Page 18 of The Soldier's Scoundrel
When they reached Turner’s door, a girl appeared on the landing above. “Miss Sarah wants to know what the ruckus is,” she whispered.
“The ruckus is me coming home after earning my daily bread. And Betsy?” He reached into his pocket and held up a coin. “Sarah does not need to know that I have a gentleman with me.”
Oliver blushed at the implication, but he was the only one who seemed embarrassed. The girl simply nodded in agreement, deftly catching the coin Turner tossed her, before returning to wherever she came from.
“Who is Miss Sarah?” Oliver asked, following Turner into his rooms. He didn’t expect an answer.
“My sister.” Turner stumbled across the room that served as his office and passed through a door. “She owns the dress shop and lives upstairs.”
Turner lived with his sister? That seemed disconcertingly cozy for a man one might be hiring to commit a crime. A man who had kissed him not five minutes earlier.
Oliver didn’t know what to do with himself in this strange, dark room, but it felt wrong to follow Turner into the room beyond without being told to.
Then Turner called out. “In the top drawer of my desk you’ll find brandy. Bring me some. Only the bottle, don’t bother with a glass.”
Oliver did as he was told and carried the bottle through the door Turner had just disappeared through. He found himself in a small sitting room that contained mismatched chairs and a deal table but no Turner. He passed through yet another doorway and realized he was now in Turner’s bedchamber. The room contained little more than a bed, a washstand and a small wardrobe. Turner stood by the window, struggling to unfasten his shirt.
“You’ll never manage it like that,” Oliver pointed out. A man did not spend ten years in the army during wartime without learning the finer points of dressing and undressing while encumbered by minor injuries. “Let me,” he said, tucking the bottle under his arm and tugging off his gloves.
Turner said nothing. He put his hands by his sides, giving Oliver access to the shirt closures. Mercifully, Oliver’s hands did not shake, even as he worked the shirt open, revealing skin that he did not allow himself to look at. He kept his eyes focused on his own fingers, his mind trained on the task at hand, not even letting himself so much as think about the heat of Turner’s gaze. Even without looking—he dared not meet Turner’s eyes—he could feel the intensity of the other man’s gaze on him.
“My hands are scraped and I couldn’t seem to get hold of the studs,” Turner said, sounding apologetic.
Oliver worked free the last closure and then reached for one of Turner’s hands, half expecting the other man to stop him, to remind him that he didn’t belong here, that he ought to go home. But he didn’t. Instead Turner held his hands out, palms up, almost meekly. Oliver took one in his own hand. Scrapes everywhere, but nothing too deep. He darted a glance at Turner’s face, and saw a similar scrape on one of his cheekbones. “It looks like you were worked over with a rasp.” He released Turner’s hand and gave him the brandy.
Turner took a swig from the bottle. “It was a windowsill.”
“A windowsill?” Oliver repeated, incredulous. “Did you fall out a window?”
“Jumped.” He took another drink. Oliver could see Turner’s throat work as he swallowed the brandy. “I didn’t have time to put on my gloves, so I had to hang onto the sill with bare hands. Then I must have grazed my face along the bricks on the way down. And then I landed like a sack of laundry.”
Oliver found that he was surprised, not that Turner was involved in any kind of cloak-and-dagger enterprise that required leaping out of windows under cover of darkest night, but rather that he wasn’t apparently very good at it.
As if reading his thoughts, Turner laughed, low and rumbling. It was the first time Oliver had heard him laugh, and he couldn’t help but smile foolishly back. “I might be too old to clamber out windows like a cat burglar at this point in my career. Alas. My father will be rolling in his grave, knowing I learned so little at his knee.”
His father taught him to—but never mind that. “Is that what you were doing? Robbing someone?”
Turner was silent for a moment, and Oliver realized he had insulted the man. He probably ought to be relieved to have ruined their fleeting moment of intimacy, but instead he felt unaccountably disappointed. “I was searching a client’s house, if you must know,” Turner answered, his voice tight. “But I suppose I committed a few crimes along the way.” He took another drink. “I tend to do so.”
“I only asked because—” but Oliver was distracted by the sight of the other man tugging his shirt over his head. He knew he ought to take a step backwards, or turn around, or leave the room, or really do anything other than stare openmouthed at Turner’s torso, yet here he was. Ogling.
Turner was lit only by the moonlight that managed to make its way through the room’s one sooty window. Which was to say barely lit at all. Yet Oliver could see every muscle and sinew in Turner’s chest and arms, in the same broad shoulders that had moved under his hand earlier. Had he been a prizefighter? Some kind of laborer? Where had he come from?
“Feel free to watch. Believe me, it’s not a problem.” Turner had managed to work open the closure of his breeches. “I’m enjoying it. In a moment, though, I’m going to start enjoying it a bit more, if you catch my meaning.” He made a lewd gesture suggesting a hardening prick. “And I need to put on an untorn pair of breeches before I go out again, so—”
Oliver whipped around, embarrassed. And then he was embarrassed to be embarrassed, and wished he had gone home hours ago and sent Turner a note. He expected to hear Turner laughing at him and was relieved not to.
It wasn’t that Oliver was inexperienced, precisely, only that most of his experiences had been rather transactional in nature. A couple shillings in exchange for a bit of this and a bit of that. Sometimes an arranged and rushed-through meeting with a like-minded gentleman. Tender kisses of the sort that village maidens received on May Day and that Jack Turner bestowed in his vestibule had never entered into the picture. Oliver was very much out of his depth.
“Go out again?” he asked, suddenly struck by the insanity of the idea. “You’ve only just jumped out a window. Something might be broken. It’s past two in the morning and surely you ought to go to bed.” Because Oliver was evidently playing the role of the nursemaid in tonight’s performance.
“I’m half starved, though,” Turner said, as if that settled the matter.
“Have you nothing to eat here?” Oliver could hear the all too familiar sounds of a man shoving an injured leg into a boot and decided it was safe to turn back around.
“There’s some bread upstairs at my sister’s but I don’t want to wake her. She’ll give me hell over my bruises. And besides, I don’t want day-old bread and drippings. I want hot food.”
Oliver felt his mouth water at the idea. That stew had been hours and hours ago. “Where on earth are you going to get hot food at this hour?”
