Page 17 of The Soldier's Scoundrel
Besides, marrying Miss Sutherland would protect her from Montbray, but it wouldn’t do a damn thing for Charlotte. Rousing himself from his delusional reverie, he hailed a hackney and went immediately to Turner’s office, but it was Sunday, and the dressmaker on the ground floor was closed for business. When he knocked, nobody came to the door. Oliver thought Turner lived as well as worked there, so the man would have to return at some point. Well, it wasn’t as if Oliver had anything better to do than wait, so he made himself as comfortable as possible on the front steps of the building, ignoring glances from passersby.
Charlotte’s situation was horrible. He knew, in the abstract, that some women were mistreated by their husbands, but the idea that his own sister was living under such a threat was shocking and painful. When he shut his eyes he could almost hear musket balls whizzing past his ear, could almost smell gunpowder and blood. It seemed that there was violence and lawlessness no matter which way he looked.
He opened his eyes and saw the well-maintained buildings of Sackville Street; when he took a deep breath he smelled horses and baking bread. When one was fortunate enough to live in a place and time with laws, it was one’s duty to follow them. There had to be another way out of this mess. But still he waited.
Jack had brought a book to keep himself occupied while waiting for night to fall. It was some nonsense Georgie had recommended, about an orphan and a great deal of hijinks. So much silliness, really. But after the household returned from church, he had retreated to the attic to spend the daylight hours hiding among the empty trunks, waiting for darkness so he could resume his search. This was the closest he was ever likely to come to a holiday, so he tried to enjoy it.
There were two full hours during which it was too dark to read but before the household retired. Rich people could always be counted on to spend money to show the world exactly how rich they were, which was probably why they burned candles and lamps to light their revels and then slept through several perfectly good daylight hours the next morning.
Finally, though, the house was quiet. Jack crept down the servants’ stairs to the main floor. He really only had to search the drawing room, back parlor and library. This was a more modest establishment than many in this neighborhood, so there were no music rooms or ballrooms or morning salons or any other such madness. And Jack was glad of it, because he was well and truly tired of being in a rich man’s house, even for this one day. The sight of all those pointless urns and gilded picture frames almost made him nostalgic for the days of the guillotine—even though he had only been a child then and one with more pressing problems than who killed whom in France. But all these acres of impossibly soft carpets gave his thoughts a dark turn.
And none of those carpets lay atop a single loose floorboard; none of the picture frames concealed a secret compartment; the urns were all depressingly empty of secrets and scandal. He had turned up nothing in either the drawing room or the back parlor except for a big, stupid dog who followed him around as if they’d known one another their whole lives. In these rooms the curtains were drawn, allowing Jack to light a single candle without any concern that he would be noticed from the street. He gingerly opened the door into the hall—of course the doors didn’t so much as squeak in this house—and crossed to the library.
He really didn’t want to shake out every book in this place. It would take all night and make a mountain of dust that would be noticed by the housemaids in the morning. “What do you think?” he whispered to the dog, who was wagging his tail and slobbering. No bad man could own a dog this stupidly affectionate. Jack was certain of it.
Before he could decide what to do with this room, he was interrupted by the sound of carriage wheels rolling up in front of the house. The front door opened and a few words were exchanged, too quiet for him to catch. In all likelihood, this was Wraxhall returned from a night at the club. Jack didn’t know if Wraxhall planned to visit the library or head straight to bed, but he couldn’t take the chance.
Footsteps ascended the stairs. Quickly extinguishing his candle, Jack made his way to the window, which overlooked Grosvenor Square. Damn. No housebreaker wanted to make his escape into a well-lit street. The mews would have been better, but he wasn’t in a place to choose. He opened the window, swung himself over the sill, and jumped.
Oliver watched in amazement as Turner all but fell out of the hackney. It was well past midnight and Oliver had been sitting on the steps for hours, leaving only to get a pint of ale and attempt a few bites of sludgy-looking stew at a nearby public house. When the carriage had rolled up, he was on the verge of heading home, planning on sending over a footman with a message first thing the next morning. But then Turner stumbled to the steps. With an instinct born of too many years on the battlefield, Oliver rose to his feet and got an arm around Turner’s shoulders.
