Page 69 of The Soldier's Scoundrel
Jack put down his fork and regarded Oliver very seriously. “I’d be glad to have your help with my work if you’d like that. What made people want to talk to you was never your breeding.” He said “breeding” like someone would say “syphilis” or “bedbugs.” Oliver held his napkin to his mouth to hide a smile. “It’s your bloody charm,” Jack grumbled.
“This is the place,” Jack said two days later, as they inspected a narrow little house near the British Museum. “The bedchamber and office can both be on the ground floor, so you won’t have to climb more stairs than absolutely necessary.”
“I can manage stairs perfectly fine,” Oliver lied. The week he had spent hauling himself up and down the stairs of whorehouses and gambling halls had been an unpleasant reminder of how bad his knee could get. Oliver knew that the time might come when even a single flight of stairs would prove impossible, even on a good day. And he was glad that Jack seemed to understand that too.
“Yes, you’re sickeningly hale and hearty.” Jack was opening and closing the windows, likely assessing the ease with which they could be broken into or jumped out of. “And only getting more so by the minute. I think you’ve put on half a stone in the last few weeks.” This was a gross exaggeration, but Oliver tolerated it, knowing Jack took some perverse pleasure in making sure Oliver remembered to eat. “And it’s all muscle.” That much was true, Oliver fancied. “At this rate you’ll be a regular Viking by Christmas.”
Oliver barked out a laugh. “How exceedingly vulgar. I’ll be nothing as brutish as a Viking, my dear. I’ll be like the angel Gabriel in one of those pictures chaps are always painting on ceilings. All golden hair and glistening muscle.”
“Well, unless you also plan on sprouting a pair of wings, I don’t know how you’ll get upstairs, so we’ll put the bedchamber on the ground floor.”
“I seem to remember that you’re capable of carrying me,” Oliver murmured, running a finger down Jack’s arm. A few nights ago Jack had thrown a limping Oliver over his shoulder and carried him up the stairs to his Sackville Street rooms.
“I’m too old for feats of strength,” Jack argued. “I’ll be forty soon.”
“When?” Oliver was genuinely curious.
Jack waved the question away. “Four years from now. Maybe five. Who’s counting?”
Oliver would remember to ask Sarah about Jack’s birthday.
“Anyway, I have every intention of being in this house when I’m forty, and also when I’m fifty, and until I draw my last breath, because I’m never moving again. So, we’d better get a house with a bedchamber on the ground floor, and that’s final.”
And that was how Oliver learned that Jack planned on the two of them living together for the rest of their lives.
Oliver watched Jack throw a careful look over his shoulder, confirming that they were still alone. He blushed, half expecting something filthy, but instead Jack leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to Oliver’s burning cheeks. “I love you,” Jack said, his voice gruff.
“I love you too,” Oliver whispered.
They signed the lease that very day.
Jack hadn’t been surprised to discover that all Oliver’s worldly goods fit inside three valises with room to spare, and the bulk of it was finery that wouldn’t even fit the man much longer. He didn’t have so much as a bed quilt or umbrella stand to his name. Their new house came furnished with the bare necessities but few of the conveniences that Jack felt were required in a gentleman’s home.
Because this was to be a gentleman’s home, and Jack would hear no rubbish from Oliver about how he would be happy in the gutter. Bollocks on the gutter. Jack had spent too many years there to wish it on his worst enemy.
Instead, they would meet somewhere in the middle. Oliver’s run of debauchery had brought him down a few rungs on the social ladder, and Jack would fake and sham his way up a few rungs.
“I say, was that umbrella stand there earlier today?” Oliver asked when he arrived home.
“No.” Jack didn’t look up from the letter he was writing.
Oliver glanced around the sitting room. “This carpet is new as well.”
Jack looked at the carpet, as if only now registering its presence. “So it is,” he agreed, in a tone that indicated that helpful elves had perhaps delivered it.
“And those candlesticks,” Oliver said wonderingly. “They’re new.”
So was the clock on the chimney piece, the footstool by Oliver’s chair, and a ceramic figurine that bore an outrageous resemblance to Oliver. This last item had been a gift from Georgie, who had all along insisted that Jack’s lover resembled a Dresden shepherdess. The other items, Jack had bought himself.
“You have to let me pay for some of these things, Jack.”
“No, I really don’t.” There weren’t many things in the world that Jack considered worth his money, but buying fine things for Oliver was oddly satisfying.
They were scrupulously dividing rent and housekeeping down the middle. Jack suspected that Oliver only agreed to that plan out of sensitivity for Jack’s pride.
“I keep telling you, even after last month’s losses, I have plenty of money safely invested in the five percents. I won’t spend a quarter of my income living like this.”
“Good. Save it away.” Jack would have bet that Oliver would come to within the last shilling of his income. The man was forever tossing extra coins to crossing sweepers and flower girls. Jack himself was developing expensive habits—witness his recent purchase of lavender-scented soap for the laundry woman to use on Oliver’s shirts, and the new pair of boots he bought for the little maid who brought up the coal.
