Dedication
For my children, who are very patient with my failure to write anything about dragons
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Announcement to A Duke in Disguise
About the Author
Also by Cat Sebastian
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
1817
Hartley wrinkled his nose. “Why are you wearing that?” he asked his brother. Will’s coat had quite plainly been tailored for a different person, if it had been tailored at all, which was an open question. Loose threads and threadbare patches renounced any claim the wearer might have to gentility. It had likely been a depressing garment from the start, but now it was the stuff of tragedy.
“This?” Will asked, looking down at his chest. “It’s a coat. I know we’re a bit carefree at the moment,” he said, gesturing to the empty bottle of wine that stood on the table between them. “But you do know what a coat is.”
“That’s not a coat,” Hartley sniffed. “It’s melancholy, in sartorial form.”
“It’s really very comfortable,” Will spoke earnestly, as if this quality could possibly matter in a garment.
“I’ll give you five shillings if you let me burn it.”
Will clutched the coat close to his body as if Hartley might try to pull it off his shoulders. “The real question is why you are wearing that,” he said.
Hartley examined his own attire. Slate gray waistcoat with mother of pearl buttons; shirt and cravat of snowy white linen, well starched; dove gray kerseymere pantaloons; black coat of Italian wool. He let his gaze linger with satisfaction on his top boots, snug to the point of impracticality and buffed to a highly satisfactory shine by his valet. The overall effect was flawless, utterly correct, and à la mode while still being understated. “I’m dressed impeccably,” he pronounced. Not a boast, just the unvarnished truth.
“Exactly. To sit at home with me.”
“Was there someplace you wanted to go?” Hartley spoke with as much dignity as he could muster after half a bottle of claret. “Don’t let me keep you.”
Will shook his head and leaned back against the sofa. “That wasn’t my point. You’ve been holed up in this house for two months.”
“Untrue. I walk every day in the park,” he said. It was neither here nor there that he timed these walks to occur when the park would be deserted, sparing himself the embarrassment of sharing space with those who had cast him out. “Besides, I’ve suggested that we travel. We could go to Paris and then be in Italy before winter.” He could picture a well-kept pensionne, an unlimited supply of heady Italian wine, and something like the promise of a blank slate, or at least oblivion.
Will examined the remnants of wine in his glass as if they were particularly interesting. “I’ve seen enough of the world. And I have obligations keeping me in England for the time being.” He addressed these words to the glass, not looking at his brother.
Hartley hadn’t been anywhere or seen anything, nor had he any real urge to do so, but it would be better than staring at these same four walls day in and day out. Unlike his brother, he hadn’t even the faintest shadow of an obligation to any living creature, which surely ought to bring him some satisfaction. “The less said about your obligations, the better,” he said coldly. Will only gave him a disappointed frown. Hartley cleared his throat. “If not five shillings, then perhaps a guinea? You could buy two ugly coats for that much.”
That got him a laugh, and Hartley let his mouth twitch slightly in return.
“Why don’t you travel on your own?” Will asked. “Or with a friend?” His voice hit an odd register on friend and Hartley shot his brother a quelling look. “Or maybe you could move to a different part of the country? Somewhere you could have a fresh start.”
“I don’t want a fresh start,” Hartley snapped.
Will was kind enough not to mention that a moment ago, Hartley had been willing to get on the next packet sailing for Calais. But that would have been for Will; Hartley might loosen the stranglehold he had on the tattered remains of his life if only he could tell himself it was necessary for one of his brothers. But to leave of his own accord felt like defeat. He was still here—still alive, still in this house, still where people had to reckon with his existence. He wasn’t going to let himself get erased on top of everything else.
“If I ever take up crime,” Will said after a few moments of almost companionable silence, “it’ll be arson. And I’ll start with this house.”
Hartley pretended not to understand. “Please take up something more profitable than arson.”
“As if you don’t have insurance. Sell it. Let it. Stay at a hotel. Stay with me. Pitch a tent among the cows in Green Park for all I care. But you can’t carry on living here.” He looked around the room, as if taking in for the first time the crimson velvet drapes and deep mahogany bookcases. His gaze lingered on a few blank spots on the wall, where the paper hadn’t faded to the mellow green of the rest of the room. The staff at this house had always been vigilant about drawing the curtains when the sun shone through the tall windows, but even so, some light had leaked into this room over the years, and Hartley knew why it hadn’t reached those few rectangles. “I don’t believe in ghosts, but this place is haunted. You must see ghosts everywhere. And, Hartley, it’s ruining you. You’re twenty-three and you’re living in a mausoleum.”
“You say that as if you’re eighty. Perhaps we ought to talk about how you aren’t living life to its fullest either, dear brother.” Will lived in a hovel and spent his days writing dismal little things for magazines that forgot to pay him. It was nothing short of a miracle that he managed to keep body and soul together. When Hartley thought of the things he had done and the dubious choices he had made, all to give his brothers a chance at having the safe, secure life of gentlemen, and what a mess they had all made of it, he could scream.
