“Good of you to show your face,” Kate called cheerfully across the taproom.
“New ale. Half a dozen more in the back.” He addressed his words to Kate alone before turning to Hartley, as if only then noticing his presence. “Good day, Mr. Sedgwick.”
Hartley hoped Sam never played cards because he was a terrible liar. “Good day, Mr. Fox,” he said with exaggerated politesse.
When he turned back to Kate, she shook her head disgustedly at him. “Like a pair of old hens,” she said. She got up, and for a moment Hartley thought she was going to leave him there. But she returned with two fresh pints of ale. “May as well tell me whatever it is. You’ll feel better after.”
“Fat chance,” Hartley said. But three pints later his inhibitions had worn down. He wasn’t going to talk about Sam, because if he told Kate about the swirling mess of stunned gratitude and baffled affection that comprised his feelings toward Sam, she’d think him a sapskull, and rightly so. There was another matter that Kate could advise him on, however.
“Can I ask you something, ah, delicate?” They had removed to a table away against the wall where they wouldn’t be overheard. The dog had leapt into his lap and promptly fallen asleep, and its snores seemed to double the effect of the ale.
“If I don’t want to answer, I won’t,” she responded pragmatically.
“My cook is increasing and I don’t know what to do.”
Kate’s lips pressed tightly together. “I take it you didn’t get her that way?”
“No! Of course not,” Hartley protested, aghast. “I don’t know the circumstances, but her parents turned her out, presumably due to her condition. After that, she worked the streets.”
“Do you typically get your household staff directly off the streets?” Kate asked, her head tilted quizzically.
Hartley was about to insist that of course he didn’t when he remembered Alf. “That’s not the point. But you’re a midwife and I thought you could attend her. I’ll see to your fee when the time comes.”
“Of course. That’s your delicate question?” She looked rather let down.
Hartley’s cheeks heated. “I thought you might also talk to her about whatever transpired in between leaving her father’s house and arriving in mine. In case anything . . . happened.” He filled his lungs with air. “To her, I mean. Or if the, ah, manner in which she got with child was . . . not of her own choosing.”
Kate nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you.” Hartley knew a surge of relief that was surely disproportionate to having secured a midwife for his cook.
Kate slid a hand across the table and laid it atop Hartley’s, and he felt his cheeks heat even more at the recognition that this was not only about his cook. “If this girl has had an unfortunate experience, she might do better to talk to you than to me, Hart.”
Hartley had not realized Kate was out of her mind. “I rather think that would drive her into the river, if she thought she might wind up like me.”
Kate frowned but didn’t say anything falsely reassuring. She didn’t try to tell him that nothing was that bad, or that he had a lot to be grateful for. She squeezed his hand. “Is it that rough?”
Was it? A year ago Hartley might have said he was absolutely fine despite everything that had happened with Easterbrook. His days had been filled with engagements and conversations—all hollow and empty, but at least they passed the time. If he couldn’t fuck, that was a small thing, really. But now his life had shrunk to the precise dimensions of the house on Brook Street, had dwindled to the size and shape of his own body. What he had lost loomed larger than what he still had. And he was furious. He wanted to raise his godfather from the grave just to have the privilege of sending him back there.
“It’s all right, you know.” Kate squeezed his hand.
“It really isn’t,” he said.
“Not what happened to you. That’ll never be all right. But you will be.”
“I’m fine,” Hartley insisted. “Except for . . .” He wasn’t going to say fucking in Sam’s pub, and besides, it wasn’t just fucking anyway. It was all the things that went along with it. “It’s shit to want something and also feel sick at the thought of it.”
“It’s utter shit,” she agreed, squeezing his hand.
“I mean, I know everyone has things they want and can’t have. I’m not that spoilt. And what I want isn’t important. I have wealth and health. My brothers and father seem to tolerate me. I shouldn’t be feeling sorry for myself. But I still want . . .” He shrugged, not wanting to complete the thought.