“What in God’s name happened to you?” He steered the man towards the building. Even in the moonlight he could see that Turner’s breeches were ripped.
“Rivington? Christ. What in hell are you doing here? It’s two in the morning. You’ll give a fellow ideas.”
He ignored that last remark but couldn’t quite ignore the deep and gravelly voice it was delivered in. But for heaven’s sake. This situation was awkward enough without a cockstand. “I’ll tell you inside.”
“Inside? Like hell you will. Go home.” Turner attempted to shrug out of Oliver’s grasp, but Oliver held fast.
“You have no chance getting up the stairs without help. Trust me on this.” If there was anything Oliver knew, it was what a man looked like when he was trying not to put any weight on an injured leg.
“I hurt my ankle. It’s nothing.”
“How?” The man looked like he had been attacked by a lion, or dragged through the streets behind a cart. A fellow didn’t tear his breeches and ruin his shirt for no reason.
“By being a fucking idiot, that’s how.” Turner fumbled in his pocket and even that small effort made him visibly wince in pain. “If you want to help me up the stairs, then fine. Have at it. For my part, I’d have thought a gentleman of your tendencies might worry about where he was seen at this hour and in whose company.”
There it was again, another hint that Turner knew about Oliver. Tendencies. “Is that blackmail?” He didn’t think it was, but he honestly couldn’t tell with this man.
“God, are you that dim?”
“Probably.” When it came to some things, definitely.
Turner unlocked the front door and they stepped inside a tiny pitch-dark vestibule. “Then let me clear things up.” His voice was harsh and rasping and Oliver thought he could feel the vibration low in his belly. “Because I am not going to blackmail you, you bloody interfering toff. For a lot of reasons, not least of which is that it’s a nasty fucking thing to do, but also, you daft bastard, because if I blackmailed you for happening to prefer men, you could blackmail me right back. Did you somehow not notice that I nearly fucked you against a building on Piccadilly the other night?”
Oliver didn’t know how to answer that, so he stood silently in the dark, waiting for whatever might happen next. And then he felt it—Turner’s big hand skimming up his arm, then along his neck, before resting on his jaw. Only then did Oliver realize Turner was trying to find Oliver’s mouth in the dark. He had only a half second of waiting for the kiss to come before he felt the other man’s lips brush against his own.
It was only the subtlest touch, something he might have imagined here in the darkness—except for how his lips were now hot and tingling, his pulse roaring in his ears.
Except for how even in his more debased fantasies, he hadn’t considered that one innocent kiss could make him feel this way. Although, innocent seemed a ludicrous word to describe any activity that occurred with Jack Turner, confessed thief and unashamed scoundrel.
Turner was still tantalizingly close. Their boots were actually touching, their chests nearly so. Oliver’s heart was beating too fast for him to collect his thoughts. He wanted to reach out, smooth his hands over Turner’s strong body. Instead he simply pressed his cheek into the other man’s ungloved palm. Turner laughed softly, a single huff that balanced on the knife’s edge between amusement and desire. But still he didn’t step away. Oliver leaned forward, brushing his lips against the other man’s in the same way Turner had done. A gentle pressure, the merest taste of a kiss.
But now Turner’s body was pressing him against the wall, the man’s lips punishingly hot and hard against his own. Tasting, exploring, taking exactly what he wanted–and Oliver wanted him to keep on taking. All too soon, though, Turner pulled away. They stood in the darkness for a moment, catching their breaths, heavily breathing the same air, before Turner spoke.
“Just so we’re perfectly clear,” Turner said in his gritty baritone before taking his hand from Oliver’s jaw. “Now, up we go.”
They made it up the stairs slowly. Turner was heavy, for one thing, and grumpily uncooperative, for another. And Oliver was nearly driven to distraction by the sensation of hard muscles bunching and moving beneath Turner’s coat. Those muscles were the sort of thing Oliver would have noticed under any circumstance, but after that kiss, dear God. However, there was a job to be done. Between them they had two good legs and a walking stick and eventually they managed to make it to the top of the stairs.