Will shook his head. “But I’m content, and you aren’t.” He finished the wine in his glass. “You can’t go on living here,” he repeated.
“Of course I can. It’s well situated and lavishly furnished. I couldn’t ask for a more suitable home. I’m grateful that it was left to me by my doting godfather.” He was rather proud that he kept his voice entirely free of irony.
“Hartley.”
“I have Lady Mary Carstairs to the right and Mr. Justice Burke to the left. It’s a very good street.”
“Hartley,” Will repeated.
The house was utterly silent around them except for the swinging pendulum of the longcase clock in the corner. The servants had gone to bed, Hartley having given instructions that they needn’t wait up for him.
“Perhaps next time you’ll join me at my lodgings for a drink,” Will said, rising to his feet and taking his hat off the
table. “Or we can meet for a pint at your local.” Anywhere but here was Will’s unspoken meaning.
Hartley threw back his wine and stood somewhat unsteadily. “Does it bother you to think of why he left me this house?” he asked, looking up at his brother. Even as the words left his mouth he knew he was being pathetic, looking in the wrong place for proof that he hadn’t ruined all their lives. “Is that why you don’t want to be here?”
Will touched his shoulder. It had been so long since anyone had touched Hartley—even his valet had learned to dress him with only the most glancing and impersonal contact—that he was momentarily taken aback.
“Hartley, the question is whether it bothers you.”
This was precisely the sort of arrant nonsense that Will would say. Hartley stepped away and let his brother’s hand fall to his side.
There was something about an empty pub that never felt right to Sam. Some places were meant to be filled with the warmth of bodies and the buzz of voices; silent, they were haunted by the people who ought to have been there. While there was some relief in seeing the last customer out the door and spending a quiet hour polishing pewter tankards to a satisfying shine and wiping any sticky traces of spilled beer off the bar, Sam was certain the Bell was at its best when it was crowded and a bit chaotic.
He had only started his ritual of rubbing down the bar with lemon oil when the door swung open. Any of the Bell’s regulars would have known it was closed, so Sam turned toward the door, ready for a minor emergency: somebody in need of a hot meal, a clean bed, or a couple shillings to pay the rent. Or maybe they just needed the kind of safety only a looming former prizefighter could provide. Sam was happy to be able to give that kind of safety. Life in London was hard, harder still if you were poor, black, and out on the streets past ten at night.
But it was only Kate. “It’s late for you to be about,” he said, putting down his chamois in order to pull her a mug of ale. There was only one reason for Kate to be out this late, and the lines around her eyes and the disordered state of her hair corroborated that she had been at another lying in. She said it happened every autumn, this rush of new lives, but Sam couldn’t remember her being so thoroughly run off her feet in years past.
“Fourteen hours,” she said, sitting heavily on a stool at the bar. Her voice was hoarse. “Then another two trying to get the babe to nurse.” Even as Kate spoke, Sam heard a scratching of paws along the flagstone floors of the taproom. Every other minute of the day, Sam was sure the dog was as deaf as a stone. But all Kate had to do was whisper and the mongrel materialized at her side. Kate had rescued—stolen, not to put too fine a point on it—the dog from a rat pit near on ten years ago, and it had been following her around ever since.
“Have you eaten?” Sam asked, already reaching under the bar for a dish.
“Not since yesterday.”
Sam had put aside a slice of pork pie for his own supper, but he could have some bread and butter later on. He slid the pie across the bar to Kate, and she thanked him by giving him a tired salute with her mug. Sam poured himself a pint and they drank in companionable silence for a few minutes. After a few years behind the bar, Sam knew the look of someone who needed to talk. He also knew that a person was more likely to speak if he kept busy, so in between sips of his ale he silently set about cleaning the tankards.
“Nick asked me to marry him again,” Kate said. No surprise there. Sam’s brother had been fond of Kate since they were all children together. They both might have thought Sam was a blind man, but he saw Kate coming and going from Nick’s rooms upstairs at all hours of the night and day.
“What did you tell him this time?”
“I reminded him that we’re both too busy to get married.”
That was a poor excuse. It was true that they were busy. Nick was up every day at dawn, cooking the meals they sold at the Bell. And after years of working alongside her mother, Kate was midwife to what seemed like every black woman in London. To Sam’s mind, that was an even better reason for them to get married—two busy people who enjoyed one another’s company would surely be best served by shortening the distance between themselves, but he wasn’t fool enough to tell Kate how to live her life.
“Did my brother pretend to believe you or no?” Sam asked without looking up from the tankard he was polishing.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her crack a smile. “He did, bless him.”
Sam never ceased to be amazed by Nick’s inherent decency; as far as Sam knew, his brother had never done any living thing the least harm. Nick had been born good, while Sam had to learn it secondhand. And, as foreigners often spoke with traces of their old tongue, sometimes Sam feared he would never lose traces of that old blood-soaked accent. “Want to tell me the real reason you don’t want to make an honest man out of him?”