“A cock in your arse,” she murmured sympathetically.
He didn’t know if it was the contrast between the coarseness of her words and the sympathy underlying them, but he burst out laughing. He laughed until his shoulders were shaking and the dog had woken up to lick the tears that streamed down his cheeks. When he looked at the bar, he saw that Sam was watching him, his mouth curved in the beginnings of a smile, as if he were happy to see Hartley laugh. As if Hartley’s happiness mattered to him.
Sam kept himself busy wiping down the bar and collecting empty tankards while the last patrons left the warmth of the Bell for the cold autumn night. Hartley, though, was still at the same table he had occupied with Kate, even though she had long since left, taking the dog with her. He had put his gloves back on and held his hat in his hand as if he were ready to be sent on his way. Sam debated whether to lock the door. He usually waited until the last patron had left, and sometimes even longer after that, in case anyone needed him. But Hartley was still here, and he was a patron.
He wasn’t fooling himself. Hartley wasn’t here for the ale. He was waiting for Sam. Sam threw the bolt and turned to face him.
“I won’t keep you,” Hartley said, rising to his feet. “I only wanted to apologize. I never meant to hurt you, but I did. I ought to have realized before I spoke.”
“What are you sorry for?” Sam needed to hear it.
“I’m sorry I suggested you walk away from the Bell. I’m sorry I suggested you didn’t count as a visitor at my house, because truly Sam, I’ve enjoyed your visits more than I’ve enjoyed anything in the past twelvemonth, and not just because . . .” He gestured between their bodies, a faint blush creeping onto his cheeks. “I understand if you don’t want to see me again. After I destroy the paintings, I’ll send word.” He stepped toward the door. “But I didn’t want to end things badly.”
“I accept your apology,” Sam said.
“Really?” Hartley stopped and turned to Sam, his expression startled.
“Would you rather I didn’t?”
“No, of course not. I—Thank you.”
“Sit back down, will you?”
Hartley sat, and Sam filled them each a tankard of his best porter. Sam pulled out a chair, and Hartley began the process of unbuttoning and removing his gloves. Sam put out a hand to stop him.
“Let me help,” Sam said, and Hartley held out his hands. Sam didn’t dare look at Hartley’s face, just kept his attention on the soft leather stretched tight and thin over Hartley’s palms. They were perfectly clean, even the fingertips. He held one of Hartley’s hands palm up in each of his, running his thumb from palm to wrist, tracing over the buttons and then the soft skin above the glove. Only when he heard Hartley sigh did he look up.
“It’s not just fucking, is it?” Hartley asked.
“No,” Sam said, and began unbuttoning the gloves.
“I was afraid of that.”
“You would be.” He flicked open the final button.
Hartley cracked a laugh and then looked very sternly across the table at him. “It’s a bad idea.”
“It was a bad idea a month ago. We’ve gotten beyond the idea stages now.” He began tugging the gloves off Hartley’s hands, one finger at a time, sliding the soft leather over each digit in turn.
“You’re saying now it’s just bad.”
“No, it’s good.” Sam pulled the gloves off Ha
rtley’s hands and held them in his own, rubbing the hollow of Hartley’s palms with his own thumbs. “There are damned few good things, but this is one of them, I think.”
Hartley pressed his lips together and looked like he was about to argue. Sam didn’t want to hear it, so he brought one of Hartley’s hands to his mouth for a kiss.
Chapter Sixteen
In contrast to the bustle of the Bell and even the warmth of his own kitchen, Hartley’s library had the stale quiet of a sickroom. More than once, he found himself wandering down the back stairs under the shamefully flimsy pretense of requiring Alf or requesting a dish from Sadie. Only that morning he had insisted on taking a heavy dish out of the oven to spare Sadie the trouble. This was highly ungenteel but he didn’t quite know whether he cared. When Will showed up two weeks after their encounter at Friars’ Gate, Hartley was too bored and lonely to even feign chilliness.
