by J. A. Rock
He peered at the sign on one of the street’s many gin shops, hoping it was the one he wanted, but no, finding a specific gin shop in the rookery was apparently like looking for a needle in a haystack. A filthy, teeming haystack that smelled like literal shit. To keep fear at bay, he focused on his anger at Becca. How dare she disparage his friendship with Balfour at every turn. If she had any idea the lengths he was going to for their family…His heart lodged in his throat as he heard what sounded like muffled laughter. His head buzzing and his mouth dry, he hurried on determinedly.
It really oughtn’t have been so difficult to pay a damned blackmailer. Warry could not help but think that putting one’s victim in danger of his life wasn’t the smartest way to ensure one received prompt payment, but what would he know? He’d never blackmailed anyone and could not confess any desire at all to ever do so. But he did need that letter back. And, once he got it, he needed to throw it in the nearest fire.
A woman lurking by the entrance to the gin shop lifted her skirts and offered to swive for what Warry could only assume was a reasonable rate of pay, and he stammered out a refusal as he hurried on his way.
“I’ve got a bruvver!” she yelled after him. “If you’re looking for a Backgammoner!”
Warry suspected that she was not referring to the game, and also that the brother might be just as unappealing. Besides all that, there was only one man Warry was seeking tonight: Wilkes.
Wilkes had been employed as Warry’s valet for several months before he’d been dismissed. Warry’s father had been unhappy at what he’d considered the man’s unreliability, and there had been an unresolved matter of some missing silverware. Earl Warrington had torn a strip off Wilkes before sending him on his way, but not before, as it happened, Wilkes had stolen the letter. The letter, which, if the contents were to be made public, would provoke a dreadful scandal. His desire to prevent such a scandal wasn’t entirely selfless nor was it driven by some deeply rooted sense of morality. It was, simply, Warry’s mistake to correct, and he hoped to do that before his own culpability was uncovered.
So he’d come to St. Giles with twenty pounds in his pocket—a vast sum that he was supposed to be setting aside in order to join the Bucknall Club—in order to pay Wilkes off and get the letter back. He only hoped twenty pounds was enough. Wilkes had been cagey in his scant communications. Warry’s heart sank as he thought of the club. That was another complication, of course. Hartwell had sponsored Warry for Bucknall’s, and while Warry had mistrusted the offer as much as he mistrusted the man himself, he had been desperate to join. After tonight, he would not be able to afford the membership fee. Warry’s father had been happy to give him the money, of course, but it wasn’t the sort of thing he could ask for twice—at least not without inventing a story about being robbed or some such.
He shivered as he passed between two buildings so tall they blocked out even the scant beams of moonlight that filtered down to the dirty streets. For a moment he was in pitch darkness, and that was when he heard a rush of footsteps and men shouting to one another and then something hard and heavy struck him across the back of the head.
His only thought as he hit the street was that he wouldn’t have to lie about being robbed at all, because that was clearly what was happening.
Warry woke slowly in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room with an unfamiliar catalogue of aches and pains clamouring to make themselves known to him. There was, however, at least one very familiar thing about the room: Hartwell. The man was dozing in a chair by Warry’s bed, his handsome profile tilted forward as his chin rested on his chest. Grey light came in through the window, and Warry’s bleary gaze drank in the aristocratic lines of Hartwell’s face. His usually sharp countenance was softened a little by sleep and perhaps too by the unruly curl of dark hair that tumbled down his forehead.
Of all Warry’s pain, the worst seemed to be the throbbing ache in his skull. When he lifted a shaking hand to his head, he discovered it was bandaged. He groaned.
Hartwell jolted slightly and awoke.
“Warry,” he said, his low voice rough with sleep.
Warry fought the urge to pull the bedcovers up, which was ludicrous because this was Hartwell. He’d fairly grown up with the man, and, besides, he was soon to be Warry’s brother-in-law, if Earl Warrington was to be believed. “Where am I?”
