. It was easy to sift his way through the contents of a husband’s desk or safe or sabretache without prying eyes, and the danger of stepping into the lair of the enemy had been a great part of the enjoyment.

Until Henrietta Clements.

As he perceived his hand stroking the damaged skin on his right thigh he stopped and touched the silver-and-gold ring he had bought three months ago from the jewellers, Rundell and Bridges, in Ludgate Hill.

‘The symbol engraved upon the circle is Christian, my lord, and of course the word engraved is Latin. Fortuna. Lady luck, and who cannot do with a piece of that.’

The salesman was an earnest young man Gabriel had not seen in the shop before and seemed to have a bent for explaining the spiritual. ‘Luck is, of course, received from the faith a believer entrusts in it, for a talisman is only strong when there is that sense of conviction. We have other clients who swear by the advantages they have received. The safe birth of a babe. The curing of a badly broken arm. A cough that is finally cured after months of sleepless nights.’

The ability to make love again?

Did he believe? Gabriel thought. Could he afford not to? Once he would have laughed at such nonsense, but for now he was catching at rainbows and hope with all the fervour of the newly converted. He had paid a fortune for the questionable assistance and had worn it ever since. He wondered momentarily if he should not just snatch the trinket from his finger and throw it into the Thames, for twelve weeks with no sign at all of any inherent powers was probably a fairly conclusive sign of its lack of potency.

Yet hope held him to the wearing of it, even though his own condition had not changed one whit for the better.

* * *

It was a week later, despite all his attempts at desiring otherwise, that Gabriel Hughes finally accepted the fact that he was impotent.

He looked down at his flagging member in the darkened room off Grey Street and thought that this was where life had brought him. An ironic twist. An unwanted mockery of fate.

The woman in the bed was beautiful, bountiful and sweet—a country girl with the combination of dewy sensibleness and a sultry sensuality burning to be ignited. She sat there watching him, a clean and embroidered chemise the only thing covering her, a quiet smile on unpainted lips.

‘I thought my first customer might be old and ugly, sir. I had wondered if I should even be able to do what my aunt has bidden me to, but I can see that this job is likely to be a lot less difficult than my old one. I worked in a weaving mill, you see, but it closed down. It was me and a hundred other girls and the light hurt my eyes and we were never allowed to just stop. Not like this, sir. Never like this. Never on our backs in the warmth and with a glass of good wine for the drinking.’

‘You are a virgin, then?’ His heart sank at all such a state would imply.

She shook her head. ‘Mary said I was to say I was ’cos the coinage is better that way, but I go to church on Sundays, sir, and could not abide by the lie.’

Gabriel was glad for this fact at least. The first time should be special for every woman. He believed that absolutely.

‘My Jack went and died on me before we were married. He got sick one day and was taken the next. It was just lucky that I did not catch the worst of it though I was ill for a good many weeks after.’

The barrage of information ran into the room with an ease that held him still and listening. For the first time in a long while Gabriel did not wish to be away from the company of a half-naked woman with such desperation. Even the roiling nausea seemed to settle with her words, the information comforting somehow.

‘Mam said I should come to London to her sister, who was doing more than well.’ She shook her brown curls and laughed. ‘I don’t think she realises exactly what it is Aunt Mary is up to, but, with little other in the way of paying work back home, I agreed to come in and try it. We haven’t yet though, have we?’ And, with colourful language, she went on to say just what it was they hadn’t yet done.

Gabriel turned towards the window. The phrases she used were coarse, but the talk was relaxing him. Perhaps such candour was what kept the blood from his ears and his breath even. Small steps in the right direction. Tiny increments back to a healing. If he could only stop thinking and do the deed once...

Reality brought his attention to the problem before him as he looked down. Flaccid. Unmoving. The scar tissue on his right thigh and groin in the light from the window was brutal and he pulled his breeches up.

But she was off the bed in a flash, one warm hand clutching his arm. ‘Can you stay for a while, sir? Only a little while so that...’ She stopped as though trying to formulate what she wanted to say next.

‘So your aunt will think you at least earned your keep?’

‘Exactly that, sir, and it is nice here talking with you. You smell good, too.’

He laughed at this and removed her hand. Sitting here was not the agony he had imagined after the fiasco in the Temple of Aphrodite and he gestured to her to pour more wine, which she did, handing it to him with a smile. His beaker was chipped on one side so he turned it around.

‘Jack used to say we would be married with a dozen children before we knew it and look what happened to him. Life is like a game of chess, I’d be thinking. One moment you are winning everything and the next you are wiped off the board.’

‘You play chess?’

‘I do, sir. My father taught me when I were little. He was a mill worker, too, you understand, but a gent once taught him the rudiments of the game in a tavern out of Styal in Cheshire and he never forgot it. I have my board and pieces with me. We could play if you like? To waste a bit of time?’

