Page 48 of A Gentleman Never Keeps Score
Glancing around, Hartley had to agree. This place stank of stale beer and had more damp than Will’s lodgings. “You really ought to go to the Bell. They have excellent pork pie.” For a moment, he considered taking Will there presently, but it was too late for them to have any supper left. “I’m sorry about Martin.” Hartley had already reconciled himself to the probability that Martin was merely a prig, not a villain. Hartley could accept his brother’s friendship with a prig. “I do hope he isn’t dead.” That ought to have been a ludicrously inadequate sentiment, but Will nodded solemnly, so Hartley thought that perhaps he hadn’t missed the mark.
“Hart, I’m grieving him, but I don’t have a body to bury.” His voice cracked on the last words.
“He may be well,” Hartley offered weakly.
“And if he’s alive, then what I’m grieving is a friendship that isn’t what I thought it was.”
Hartley drew in a sharp breath at this acknowledgment. “If you see him...” Hartley paused in disbelief that he was going to say this. “If you see him and he needs anything, can you pretend to have saved up—really anybody who looks at you will believe that you don’t spend much—and then quietly take some of my money to give him? I mean, don’t tell him it’s from me. You can say you stole it from the prime minister or some Tory lord.”
“I don’t lie to Martin, but if he’s alive I might take you up on your offer. Uh, thanks, Hart. Decent of you.”
Hartley waved this away. “I know you don’t like coming to my house, but I have a very good cook who is bored of cooking only for me. I happen to know she has a massive gourd and a brace of partridges, and probably some other things besides that she’s planning to cook for tomorrow’s supper. It’s a lot for one person, but if I don’t sit down for supper, she and Alf won’t eat anything themselves.”
Will stared at him for a moment. “Very well,” he said finally. “I’ll oblige your cook by eating her supper.”
“Oh, also we have to eat in the kitchen because almost all my servants quit and I don’t like to make too much work.”
Will opened his mouth and then shut it again. “I was going to ask if you wanted to come with me to the next meeting of the Hampden Club, but perhaps you’d like to be the speaker.”
“Shut up, you. I’ll have nothing to do with your radicals.” But Hartley couldn’t stop himself from smiling.
Chapter Twenty
Hartley returned home to find Sadie in the kitchen, surrounded by about twenty pans of various sizes, two cloth-covered lumps of what he supposed was rising dough, and cuts of meat in assorted stages of preparation. The kitchen looked like a mess hall.
“Is anything amiss?” he ventured.
“No,” she bit out. A few strands of dark hair were coming down from her cap and her apron was askew. This was the first time since the night of her arrival that he had seen her even slightly disordered.
“Where’s Alf?” He had specifically told Alf not to leave Sadie alone.
“Gone to get Mistress Bradley.”
“Miss...” It took him a moment to understand that Mistress Bradley meant Kate. “Is it... um...” He gestured to Sadie’s stomach. He had never gestured to anyone’s midsection as often as he had since Sadie entered his household and it filled him with dread rather than relief that the reason for this delicacy was about to make its appearance.
She nodded curtly and resumed stirring what appeared to be a blancmange.
“Are you quite certain this is the time to prepare dinner?”
“Mr. Sedgwick,” she snipped. “I started these dishes earlier in the day with the hope that you and Alf might not starve during my lying in. If you’d rather I abandon my efforts and take to my bed, I can arrange for that.”
“Ah, no. Carry on,” he said quickly. “Thank you. Perhaps you’ll let me stir that pot while you attend to the goose?”
She turned away and gripped the edge of the table while Hartley looked on helplessly, then resumed plucking the goose. Hartley stirred the pot fervently.
“Can I get you anything?” Hartley asked after the third iteration of this pattern of table-gripping followed by furious goose-plucking. Sadie shook her head.
When Kate arrived with Alf in tow, Hartley fully expected her to take control of the situation. Instead, she watched Sadie for about half a minute, then gathered a basket of parsnips to peel. When Alf saw this, he whimpered. “You’re not going to do anything?” he asked.
“How old are you?” Kate asked.
“Eighteen this summer.” Hartley rather thought Alf meant this coming summer, but refrained from mentioning this.
“You can tell me how to do my job when you’re thirty and you’ve helped deliver over two hundred babies.” That got a choked laugh from Sadie. “Meanwhile, go get a cask of stout brown ale, the darker the better.”
Hartley fished some coins out of his purse to give Alf for the purchase, then resumed stirring the pot. An hour later, the motley array of pots and dishes had transformed itself into the beginnings of a minor feast, Hartley had learned that chopping a turnip involved taking one’s life into one’s own hands, and Sadie was still puttering about in the kitchen.
“I think we’re about done,” Kate said with an air of finality.
