Page 45 of A Gentleman Never Keeps Score
Sam guessed that Alf was exaggerating, and that any reaction from Hartley or Sadie owed more to the circumstances surrounding Alf’s fights than it did with the fact that he had been brawling. But he also knew that pointing this out wouldn’t convince Alf of anything he didn’t want to believe. Sam had a hard time believing it himself—he could imagine Hartley wrinkling his nose disdainfully at the idea of bloodshed or unruliness.
“Did you put anything cold on that eye?” Sam asked, and when the lad shook his head, he went to the back room to see if there was a slab of meat in the larder he could use.
He and Alf weren’t terribly different. They were both products of the East London streets, with the difference that Sam had the advantage of a somewhat profitable talent and Alf had the advantage of his skin. Sam was freshly appalled that he was going to bed with this boy’s employer. Hartley claimed not to have been raised a gentleman, but his brother had been a naval officer and his godfather had been a lord. He was enough of a gentleman to be miles away from Sam and Alf’s experience. All of that was so easy to lose sight of when they were together. But there was no future for them, and it was best for Sam to get that through his skull before he got in any deeper.
“You got robbed,” Sadie said when she looked at the haddock Hartley had procured and heard what he spent.
“I wasn’t going to haggle with the fishmonger. I have a bit of extra cash at hand and I daresay the fishmonger doesn’t.” Hartley had determined to take over the household marketing for the time being. Alf had once again gotten into fisticuffs with some boy who maligned Sadie’s fair name, and the quantity of tears and recrimination that Hartley had endured in the aftermath had been quite enough to last a lifetime. He was entirely willing to overpay for haddock if it meant domestic peace.
Sadie shook her head and went back to stirring the pot. “That’ll drive prices up for everybody else. It’s extravagant.”
“If you want to see extravagance, feast your eyes on this.” He dashed upstairs, returning with a cherrywood box. Nestled inside was a silver christening cup he had purchased during an afternoon of going from jeweler to silversmith, searching for the most lavishly useless baby present he could turn up.
“What in hell is a baby going to do with that?” Alf asked, peering over Sadie’s shoulder. He had a ghastly bruise on his eye that Hartley was trying to pretend he hadn’t noticed.
“Nothing, I should hope,” Hartley said. “I gather that the point of these things is that they can be easily sold down the line, either by the child when she’s grown or by the parents if they hit a rough patch.” Hartley wasn’t entirely certain, not having been raised in a household where babies—or anybody else—had precious baubles. But it seemed a prudent practice to give a child something to hock later on, and meanwhile the cup was pretty, so Hartley approved.
“Bless me.” Sadie stared at the cup as if it were a holy relic. “My sister and I had a pair of those silver sauceboats that are meant to feed babies. Of course nobody used them,” she said. “They sat on a shelf in the best parlor. I ought to have taken mine away when I ran off, I suppose.”
“You didn’t run off,” Alf pointed out. “And you didn’t have a chance to take anything with you.”
“This is too fine for—” She gestured at her belly. “It’s not right for me to have it. I can’t accept.” She pushed the silver cup across the table and her eyes filled with tears.
“It’s not for you. It’s for the baby,” Hartley said. “No, that’s not true. It’s for you too. You said yourself that you had something like this. Surely it’s proper for your own child to have such a thing.”
“This baby will be the bastard of a disgraced lady and a married man. It’s hardly the same.”
“Indeed it’s not.” Over the past weeks Sadie had supplied Hartley with the essential details: she had been seduced by a handsome young soldier who promptly abandoned her, she refused to marry whatever ghastly suitor her parents had supplied to remedy the situation, and her parents had turned her out. “You were dealt a bad hand, Sadie. But what would you need to make the most of it? I’m certain you don’t want to be my cook for the rest of your life.”
