Page 31 of Once a Gentleman
Chapter Fourteen
Shortly after midnight, the ungodly racket began to die down. At least two of the bedchambers down the hall from Kit’s had been occupied earlier in the evening, and the groans and gasps and foul language of those using them had been very little muffled by the walls—or by Kit’s efforts to ignore them.
Just as Kit began to think he might venture to the servants’ stairs and thus to the kitchen for an apple and a bite of cheese, dinner having been so many hours ago, he heard footsteps on the main stairs and two quiet voices, followed by the opening and shutting of the door across the corridor.
That was certainly odd. They had sounded neither drunk nor vile in any other way, though the voices had most definitely belonged to two men—and in Kit’s experience, the men who shared a bedchamber in Turner’s house were always drunk and almost always vile.
In any case, they were safely shut up in a room, and even granting them the very minimum of staying power, they would likely remain that way for a quarter-hour or more.
At least neither of them had been Turner; Kit was sure of that. Much as it sickened him to admit it, he’d have known Turner’s voice, and even Turner’s step, after only an instant’s attention.
It sickened him far more, a cold, hard lump of nausea in his belly, to recognize that if Turner had been one of the men…well, he would not have liked it in the least.
Just as he had liked it very little the past three nights between this and the night he had—and he flinched at the memory, rubbing his hands over his face as if to scrub away his own monumental, unbearable idiocy and weakness. He had known Turner’s interest wouldn’t last. He hadknownit. Counted on it, even, and pretended that he considered it a blessing to have it over with. And yet the last three evenings had been torture of the acutest kind. Turner could have come to Kit’s door rather than stumbling up the stairs with some other man and retiring, laughing and carrying on, into one of the other bedchambers.
Not that Kit would have admitted him.
Kit paced to the fire and kicked moodily at a bit of ember that had fallen onto the hearth, succeeding only in smudging the tip of his slipper with soot.
He would certainlynothave admitted him.
Silence had now really fallen over the house, more or less, even the two men opposite Kit’s room having remained peacefully shut up together. And yet Turner had not come upstairs. There must still be guests downstairs, then? Although Turner often left them to their own devices when he chose to seek his own private pleasure, letting them run wild in the house, with the study and Kit’s own bedchamber, and possibly some private upstairs sanctum of Turner’s own, the only places left undisturbed.
Was Turner downstairs somewhere, perhaps even in the study—and here Kit’s heart gave an unsteady wobble—with another man engaged in the same way Kit had been a few nights before? If Kit discovered that to be so, he must resign his position at once, of course. The drawing room had already been made off-limits, due to the phantom of Kit on his knees at Turner’s feet that wavered before his eyes each time he even walked by the door.
If the study were polluted by the knowledge that the same had happened there, only…only with another, then he would never be able to set foot in it again.
He leaned his burning forehead against the mantel and squeezed his eyes shut.
He ought to resign at once in any case. He ought to have resigned long ago.
Really, he ought never to have taken the position at all. Trusting to his own firmness of will had been one of the greatest mistakes he had ever made. Tempting, very tempting indeed, to ascribe his own weakness to Turner’s malignant influence, as a man with a poor understanding of his religion might do when blaming the devil for his own lack of character—overlooking the metaphor that might lead him to look for the evil within in favor of blaming an external force and hence absolving himself. Kit was no theologian, but he rather thought Christ had chosen to die forhissins, and not for Lucifer’s, and that suggested strongly it was humanity in need of such a service. Besides, oughtn’t he to return the favor by shouldering the remaining burden of his own faults, rather than attempting to shuffle them off to yet another third party, be that the devil or Turner?
Anyway, those were murky waters, but he was certain at least that it would be ungentlemanly to blame another for something he had, quite frankly, desperately desired for himself alone.
Gentlemanliness was something he understood, unlike theology. It had firm principles and comprehensible standards to which he could cling when all else felt like the heaving deck of one of Turner’s ships, shifting always beneath his feet and flinging him in all directions.
It would not be the act of a gentleman to blame Turner for something Kit had done himself. It would certainly not be the act of a gentleman to charge downstairs, roust out any remaining drunken sots who might be littering the floors and furniture, and then accost Turner for his thoughtlessness in leaving Kit alone. For whether or not Kit shrieked like a fishwife while doing so, it would be highly improper.
Of course, Turner had not left him completely alone. He had come to the study the morning after—the morningafter.
And he had acted as if nothing at all had happened. He had approached him, in fact, as if their evening had ended with the departure of Turner’s friends, when they had been in a state of complete harmony. If that had been all—oh, God, if only that had been all. If they had done nothing but part ways in the hall after waving off the Harrisons, they could have smiled, and retired to their respective chambers alone, and met in the morning quite as friends. The kind of friends, even, who might have gone out for a morning ride, despite one being a secretary and the other his employer.
And instead Kit had chosen to follow Turner into the drawing room.
And then Turner, inevitably, had escalated matters until Kit could resist no longer.
Really, blaming Turner for it would be like blaming a tiger for eating one after choosing to venture into the beast’s jungle lair unarmed and whistling an annoying tune.
The men across the corridor still hadn’t stirred, damn and blast them. They must have fallen asleep, and Samuel would need to come round before dawn and toss them out on their sore and aching heads.
At least that meant the coast would likely be clear for a journey to the kitchen, though Kit’s stomach rebelled, now, at the thought of food.
Tea, then. He’d make tea.
Kit shrugged on his coat—he would not be appearing in his shirtsleeves, for someone ought to keep up a veneer of respectability, no matter how many cocks he’d sucked in the drawing room, damn it all—and slipped out his door, carefully locking it behind him and pocketing the key. He had to pass the head of the main staircase in order to reach the servants’ stair, which opened at the other end of the corridor.
As he did, he glanced down to see what rack and ruin had taken place since he’d fled upstairs hours earlier when the party began.