The wine was cheap, but the room was warm and as the girl brought her robe off of a hook and wrapped it around herself, Gabriel breathed out.

Little steps, he reiterated to himself. Little tiny steps. And this was the first.

* * *

An hour later after a close game Gabriel extracted a golden guinea from his pocket and gave it to her. ‘For your service, Sarah, and for your kindness.’

Bringing the coin between perfectly white teeth, she bit down upon it. Still young enough not to have lost them, still innocent enough to imagine that gold might be a cure for the dissolution of morality. A trade-off that at this point in her life still came down on the black side of credit. God, he muttered to himself as he grabbed his jacket.

Henrietta Clements had been the same once. Hopeful and blindly trusting.

He brought out his card from a pocket and laid it down on the lumpy straw mattress. ‘Can you read?’

She shook her head.

‘If you ever want to escape this place, find someone who can, then, and send word to me for help. I could find you more...respectable work.’

She was off of the bed in a moment, the scent of her skin pungent and sharp as she threaded her arms about his neck.

‘If you lay down, I’d do all the work, sir. Like a gift to you seeing as you have been so nice and everything.’

Full lips closed over his and Gabriel could feel an earnest innocence. The pain of memory lanced over manners as he pushed her back.

‘No.’ A harsher sound than he meant, with things less hidden.

‘You won’t be calling again?’ Sarah made no attempt at hiding her disappointment. ‘Not even for another game of chess?’

‘I’m afraid I won’t.’ The words were stretched and quick, but as manners laced through reason he added others. ‘But thank you. For everything.’

Chapter Three

The stone was cold, rubbed smooth with the echoes of time. He had tried to reach her, through the tapestries of Christ under thorns, but the choking smoke had stopped him, the only sound in his ears the one of a ghastly silence.

His dagger was in his fist, wrapped around anger, the Holy Water knocked from its place on the pulpit and falling on to marble pocked with time. The spectre of death had him, even as he reached for Henrietta, the trickle of red running down his fingers and her eyes lifeless.

* * *

Gabriel woke with the beat of his heart loud in his ears and his hands gripping the sheets beneath him.

The same bloody dream, never in time, never quick enough to save her. He cursed into fingers cradled across his mouth, hard harsh words with more than a trace of bitterness within as his eyes went to the timepiece on the mantel.

Six o’clock. An hour’s sleep at least. Better than some nights, worse than others. Already the first birds were calling and the working city moved into action. The street vendors with their words and their incantations. ‘Milk maids below.’ ‘Four for sixpence, mackerel.’ The heavier sound of a passing carriage drowned them out.

Unexpectedly the image of the water-blue eyes of Miss Adelaide Ashfield came to mind, searing through manners and propriety on the seat at the edge of the Bradfords’ ballroom as she cursed about her ten more weeks.

Where did she reside in London? he wondered. With her uncle in his town house on Grosvenor Square or in the home of Lady Harcourt? Did she frequent many of the ton’s soirées or was she choosy in her outings?

Swearing under his breath, he rose. He had no business to be thinking of her; she would be well counselled to stay away from him and as soon as he had caught those who were helping Clements in his quest for Napoleon’s ascendency he, too, would be gone.

The society mamas were more circumspect with him now, the failing family fortune common knowledge and the burned-out shell of the Wesley seat of Ravenshill Manor unattended. His father had squandered most of what had been left to them after his grandfather’s poor management, and Gabriel had been trying to consolidate the Wesley assets ever since. The bankers no longer courted him, neither did the businessmen wanting the backing of old family money to allow them an easy access to ideas. It would only be a matter of time before society turned its back altogether.

But he’d liked talking with Adelaide Ashfield from Dorset. This truth came from nowhere and he smiled. God, the unusual and prickly débutante was stealing his thoughts and he did not even want to stop and wonder why.

She reminded him of a time in his life when things had been easier, he supposed, when conflict could be settled with the use of his fists and when he had gone to bed at midnight and slept until well past the dawn.

What would happen after the allotted ten weeks? Would her uncle allow her to simply slip back into the country with her fortune intact, unmarried and free?

His eyes rested upon the gold locket draped on the edge of an armoire to one side of the window.

The bauble had been Henrietta’s. She had left it here the last time she had come to see him and he had kept it after her death. For safekeeping or a warning—the reminder of love in lost places and frozen seconds? For the memory of why a close relationship would never again be something that he might consider? He had tried to remember how the fire in the chapel had begun, but every time he did so there was a sense of something missing.

For a while he imagined it might have been he who had started it, but subsequently he had the impression of other hands busy with that very purpose. Hers? Her husband’s? The men they associated with? The only thing Gabriel was certain of was the hurt and the stab of betrayal that had never left him.