“You’ll think I’m daft.”
“Already do.”
“Here, give me one of those.” She took a rag and began attacking a tankard as if it had done her wrong. She knew her way around behind a bar, Kate did. She had been a barmaid at the Bell back when her father still owned it, long before Sam had bought the place. They had been a good team. They still were: Kate brought people into the world, Nick fed them, and Sam poured their drinks and gave them a place to be warm and safe.
Sam went to fetch the broom, and when he came back he found Kate paused, rag midair. “It’s about the painting,” she said.
“What painting?” He instinctively checked the woodwork for peeling paint that needed to be retouched. That would be an expense that had to wait. This week he had already paid half a crown to the chimney man to do something about the smoke that billowed through the room whenever the wind blew from the north, and then another two shillings to the glazier to mend a window some neighborhood ruffian lobbed a rock through.
“The dirty one I sat for.”
Oh, that painting. “That was, what, five years ago?” In her youth, Kate had been a bit on the unruly side. She had been helping an opera girl bring on her monthlies when the gentleman who had gotten the girl in trouble took a fancy to Kate. He had offered her a princely sum to let him paint her in the altogether. Kate agreed, having been a bit pressed for cash due to her father making a habit of losing money on bad wagers and strong drink. “What made you think of it now?”
“Closer to seven years. I don’t like the idea of there being a picture out there of Nick’s wife stark naked.” She hoisted herself up onto the bar, her legs dangling off the edge as they had when she was a kid.
“But Nick already knows. Hell, he’s known about that painting since he tried to persuade you not to do it. If it bothered him, he wouldn’t have asked you to marry him.”
She twisted the cloth in her hands. “That’s why it’s bothering me.”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “Because he doesn’t care?”
“No!” Smiling, she flung the rag at his head, but he caught it. “Because I remember what he said. ‘How are you going to get a decent husband with your bosoms out there for all the world to see,’” she said in a passable imitation of Nick’s serious-minded way of speaking.
“He was a kid when he said those things.” And if Sam knew his brother, he’d apologized a thousand times over for having said them in the first place. “Besides, wasn’t it a lord who wanted the painting? What are the odds of someone who knows you and Nick happening on a painting in a lord’s house?”
“Could be someone who comes in to clean his windows or empty his chamber pots. And anyone who knows me would recognize it straight away.”
That was true enough. Kate had a mass of black curls and a welter of dark brown freckles on her light brown skin. Sam frowned. “Still, I don’t know there’s much to do about it.” He brought his tankard to his mouth.
Kate looked up at him, her dark eyes dead serious. “I want to get it back.”
Sam nearly choked on his ale. But he knew better than to try to persuade Kate away from a bad idea. “Do you even know where it is
?”
“The old pervert probably still has it. Like as not in a room with a pile of other dirty paintings for gents to gawk at.”
The thought made his stomach clench in anger. “But you aren’t sure.”
“One way to find out.” She shrugged.
He had a sinking feeling that she didn’t mean writing a polite letter inquiring as to whether the man still had the painting and offering to purchase it for a fair price.
“Tell me you don’t mean to shimmy up drain pipes.” When she didn’t answer, he pulled a chair off the table and straddled it, resting his chin on his forearms. “Because I can tell you my brother wouldn’t fancy having to visit you at Bow Street. And neither would I.”
Her brow furrowed, so he thought he might be getting through to her. “I suppose I could pay someone. Mrs. Newton’s son, maybe.”
“Telling Johnny Newton there’s a dirty picture of yourself might not be your most discreet option.”
“There has to be something I can do.” She had a desperate look in her eye that made him worry she might do something foolish to get this painting back. He wanted to remonstrate, to tell her that she ought to stay safe, to mind all the written and unwritten rules about what a black person could do in this country. These days Sam himself followed every rule, no matter how trifling, and stayed well clear of anything that even looked like it might carry a hint of a problem. His license was paid, his pints were poured generously, and he made sure there was nothing for the building’s owner to complain about. He never let himself lose sight of the fact that if anything ever went wrong, someone would be only too happy to pin it onto a black man. That had been a lesson he’d learned too well and too often, God help him.
That didn’t make it fair, though. Nick and Kate ought to have a future, a life, all the good things they deserved, without it being ruined by rich men. The idea of a dirty old man having a painting of Kate when she had been too poor to turn down honest money—it didn’t sit right with him. Kate shouldn’t have that hanging over her for the rest of her life. Sam worked so hard to make sure the people in this community were safe and fed and had the best chance even though the deck was stacked against them; it was grossly unfair that Kate and Nick might have that taken from them. He knew exactly what kind of things people did with themselves when they were desperate. That was another lesson he had learned the hard way.
A Gentleman Never Keeps Score Page 1