Page 32 of A Gentleman Never Keeps Score
“Will?” he asked. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”
“Really?” The other man sounded exasperated, rather than upset. “Pretty sure that’s my line, Hart.” Sam wasn’t sure who this Will was, but it seemed that he and Hartley knew one another well.
“I’m here to destroy some paintings,” Hartley said with a shrug.
“Paintings,” the other man repeated, sounding confused. Sam gathered that Will didn’t know what kind of paintings Hartley was searching for. “I won’t ask why. I’ll assume you break into places whenever the spirit moves you. And maybe you do, for all I know. But you can see for yourself that this house doesn’t have anything in it. I’ve been over it with a fine-tooth comb.”
“Whyareyou here, Will?” Hartley asked.
There was a silence that lasted a few beats too long. “I’m looking for Martin.”
Hartley’s sharp intake of air was loud in the empty room. “I should have guessed. I thought you had gotten past that. After what he did to me, I thought—well, never mind.”
“Jesus. Why will you not listen to reason about this?” Will’s frustration made it clear this was a topic they had discussed many times. “He’s not responsible for what his father did.”
“He exposed me, Will. That was his own doing.”
“That doesn’t make any sense! His father’s reputation was the last thing he had. Why would he throw that away? He has nobody, Hart. He’s alone. He doesn’t have anyone who cares about him, and he never has.”
“Except you,” Hartley interjected, his mouth curling into a sneer.
“I’m looking for him because I’m afraid he’s done something stupid.”
“I hope he has.” Hartley’s voice dripped with venom.
“We can’t see eye to eye there,” Will said. “I can’t find him. And he’s all alone. Hartley, he has nobody, and you have so many people if you only looked around.”
Hartley gave a bitter laugh. “I haven’t had a single caller at my house in months.” Sam felt Hartley’s words like a slap. He had suspected that he didn’t count as anything in Hartley’s life, not as a visitor, not as a friend, certainly not as anything more; he was a bit of rough trade, and now he was hearing it for himself. This was the man Sam had been willing to risk his neck for.
“You have Ben and Percy and Lance, which you might know if you ever bothered to answer their letters. Ben is worried sick. And I suspect you also have whoever the fellow is in the window.”
Sam had to give Hartley credit; he didn’t even glance in the direction of the window. He was a born deceiver, and it made Sam smile inwardly despite his sense of betrayal. Hartley raised his eyebrows. “Back at the opium, are you?” And there it was, more of that casual cruelty in Hartley’s voice. Sam hardly knew how to reconcile that coldness with the kind words and gentle touches they had shared last night.
Sam could hear Will suck in a breath. “I see that we’re done here. I’m leaving. Call on me in London, Hart. I miss you.”
Hartley didn’t respond to that. Sam waited until the footsteps had died away before shoving the curtains aside, feeling like a fool. But Hartley was now sitting on the floor, his knees drawn up and his head cradled in his arms, and Sam couldn’t stop himself from crouching beside him, wrapping his arm around Hartley’s shoulders, offering whatever comfort he could.
“I’m getting you out of this house,” Sam growled, pulling Hartley to his feet. “And then we’re talking.” He made it sound like a threat, but Hartley was too worn out to complain; besides, he liked the feel of Sam’s arm around his shoulders as they left the bedroom.
The sun was high in the sky when they stepped outside. Somehow it was only noon. Hartley winced at the light; he felt as though he had spent hours in the dusty shadows of Friars’ Gate, but it couldn’t have been more than ninety minutes.
“That was your brother?” Sam asked when they reached the edge of the woods where they had left the hamper from the inn.
“One of them. I have a lot of brothers.”
“He must be one you’re not particularly close with, I suppose, seeing as how you’ve never mentioned him and he’s mates with your godfather’s son?”
“We’re close.” Hartley sat on the ground, not caring about the state of his trousers. “Or, we were.” When had things gone so drastically wrong? It had been two weeks since he had seen Will, and they lived in the same city.
Sam sat beside him, leaning his back against a tree. He didn’t angle himself toward Hartley or place his hand palm up beside him. He didn’t do any of the things that silently let Hartley know that touching was an option, should Hartley be so inclined. Hartley hadn’t realized how much he depended on this silent conversation of unspoken questions until it was absent. Sam’s body was oddly rigid against Hartley’s, and he didn’t know why. He supposed he had bungled something, stepped on Sam’s toes, said something unfeeling. Somewhere along the way, Hartley had lost the knack for friendship, if he had ever had it to begin with. He thought of the pile of letters on his desk, thought of how he had just treated Will with deliberate callousness.
He took a long drink from the jug of brown ale that the innkeeper’s wife had tucked into the picnic basket. “I’ll visit my godfather’s solicitor,” Hartley said. “He must know something.”
“About what?”
“The paintings,” Hartley answered, holding out the jug to Sam. “Isn’t that what we were talking about?”
Sam shook his head and waved away the offer of ale. “Forget about the paintings. You don’t know where they are and you’re not going to get them back.”