“Hartwell House,” Hartwell said, which was the residence in Grosvenor Street the Hartwells used while in Town. Warry had often been a guest there, although he had never stayed overnight. The Warringtons had their own house in St. James’s Square.
Warry furrowed his brow, and immediately regretted having done so as a spike of pain lanced through his skull. He winced. “But…but how did I get here?”
A soft groan accompanied Hartwell’s cat-like stretch. “Apparently you were accosted in St. Giles, had your purse taken and your skull soundly bashed, and cried out my name in your delirium. A pair of mollies brought you here.”
“A pair of…” Warry’s face grew hot before his aching brain seized on the greater humiliation. “I cried out your name? Balderdash!”
Hartwell regarded him witheringly. “If you can conceive of another reason you might be here, then do feel free to share it.”
Warry’s jaw worked, but dash it, Hartwell was right. He must have mentioned Hartwell, or how else would anyone have known to bring him there? And his skull must have been cracked like an egg because what on earth would possess him to ask for Hartwell? Delirium, indeed.
“I…” he said weakly. “I don’t understand.” His heart thudded as last night came rushing back to him. Good Lord. Wilkes! Had Wilkes been responsible for the beating last night? Had he thought to take Warry’s purse and keep the letter for further extortion? Or had the robbery been an unhappy coincidence, and would Wilkes think Warry had stood him up? What if he had already made public the letter? He tried to push the covers back.
Hartwell’s expression sharpened like a hawk’s. He leaned forward, bending his body toward Warry in a way that made Warry shrink back against the pillows. “Well then, that makes two of us. And I for one would very much like to know why the Viscount Warrington was wandering around the St. Giles rookery at midnight, in the company of robbers, mollies, and scoundrels, and how he managed to get his head bashed in.”
Warry blinked rapidly. “I…I…How many were there?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Robbers. Did the…the mollies see? Did they see what the fellows looked like?”
“Much as I would have liked to have them to tea, they didn’t linger once they’d collected a few shillings for their trouble.”
Warry willed himself not to despair. So he had cried out Hartwell’s name as he lay in the shit-covered street, then been dragged nearly two miles by a pair of prostitutes, and his ordeal had cost Hartwell several shillings. Not to mention how desperately he needed to make contact with Wilkes or how plain it was that Hartwell was not going to leave him alone until he offered an explanation. “I shall pay you back.”
“You’re more fool than I thought if you believe that’s what I’m concerned about.”
That put a halt to Warry’s racing mind. That word—concerned. The echo of it was there in Hartwell’s eyes. To see Hartwell looking so grave, so worried—about him—rendered Warry silent once again.
Hartwell stared at him sharply for a moment and then leaned back again, adopting a lazy, relaxed posture and a soft smile that Warry didn’t believe for a moment. He shrugged. “Of course it’s really none of my business which particular vice you were seeking last night, Warry, although I’m sure Becca will hound you relentlessly until you crumble.”
“Becca?” Warry shot a hand out and gripped Hartwell’s wrist. He dug his fingers in as fear clawed at him. “No, Hartwell, please! You mustn’t tell her! She can’t know!”
“Good Lord,” Hartwell said. “What have you got yourself into, Warry?”
“I…” Warry swallowed, his heart squeezing as he
held Hartwell’s dark gaze, seeking desperately for any lie he could tell that would get him out of this house and away from Hartwell’s scrutiny. Something that Hartwell and Becca might gently mock him for but not hate him. Because as much as Warry deserved that hatred, he wasn’t sure he could bear it. And as much as he had thought he loathed Hartwell mere hours ago, in this moment, gratitude and perhaps a concussion made him long to believe he looked into the eyes of a friend. He listed his chin as the lie came to him and pushed the words out in a breathy confession. “I…I meant to go gambling.”
