Page 18 of A Gentleman Never Keeps Score
Alf gave a disappointed shake of his head. “What a sodding snob you are.”
Hartley didn’t deny it. “I realize that girls are put on the street for far less than—” again he mimed a large belly “—but that doesn’t make it any less galling. The fact is that my father would never have kicked any of us out for anything. He was—is—a bit scattered, and he’s deliberately ignorant about how the world works, but he’d never have turned us out into the cold.”
“That’s a low bar you have there.”
“What I’m trying to say is that he always knew about me.”
“There are newborn babies who know about you, mate.”
Hartley glared. “Anyway, keep her safe and make sure she has whatever she needs.”
“You know I will.” Alf’s voice was gruff.
Hartley was getting ready for bed when he heard the wailing. At first he thought it was an injured child, so he ran down the stairs toward the back of the house, from where the sound was coming. But when he opened the door, he saw Dog.Dog, honestly. Who had a dog for eight years without bothering to give it a proper name?
“You again? Your mistress will be beside herself.” If he knew the name of the pub where Sam worked, he might have sent word. But it was late, and it was raining again, and he couldn’t stand to leave an elderly three-legged dog standing out in the cold. Sacrificing another apron, he dried the dog and put it in front of the banked fire to sleep. He’d figure out how to get in touch with Sam tomorrow.
Sam had spent nearly two hours in Hartley’s kitchen the other day, most of that time with his shirt off, and they hadn’t so much as touched one another. They had talked about dogs and ale; Hartley had spoken of his brothers and Sam had talked about some of the patrons at the tavern. Neither of them had mentioned the painting; neither of them had even made a move to get the other’s trousers off. The entire visit had been as chaste as a tea party. In fact, Hartley had enjoyed it more than any tea party he had ever attended. He had been at his ease, eating what amounted to table scraps in his empty kitchen, sitting with a shirtless tavern keeper. He had felt at home for the first time in months, if not years.
He knew that to be a dangerous illusion. He couldn’t spend a pleasant evening with a man he wanted to take to bed without everything getting muddy in his mind. No—his mind was already muddy. It was an oozing pit of quicksand. There was no way for Hartley to have what he wanted out of a man; his brain wouldn’t let it happen. Every minute together would only remind him of what wasn’t possible, of what his mind was too broken and muddled to allow.
The dog followed him upstairs, wagging that appalling stub of a tail. It looked like somebody had meant to dock the thing, then only done the job halfway.
“No. No, sir,” he whispered so as not to wake Sadie. “You stay downstairs.”
The dog tipped his head again. Hartley couldn’t tell what kind of dog it was supposed to be. He had the pointed muzzle and long legs of a rat terrier, but its fur was long and shaggy. Its ears looked like they wanted to prick up but were too floppy to quite manage the trick. Well, one of his ears was floppy; the other had that chunk missing from it. “Fine,” Hartley said, sighing. “Come upstairs.”
At the first landing, the dog stopped walking, instead holding one of its paws in the air and mewling plaintively.
“This is emotional blackmail,” Hartley said.
The dog whimpered. Hartley picked it up and placed him at the foot of the bed where he would doubtless ruin the coverlet.
No sooner had Hartley slid between his clean sheets, then the dog started howling.
As Sam swept the floor, one eye on the straggling patrons who were still nursing the remnants of their drinks, Kate came downstairs. Sam gathered that she had been paying a visit to Nick.
“Where’s the dog?” she asked, scanning the room.
“In the courtyard. I gave him a ham bone.”
Two minutes later she was back. “He’s not out there. And it’s raining again.” She had circles under her eyes, and she really ought to be asleep. “I’m going to go look for him.”
“I’ll go look if you’ll keep an eye on the till and refuse to give anyone so much as another drop to drink.”
He slapped his hat onto his head and went into the rain. “Dog!” he called, which sounded ridiculous enough to earn him a glance from a passerby. After a quarter of an hour, Sam still hadn’t seen any trace of the animal. Constable Merton, however, was trailing a few paces behind, as if waiting for Sam to step out of line. In defeat, Sam headed back toward the Bell.
From the shadows came the gleam of moonlight glancing off a row of silver buttons. Even if Sam hadn’t been preoccupied by buttons lately, the sight would have been arresting enough in this neighborhood, even more so at such a late hour and in such bad weather, and when the wearer of the expensively buttoned garment was being propelled through the streets by a scruffy dog on a string.
“Oi!” Sam called, when he saw Hartley twice walk past the alley that led to the Bell. The dog was jumping and barking, and generally looked like he was going to have some kind of fit if Hartley didn’t turn where he was meant to.
Hartley turned his head and spotted him. “Thank God,” he said, sagging with relief. “Did you know this dog can bay like one of the hounds of hell? When I left him outside my bedchamber door, I thought he’d wake the neighborhood. I put him at the foot of the bed—”
Sam realized that the little bastard had gone back to Hartley for some more bread and cheese. “You put that—” he gestured at Dog, who was at least fifty percent filth at this point “—in your nice clean bed?”
“I wanted to sleep! I would have shared my bed with half a dozen piglets if it meant an end to the racket.” A man gave Hartley an odd look, but he didn’t notice, and Sam bit back a smile. “I didn’t know which pub you worked at, or if you’d even be there, so I put the dog on a lead in the hope that he’d find his way home.”
“It looks like it worked.”
