Page 31 of A Gentleman Never Keeps Score
After having lived in London society for a few years, the only thing that Hartley now found surprising about Sir Humphrey’s parties was that the man had dared bring Hartley. The other gentlemen had brought women—courtesans, opera dancers, sometimes girls who had been more or less picked up off the street. Looking back, maybe the other men had thought Hartley was a guest. Or perhaps some of those men were planning to visit one another’s beds as surely as Sir Humphrey was going to visit Hartley’s; perhaps the women were nothing more than a screen. Hartley had since encountered some of those men and they had never alluded to Sir Humphrey or his parties; every last one of those men had cut Hartley dead after the letters became common knowledge. Now he wondered if they had secrets like Hartley’s own, and had cut him rather than be found guilty by association.
“It’s empty,” Sam said, unnecessarily.
“I suppose Martin sold off the furnishings.” He would have had to sell off everything not nailed down in order to pay off the legacy duties, Hartley supposed. “That’ll make it easier to search. We ought to check every room, one by one,” he whispered. Something about an empty house made him want to keep his voice low.
Sam nodded his agreement and they passed through the ground floor rooms in near silence. Hartley didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. The paintings could be on a wall, stacked on the floor, or even removed from the frames and rolled up. Had Sir Humphrey sent them here to adorn the walls during a party? Or had he some other motive in removing them from the London house? Was there a possibility that Martin had sold them after all, but somehow Hartley hadn’t found out?
With every door they opened, Hartley held his breath, not sure what he’d see on the other side. But so far there were only empty rooms.
“Hell of a lot of rooms,” Sam said, his voice low.
“This is nothing,” Hartley said. “It’s maybe a third of the size of the family’s principal seat in Cumberland.”
Sam muttered something about the guillotine that Hartley didn’t quite catch. “Is this how you grew up? In a place like this?”
Hartley had to stifle a laugh. “No. God no. I grew up in a sort of semi-genteel poverty. There were always too many mice and not enough beds to go around. Plenty of books but never any ready money at all. How I use to envy proper ladies and gentlemen.” He had imagined that anyone who lived in a decent house and had clean clothes would never have to worry about getting enough to eat. With a child’s belief in magic lamps and good fairies, he had thought that if only they were gentlemen, he and his brothers could be safe. So he had set about to make sure his brothers got to be gentlemen. All his worst choices, all the troubles that had been visited on him and his brothers, stemmed from that fundamental error. He supposed Ben was happy enough despite not having a penny to bless himself with. As for Will, he was infinitely worse off than he would have been if Hartley had never intervened, never begged Easterbrook to use his influence for Will’s advancement in the navy.
As they climbed the stairs to search the upper floors, a noise came from above.
“Probably rats,” Hartley whispered. Sam didn’t answer.
Hartley directed Sam to the room that had been his own. It was partly the instinct to walk a path he had followed many times before, but also a feeling of dreadful certainty in the pit of his stomach. The door was shut, of course, and when they opened it, the draft dislodged a cloud of dust that made them both cough into their sleeves. Before it cleared, Hartley had a fleeting sense of relief that he hadn’t come here alone. Sam’s solid presence beside him was a reassuring reminder that it was not seven years ago.
This room was empty too. Gone was the old-fashioned clothes press, white with gilt leaves painted on the edges. Gone was the spindle-legged writing table where he had penned cheerful letters home, assuring his brothers that he was having a jolly time with the toffs. Even the bed was gone. It ought to have been comforting to see that the room held nothing to remind him of his past, but instead it was disorienting. His memories became unmoored from reality and took on the cast of a troubled dream.
“You all right?” That was Sam, always checking on him.
“Not really, no.” He could have lied, could have said that he was perfectly well, that being in this house meant he was one step closer to getting what he wanted and that he was glad of it. But his heart was racing, his hands sweating inside his gloves, and he didn’t have the wherewithal to put up a front.
“I hear footsteps,” Sam hissed. “Someone’s here.”
Hartley heard the sound too. Footsteps upstairs, almost directly over his head. “You have time to leave, if you’re quick,” he whispered. “Leave the way we came. I’ll meet you back at the inn.” He could talk his way out of trouble with a caretaker or groundskeeper, he was certain of it. Failing that, he had brought enough money to make up a handsome bribe.
“Hartley,no.This house is empty. There are no paintings. We both need to get out of here.” Sam’s voice was an urgent whisper. “It could be a madman with a pistol. A gang of smugglers. You don’t know who’s been using this place. Come with me. Now.”
“Go. Please. I’ll be fine.” Surely he didn’t need to explain why Sam wouldn’t be safe. “Please,” he repeated.
“I’m not leaving you here, damn it.”
The footsteps were on this floor now, approaching them. Heavy footsteps. Boots, most likely. “It’s too late.” Hartley searched the room. “Get over there,” he said, gesturing to the curtains that covered a large window.
“Sod this all.” Sam sounded furious, but he got behind the curtains.
Hartley’s hands had stopped sweating and his heart had slowed down. He was much more at ease than he had been when they entered the room, far more at ease than he might have imagined he could be when about to be discovered midfelony. He patted the knife that he had brought with him to destroy the paintings. He’d wait for the footsteps to pass, and then he’d go room by room until he found the canvases.
The footsteps fell silent. Hartley was about to step out of the room and peer into the corridor when he saw the shadow in the doorway.
Chapter Thirteen
There was a gap between the curtains, just a hair’s breadth, but through it Sam could see Hartley. The man in the doorway remained frustratingly just out of view. For a moment the small cramped space turned into a corner of a boxing ring; the pounding of his heart and the rush of blood in his head became the cries and jeers of the crowd. Sam realized it was because he was ready to knock that stranger’s teeth out—his own bloodlust on Hartley’s behalf had put him back in the ring.
Sam remembered his da telling him to imagine that his opponent was someone who had done him wrong. But even when the other boxer repeated one of the uglier phrases shouted by the crowd, Sam didn’t want to strike him. Because if he started hitting everyone who looked down on him because of his race or his class, he’d wind up going on some kind of spree. And he knew men who had done exactly that. There were plenty of people all too ready to raise a hand for the wrong reasons, and Sam didn’t want to be one of them.
Despite all this, despite his loathing for violence and his relief to have done with that part of his life, if the man in the doorway took a single step closer to Hartley, Sam knew he would do whatever it took to keep Hartley safe, consequences be damned.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t furious at Hartley for not having left when Sam told him to. Now Sam was risking his safety, maybe even his life, to keep an eye on Hartley. No man was worth this kind of danger. If Sam were arrested for housebreaking, his family would never get over it. And if Hartley’s name was as much a byword for scandal as he claimed, then Sam could imagine what kind of construction would be put on today’s events. His family would never live it down. All the work he had put into the Bell would have been for naught. It wasn’t healthy to care enough about someone to want to take that kind of risk.
But as Sam watched, his heart was pounding so loudly it seemed a wonder that Hartley and the other man couldn’t hear it, Hartley’s expression shifted from tense watchfulness to bewildered relief.
