Page 71 of Once a Gentleman
Chapter Twenty-Six
Harrison insisted on escorting Andrew home from the dock, even though there was no bloody need for it.
“I’m not a damned invalid,” he snapped, as Harrison opened the door of the hack for him. “You only need one fucking hand for a door.”
“You may not be an invalid, but you’re certainly a pain in the arse, sir,” Harrison shot back with offensively undaunted cheer. “I’ve gotten you this far and I’ll see it through, since I’m your friend and you’re my superior officer. So get in, and enough grousing about it.”
Andrew got in, though he groused under his breath and probably sounded a right pain in the arse.
It had been two endless months since Dr. Serrano cut off what was left of his hand, stitched up and splinted his leg, and told him to hope for the best. In the end, the surgeon had known his business; the stump of Andrew’s wrist had healed over well enough, still sore and tender but closed and free of any infection. His leg had not developed gangrene, and he still had it. A little twisted, and still weak, but present and accounted for.
But it had taken weeks to reach that point, weeks of Harrison doing everything for him in a way one might hesitate to expect of one’s wife, valet, or brother.
Andrew was on half-pay and would be ashore until his leg healed up as well as it ever would, so at the moment he had no ship and no occupation. He also had no lover—and he pushed thoughts of Kit away, as he had been doing approximately every ten minutes since writing those thrice-damned letters.
But he had Harrison, it seemed, and he had been doing his level best to drive him away as well.
“Forgive me,” he muttered as the hack began to rattle its way toward Southsea and Andrew’s cold, empty house. Hell and damnation. He had managed not to think of Kit for all of thirty seconds. “You deserve better from me, and I well know it.”
“I’d be no better in your shoes,” Harrison replied.
“Yes, you damn well would. You have more good humor in your little finger than I have in my entire body.”
Harrison chuckled. “Perhaps your good humor resided in your left hand, sir.”
That left Andrew speechless for a long moment, and then he burst into deep, helpless guffaws, Harrison laughing with him.
God, but that felt good. When had he last laughed? Before his injuries. Before he had sent Kit away in the coldest, the cruelest possible manner. Before he had destroyed his own happiness and ensured that Kit would never wish to speak to him again.
That sobered him quickly.
Andrew leaned back against the hack’s uncomfortable excuse for a cushion and allowed himself to think of Kit, just for a few moments, because he could hardly help it in any case. All too soon, he would be stepping into the house they had shared. Kit’s ghost would lurk around every corner, his voice echo from every room. Would he even be able to set foot in his own bedchamber, let alone Kit’s? No, he would need to sleep elsewhere. Perhaps on the floor of the study in a pile of brandy bottles, and be damned to him. If Mattson had left any brandy undrunk in the house, which seemed highly unlikely.
The hack rumbled on, no matter how Andrew wished it wouldn’t, and within too short a time it had deposited him and his trunk on the front steps of his house. Harrison bid the hack’s driver wait a moment; it would take him on to his own home, where he would enjoy the much warmer reception that he had thoroughly earned by virtue of not being an utter bastard.
Andrew still believed he had done the right thing, the only thing under the circumstances. Perhaps he ought to have waited after all, until the surgeon had done his work and Andrew could evaluate matters again. He felt the loss of Kit far more keenly than the loss of his hand, a hard, throbbing ache in his chest that hadn’t dissipated for an instant since he dictated those letters. The misery of longing for what could have been, and what would never be, oppressed him constantly. He couldn’t bring himself off even when he had the rare opportunity to be alone, because he couldn’t force himself to think of anything but Kit when he did. He made himself eat and sleep and do what was necessary to recover his physical strength with a grim, bloody-minded determination to do his duty that had nothing to do with appetite or any real ability to rest.
But if he’d waited only to die, or to be left unmanned and useless, then Kit would have been put in an impossible position…God, what a bloody muddle he’d made, and he had no one to blame but himself.
Harrison rapped on the door, and a moment later Peter opened it, gawked, and then gave a glad cry that rang through the street. “Sir! You’re home! Mr. Hewlett, Mr. Enderby, Mr. Turner’s home!”
Andrew’s heart stopped for a moment, and he couldn’t draw breath.Mr. Hewlett?
Peter rushed down the steps, taking up Andrew’s trunk and hefting it inside, talking all the while without allowing Andrew to get a word in edgewise, and he shook Harrison’s hand and limped up to the door after Peter, in a daze of dreadful hope and terrible confusion.
It felt like a dream, walking into the hall of his own very familiar house—except that it was not so familiar, for the floor and stairs and banisters and side tables all gleamed with polish, fresh flowers stood in a new vase replacing the one broken when he flung that bastard Dowling into it, and bustling out from the door at the end of the hall that led to the kitchen were not only Samuel and Mrs. Felton, but also a woman dressed in the plain black of a servant whom Andrew had never seen before in his life.
And then the study door opened, and Kit stepped out.
Kit, oh God, there, in the flesh, real and perfect and unchanged, his unruly curls falling about his temples and his eyes as brilliantly green and bright as always, his lips so soft and tempting, slightly parted as he gazed at Andrew.
And he didn’t come forward. He didn’t speak. He held onto the jamb of the study door so hard that his knuckles had gone white, as if he needed it to keep himself upright.
But he didn’t say a word, and he looked…Andrew couldn’t read his expression, but it wasn’t joy or delight.
Of course it wouldn’t be. Andrew had dismissed him, had told him he no longer wanted him.
Why had Kit remained?