“It’s not a dream come true, but the work I do for you isn’t any different from what I did for my parents, the main difference being that you pay me and don’t call me names. And you don’t think worse of me for this.” She gestured again to her belly, but this time let her hand linger there. “Also, now I have my own kitchen with a proper range and it’s glorious. Well, I suppose it’s your kitchen,” she said, looking at Hartley.
“No,” Hartley said. “It’s yours. And so is that christening cup.” He felt insistent that she take that cup, that she and her child have what would have been theirs if the world were fair and right. He wasn’t such a ninny that he believed in fairness, and at this point he didn’t even know if he believed in ladies and gentlemen. This muddle-headed thinking was what came of associating with the likes of Will, he supposed. All he knew was that he cared for Sadie and wanted to make things right for her.
Sadie looked down. “I couldn’t go back to Devon and I wouldn’t want to. Now, try this and tells me if it needs salt.” She blew on a spoonful of some kind of gravy or sauce and held it out for Hartley to taste. “It’s béchamel sauce for the haddock.”
“It’s delicious,” he assured her. It was velvety and rich. “Fit for a king. Everything you make is superb.” He had tepidly appreciated the finest delicacies prepared by skilled French chefs in the grandest houses, but he found that he actively craved the simple dishes Sadie made. It had taken him days to realize this was hunger, and to wonder how long he had lived without it.
They’d share the haddock with Alf, eating together in Sadie’s little parlor, three people who ought never to have found themselves around the same table. He looked forward to these suppers more than he had any elegant dinner. Admitting this to himself felt like releasing something he had held clenched in his fist for so long that he had forgotten it was there, and he didn’t know if he was casting off a burden or losing a prize. Thus far, he was a disgraced gentleman. But if he carried on like this, dining with his servants and purchasing his own haddock, he’d be something else entirely. While he knew that being a gentleman wasn’t all he had once believed, he didn’t know what would be left of his life if he renounced all claims to gentility.
“Everything I cook here turns out better than it did at home,” Sadie said, tasting the sauce herself and adding a sprinkle of something green. “Partly it’s the range. But I think it’s also because things taste better when you aren’t miserable.”
“I see,” Hartley said. Was it possible that he had been miserable until now? He didn’t think so. He had been frozen, insensible to both pleasure and pain. If so, presently he was thawing, and the process was as strange as sensation returning to a frostbitten limb, and it left him feeling peculiarly vulnerable.
He absently fingered the top button of his waistcoat, feeling the cool smooth ivory beneath his bare skin. His dress, his manners, his reserve—they were his only defenses, cultivated to put as much distance as possible between the world and his true self. He knew other people might think him an affected snob, but the alternative was walking around in a terrifying state of exposure. Some of those defenses he had cast aside to be with Sam; he had a grim suspicion that he’d have to cast aside yet more if they were to go on. That would mean rendering himself vulnerable in a way that he doubted he could tolerate. He didn’t even know who he would be without the fortress of his house and the outward signs of wealth and status, and he doubted he’d give them up, not even for Sam.
Chapter Nineteen
Hartley dressed with his typical fastidiousness, but with a different goal than usual.
“Leave off the cravat,” Alf said, coming up behind him. Hartley spun away from the looking glass to face the lad. The bruise under one eye had darkened to a painful-looking wine-colored blotch, ringed with pale green. Hartley winced whenever he saw it.
“Why in heaven’s name would I go out without a cravat?”
“Because it’s past ten and you have on your oldest breeches and a pair of boots I haven’t gotten to polishing yet. And I don’t know where you got that coat but I’m selling it at the stalls tomorrow and keeping the money myself. You don’t look like a man who’s up to any good, and men who are interested in late-night crimes against nature don’t need to wear cravats. Also, you might spare me the trouble of pressing and starching them.”
“I wasn’t aware that I’m ever up to any good.” Hartley brushed some lint off the sleeve of the coat he had borrowed from Will. At least he hoped it was merely lint. “And I’m not engaging in crimes against nature this evening.” He had in mind an entirely different kind of criminal venture.
“Now I really am worried,” Alf said.
