Page 41 of The Soldier's Scoundrel
He felt sick at the idea of Jack weighing Oliver’s company against a sum of money. If Jack even considered the offer, it would transform everything that had happened between them into just another transaction of the sort that Oliver had hoped to avoid. Jack would be just another man for whom Oliver meant nothing more than a payment. He felt foolish for having ever thought it could be something more.
Oliver threw open the garden doors. The sunlight was almost blinding after the cryptlike darkness of his father’s apartments as Oliver set out for the lake that lay at the bottom of the garden. Depending on his leg, perhaps he’d manage to make it over to the stables and see if any of the grooms he remembered were still at Alder Court.
Not that it mattered. Oliver had been away for long enough that he was a stranger here. And even if someone did recall the earl’s younger son, they didn’t know him. He remembered Jack’s whispered words in the graveyard, about how Oliver was isolated by secrets and shame. And Jack didn’t even know the half of it.
The landscape ought to have been comfortingly familiar, but instead it jarred with his memories in small, unsettling ways. The yew trees in the avenue had been aggressively pruned back, and the low wall around the kitchen garden looked to have crumbled and then been repaired. There were dozens of other discordant details that he couldn’t quite pin down, but which combined to make the real Alder Court dismayingly different from the memory he had treasured during those long years of endless travel and fighting, bloodshed, and chaos.
There wasn’t anything left for him here. He had, in the back of his mind, a vague and half-formed notion of leasing a small property in the country. Not actually on his father’s estate—even in Oliver’s daydreams that didn’t seem like a good idea—but near enough for it to retain a sense of home. Something very small, perhaps nothing more than a hunting lodge or a shooting box. He wouldn’t even need servants to live in. That would afford him some privacy, in case he were able to tempt a certain man to spend some time with him.
But now he knew that there would be no tempting Jack Turner to any private retreat. No, Jack belonged in London, in the smoke and fog and shadows, surrounded by miscreants and secrets. Not in the verdant countryside. Not with Oliver.
Nor could Oliver hide in the country. Again, he was haunted by Jack’s graveyard whispers: What will you do with the remainder of your years . . . So many days to fill without anything to do, without anyone who knows you for who you really are. Retreating to a house in the country now felt like cowardice, like failure, like a prolonging of the loneliness that had always chased him.
He turned back to the house before reaching the lake. The soft grass was harder to walk on than even the uneven cobblestones of London or the muddy lanes of Pickworth.
Jack would make his own decision about whether to accept the earl’s money. Oliver couldn’t do anything about that. What he could do was show Jack what things might be like between them, so that Jack would know what he was giving up. And if Jack did decide to leave, at least Oliver would know that he tried, that he was honest with himself and with Jack.
Really, your heart shouldn’t stir when you watch a man eat pork pie, or eat anything else for that matter. In the interest of brevity, Jack felt he could very well shorten the rule: your heart shouldn’t stir, full stop.
But Oliver had eaten his second serving of pork pie and Jack was glad of it, and those were the facts of the matter. If those bare facts were written before him on his cards, he’d know what interpretation to put on them, and he didn’t like it one bit. He was in a fair way to losing his heart to Oliver Rivington, and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.
Not that he’d need to. It was only a matter of time before Oliver realized what his father already knew, which was that Jack fell pitiably short of Oliver’s standards of honor and decency. And then Oliver would be gone and the condition of Jack’s heart wouldn’t matter in the slightest.
If Oliver was the least bit curious about what Jack had been doing with the earl, he hadn’t asked. Instead he invited Jack to join him for supper on the terrace. It was too fine a night to waste indoors, he said, but Jack wondered if he was being spared the awkwardness of dining in Alder Court’s dining room.
And so they drank wine from the earl’s cellars and ate what Jack had to concede was a first-rate pork pie, all without so much as a single servant to hover over them or listen to their conversation. This was the first time since they left London that Jack understood why some people were forever going on about the charm of the countryside. The air smelled sweet and there was no smoke or fog to obscure his view of the sky. It was quiet enough to create the very pleasant illusion that there was nobody in the world but Oliver and himself.
Total rubbish, but there you had it.
Oliver leaned forward to replenish Jack’s wineglass and then stretched out, putting his feet up on a low wall that ran along the terrace and folding his arms behind his head. He was the very picture of long-limbed elegance, and Jack wanted nothing more than to drag him off to bed. But that could wait, preferably until Jack could overcome some of his more egregious feelings and trust himself not to play the fool.
As the sun set, Oliver entertained Jack with the sort of easy chatter that required Jack to do nothing more than supply occasional rejoinders. Ordinarily, Jack had no patience for being on the receiving end of all Oliver’s pleasantness and good manners, his infernal drawing-room charm. But tonight he knew Oliver wasn’t doing this to manage him or to soothe him into a better mood. He was doing it because he was happy and he wanted to share that with Jack.
More rubbish, but no use denying it.
“It’s growing chilly,” Oliver observed after they finished the wine. “Join me in the library? Nobody will disturb us,” he added, with a blush Jack could detect even in the twilight.
Of course Jack went. He would have gone further than the library, God help him.
In the library Oliver wrote a letter to his sister while Jack reviewed his notes, spreading his cards out on an empty table.
“That reminds me,” Oliver said, reaching into his pocket. “You could use this to store your cards. It’s sturdier than the string you use to tie them up, and you’d have less danger of any cards going astray.” He held out a silver calling-card case.
“I couldn’t accept—” Jack started.
“No, it’s nothing. I have another.” He didn’t look like he was lying. Abandoning his letter, he came over to Jack and perched on the edge of the table. Taking one of the cards, he placed it in the case. “It’s the right size.”
Hell’s bells. The man sounded so proud of himself that Jack couldn’t bring himself to refuse the gift. “Thank you,” he managed. He took a good look at the case. It was very plain, thank God, with an engraved R as the only embellishment.
“I thought you might not mind the monogram.”
“I don’t.” And he didn’t. He had to stop his finger from absently tracing it. Instead he placed his hand on Oliver’s knee and gave it a squeeze.
Oliver turned his attention back to the cards that sat on the table beside him. “You know, the other day I thought it looked like a hand of solitaire, the way you arranged the cards, but tonight it strikes me that tarot is the better comparison.”
The wine had loosened Jack’s tongue, or maybe it was that he was being lulled into a false sense of security. Stupidly, so very stupidly, Jack wanted to tell Oliver all the sordid truths about himself, all the things he never talked about, not to anyone.
Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. If nothing else, his confessions would hasten the inevitable dawning of Oliver’s disgust.
