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A Gentleman’s Position(93)

By:K. J. Charles


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Read on for an excerpt from


The Ruin of Gabriel Ashleigh



by K. J. Charles

Available from Loveswept





LONDON, AUTUMN 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.