“Look,” Will said, his hands shoved in the pockets of a coarse fustian coat that ought to go directly to the rag man, “either we patch it up now or we’re going to be awkward together for the rest of our lives. You’re my brother and my best friend. I don’t see that a dead man needs to ruin that, in addition to everything else he ruined.” Something in his tone suggested that Will’s list of things Sir Humphrey Easterbrook ruined went beyond Hartley’s personal life, but he didn’t want to ask, lest they start quarrelling about Martin again.
“Quite,” Hartley said. Really, he didn’t deserve a brother as understanding as Will. Hartley knew he was prickly and difficult; he couldn’t meet Will’s generosity even close to halfway.
“So come with me tonight to see the new play in Covent Garden. I’m meant to write a review for the Observer.”
It was supposed to be perfectly terrible, and Hartley, who liked picking apart bad plays almost as much as he enjoyed watching good plays, would have gone in a heartbeat if he didn’t have misgivings about being on display in front of hundreds of people.
“Come on,” Will said encouragingly. “It’s going to be ghastly.” He said this in the manner of one promising a special treat, and Hartley couldn’t help but smile.
“Very well then,” Hartley said. “If it turns out to be any good I’ll be very cross.”
“Afterward,” Will continued, “the cast is having a bit of a do.”
“No,” Hartley said too quickly.
“It’s nothing grand.”
Hartley refrained from pointing out that Will was hardly likely to be associated with any grandeur whatsoever, and also that his boots looked like they had been dragged behind a cart for some distance before he put them on. He needed to get out of the house before he started offering to help Sadie peel vegetables simply to avoid his own company. If he could associate with anyone without fear of being ostracized, it was actors. It might be pleasant to simply be among other people who didn’t whisper about his proclivities and scandals. Hell, most people thought actors were all sodomites and actresses all whores, so he’d be among fellow travelers, as it were. “Fine,” he said, and rang for Alf.
“The black coat and the violet waistcoat,” Alf declared when Hartley said he was going to the theater.
“I was thinking of the dark blue coat with the gray waistcoat.”
Alf’s lip curled. “If you’re only going to leave the house once a week, might as well look your best when you do.”
“The gray waistcoat suits me.”
“Makes me want to die from boredom. What’s the point of having purple waistcoats if you don’t wear them?”
Will watched this exchange like a spectator at a tennis match. Indeed, he had never seen any of Hartley’s servants say more than two words to him, usually along the lines of “yes, sir,” or “presently, sir.” But things were different now and Hartley found that he didn’t mind Alf mouthing off. Maybe it was because he had nobody else to talk to. Maybe it was because Alf knew the worst and tolerated him anyway. Or maybe it was because Will’s presence reminded Hartley that he hadn’t always been a fine gentleman. Will’s appalling coat wasn’t so different from what Hartley had worn a few years ago.
Hartley hadn’t known that coats such as Will’s were anything other than perfectly serviceable until his godfather had taught him so. Closing his eyes, he had the sense that when he opened them, the library would be as it was eight years ago: lewd paintings on the walls, expensive baubles still unsold, the room filled with wealthy sybarites. It was in this room, and at the house parties at Friars’ Gate, that Hartley had learned what gentlemen were, what they wore, the unspoken codes of behavior that they followed. He had soaked up that knowledge with the callow certainty that being a gentleman would protect him from the vagaries of fortune. At his father’s house, everything had been maddeningly unsettled—days without food, years without school, no plans at all for the children’s future. Without trades or professions, the Sedgwick children would have had a lifetime of missed meals and empty hearths.
Easterbrook had been perfectly aware of the young Sedgwicks’ predicament and his own ability to give them aid. But instead of freely offering help, he had taken advantage of Hartley’s desperation. At the time, Hartley had thought only of the promise of future security for his brothers; he considered himself the author of his own fate. Now he looked back and saw his own actions as the tactics of a desperate child with nowhere else to turn.