Chapter 2
Hartwell threw back his head and laughed. “That’s it? That’s what you nearly ripped my arm off for?” He tucked the arm in question firmly against his side and straightened his cuff. “You thought to visit a gaming hell? Why, just last week I held a Venetian breakfast. I would have invited you if I’d known you were so eager to lose your purse.”
Warry’s pale cheeks turned a pink that Hartwell could see even in the weak light of dawn, and his hand slipped from Hartwell’s wrist. Warry might have grown into a dour figure of late, but underneath it all, the lad really hadn’t changed since their childhood. Anytime Hartwell and Becca had attempted, through whispered dares and smothered giggles, to dabble in impropriety—Becca nabbing one of her father’s cheroots for them to share; Hartwell blushingly taking down his drawers so that she could see how they differed under their clothes—Warry had eagerly offered to take part as well. But if they dared him—“Go on, Warry, take a suck!”, the cheroot, not the other; even Hartwell wasn’t so crass—he became red-faced and nearly beside himself, telling them what they were doing was wrong. That they should stop at once.
No wonder his parents had taken to employing him full-time as Becca’s chaperone. He was priggish as a schoolmarm, and it was quite pitiful to see him stammering and near to wetting himself over having so much as thought to indulge what was really a very common vice.
Hartwell leaned back and sighed, draping an arm over the back of the chair. The arm that Warry had gripped. Hartwell could still feel the warmth from his palm on his skin. It was startling to realise that the young man—whose hair Hartwell used to tousle and whose back Hartwell used to slap without thought—had become such a stranger that the grip on Hartwell’s wrist had given him a jolt. Well. There had been that bit of fun the morning of the Gilmore rout. Those few moments where Warry had seemed himself again, and which seemed so long ago now that Hartwell refused to let himself recall them. Or perhaps it was what had transpired after that he did not wish to recall. “You do know that Becca would congratulate you if you told her you’d gone gambling?”
Warry stared at the bedcovers and didn’t speak.
Hartwell softened his tone, though amusement still lingered in it. “It is all right to indulge in the lesser vices, Warry. A game of faro is hardly murder. It is not a sin to enjoy yourself.”
Warry nodded ever so slightly, still refusing to meet Hartwell’s gaze. While Hartwell had to keep reminding himself to stop thinking of Warry as a lad, it was near impossible not to with Warry huddled in the large bed, clutching the edge of the sheet like a child, his light-brown hair sticking in every direction, and his face…
Well, his face full of bruises, which Hartwell disliked immensely. He straightened, and his tone became clipped. “However, it was enormously bacon-brained of you to choose St. Giles for your first foray into wickedness. There are plenty of respectable hells you might have chosen that wouldn’t have put you in the path of scoundrels.”
“Do not scold me. I’m not a child.” Warry looked up now, and Hartwell received another jolt at the blaze in his eyes.
“I will still scold you when we are old and grey, Warry,” Hartwell said with attempted good humour.
Warry’s face shuttered. He shifted, twisting the sheet edge around one finger. “I didn’t want word to get back to my family. My father has struggled with the vice in the past, and Becca scorns him for it. I did not wish her to scorn me as well.”
Hartwell’s brow furrowed. “She has never said anything to me about your father’s gambling.”
“She doesn’t tell you everything.” There was a bitterness in his tone Hartwell could only wonder at.
That thought badgered him more than he liked to admit. Sometimes—usually late at night, when he couldn’t sleep—it occurred to him that Becca was the only person in the world who knew him truly. His parents seemed only to appreciate the idea of him: a strong, strapping son, desired by every young lady of the ton and not a few young men, who could provide an heir and do proud the Hartwell line. His friend Lord Christmas Gale was good for a drink or two at Bucknall’s or occasional shooting practice, but Gale was a recluse and a misanthrope. Hardly the sort of fellow you confided in. The idea that he was, on some level, alone in the world, save for Becca, was difficult to swallow. And the idea that the same might not be true for Becca—that she had others to confide in, including her younger brother—made him, for an instant, uncomfortable.