He tried to remember what it was like to care so much about anyone else, and all he could think of was his growing pile of unanswered letters. When he opened his eyes, he saw Will staring at him with concern. Good God, if Will was worried about him, he must really be badly off.
He cleared his throat and tried to summon up a pedagogical manner. “In the best households,” he told Alf, “a servant doesn’t argue with his employer about waistcoats.”
“Is that so?” Alf was speaking with what was doubtless intended to be a comic mockery of Hartley’s own accent.
“Indeed it is,” Hartley said, drawing on a dwindling reserve of patience.
“If I ever give a sod what they do in fine households, I’ll be sure to remember that.”
A strangled sound came from Will’s direction and Hartley did not dare turn his head lest he see his brother laughing and find it contagious. “Fine,” he conceded. “The violet waistcoat, then.”
The play was every bit as bad as Hartley had hoped, and he enjoyed Will’s scathing commentary more than the actual production. Afterward, they went to somebody’s lodgings, where gin and cheap wine flowed freely and a few actors still wore their stage makeup. Hartley couldn’t help but feel that he ought to be enjoying it more, and that it was his own fault for finding himself at the edges of the rooms, failing to take conversational bait, and in general being a bad guest.
“You’re Will’s brother?” said a man in a sloppily tied cravat and an inexpertly shaved jaw. “You look nothing alike.”
“He’s one of the legitimate ones,” Will said, appearing at Hartley’s elbow. “This is Edgar Graham, the actor.”
Will wandered off, claiming to need another drink, but plainly leaving Hartley and Mr. Graham alone. “The play was very entertaining,” Hartley lied.
Graham snorted. “The crowd did seem to like it, at least.”
“The problem was in the third act,” Hartley said before he could think better of it. He had downed two glasses of gritty, bitter wine in quick succession in order to combat his unease, and now his mouth was running a full minute ahead of his mind.
“Oh?” Graham said, raising his eyebrows. “Tell me more.”
“Well, if the baron is meant to be a villain, he ought to act like a villain. Instead he pulls his punches. I kept waiting for the baron to abduct that poor daft Clara creature. Who, by the by, I would have abducted by myself if I hadn’t been twelve rows back.”
“Up close she’s even worse,” Graham lamented. “She simpers.”
“Precisely!” Hartley said. Some kind-hearted soul had filled his glass once again so he drained it, and now he wa
s in fine form. “She simpers, she wrings her hands, and her brother has the ancestral jewels that our villain requires for his fell purposes. Why on earth not abduct her?”
Graham raised an eyebrow. “Do you know the playwright?”
“No,” Hartley said. “Is he here?”
“If you knew him, you’d understand that he’s revoltingly decent.”
“Oh, to hell with decent people. They’re exhausting. Make one feel so evil, when really one simply has one’s own concerns.”
“I could not agree more.” He leaned close to Hartley, and since Hartley was against the wall he couldn’t step away. They were only a hair’s breadth closer than normal talking distance, just enough to make it clear that this was an approach. It occurred to Hartley that in the right circles, his reputation would make picking up bedmates vastly less confusing and fraught with peril for everyone involved. Graham was even fairly good-looking, in a scraggy sort of way. If Hartley were an entirely different person, they could disappear to another room and pass a pleasant hour.
But the proximity made Hartley feel sick. Even the look of interest in the other man’s face made Hartley feel pinned to the wall, exposed. Unsafe. “I need to leave,” Hartley managed, and was out the door before he heard Will calling after him.
“Damnation,” Will muttered, catching up to him. “Did Edgar do something?”
“No. I’m a bloody mess, that’s all.” Hartley leaned against the damp stone of a building. His head swam from an excess of wine and his heart raced but he no longer felt actively terrified. He had the relief of waking from a nightmare but the certainty that he’d have the same dream the next night.
A Gentleman Never Keeps Score Page 15