“Well, then. What do you intend to tell her about this?” He nodded at Warry’s bruised face.
“I don’t know. I…She’ll ask questions.”
“And hold your feet to the fire to get answers.”
Warry looked up again, and Hartwell found himself absurdly eager to keep Warry’s attention on him. He disliked this battered Warry who stared at bedsheets and seemed to have forgotten how to smile or laugh. A memory came to him unbidden: a spring day at the Hartwells’ country home. He and Becca were outside behind a large tree, and she’d insisted they practice kissing so they would both know precisely how repulsive an act it was when they were forced to do it one day with their spouses. Warry had of course been idling nearby and eagerly piped up that he wanted to try it too.
“Well, you can’t kiss me! I’m your sister,” Becca had said in disgust. But then she’d grinned. “You can practice on William.”
Hartwell had laughed good-naturedly and pretended to hawk great quantities of saliva into his mouth before pursing his lips and bending toward Warry. He’d assumed Warry would do what he always did—start quivering over the possibility of being caught and refuse to follow through—but to his shock, Warry had strode up to him and planted a kiss on his lips.
To Hartwell’s greater shock, he’d suddenly heard his father’s rough voice and been yanked away by the arm. He didn’t recall what had happened after that; probably his father had blustered about impropriety and how Hartwell mustn’t play games like that with other boys. He was an only son, and his focus should be on girls, girls who would grow into wives, wives who would produce heirs…
Hartwell didn’t wish to recall the interaction or the kiss, which had been dry and awkward. He had never wished to disappoint his father; indeed, he’d never considered himself the sort of person who could disappoint anyone. That his hesitation to wed rendered him a source of frustration to his parents was troubling in a way he could not quite articulate.
He crossed an ankle over his knee. “I have a proposal. An arrangement that may benefit us both.”
Warry leaned back against the pillows but still held himself stiff.
“You may stay here until your bruises fade, and in return, you must help me learn to court your sister.”
Warry frowned. “You wish to court my sister?”
“Yes,” Hartwell said. “There is no need to sound quite so astonished about it. If she and I are to be married, then I must know her as more than simply a friend.”
“You’re not going to marry her.” It was said with a certainty that dug at Hartwell.
“Of course I am. It was all but decided before we were out of leading strings.”
Warry wrinkled his nose. “She doesn’t want to marry you.”
“She said she did yesterday.”
“She doesn’t want to marry anyone.”
“Well, she must. As must I. And so, we will marry each other. That is decided, Warry. That is not what this conversation is about.”
“It is now.”
This was the Warry Hartwell remembered—an obnoxious little pup, answering back over everything. Hartwell would have carried him outside and dunked him in a pond if he hadn’t looked so bruised and pathetic.
“I know nothing of her romantic tastes. We’ve always avoided talking of such since neither of us…” He shook his head. “Well, we have both, of late, been reminded of our duty, and we have come to an arrangement, but there is no need for that duty to be unpleasant, is there?”
The furrows in Warry’s brow seemed in danger of becoming permanent. “You believe I spend my days thinking on how to court my sister?”
Hartwell sighed impatiently. “No, but I know your sister has had admirers, and I’m certain you’ve seen her reaction to certain types of flowers or…or chocolates or sweet sayings in cards. I want you to teach me what she likes so we might present as a convincing match to Society. And more importantly, to my parents.”
He marvelled at just how simple a solution it was. It was as Becca had said: they would feign courtship in front of their parents. They would marry as friends and live their own lives. She would never hold him back from anything he wanted nor he her. He only wished he hadn’t been too pig-headed to see it that way in the first place.
“If you’re just putting on appearances,” Warry said, “surely she can pretend to like any flower.”
Hartwell struggled to keep the frustration from his voice. “Well, it’s not just pretend now, is it? I love your sister dearly. I wish her to feel I can be a husband to her as well as a friend.”
Warry’s scowl twitched into a near smile before re-etching itself firmly onto his face. “She’s going to laugh at you.”