Page 33 of A Gentleman Never Keeps Score
So, it wasyounow instead ofwe. Hartley put the stopper back in the bottle. “I thought you wanted Kate’s painting.” Hartley’s voice sounded small and peevish.
“I did, but not anymore. Kate would have my hide if she knew what we just did.”
“That’s fine,” Hartley said. “I can manage it on my own.”
Sam made a sound of frustration. “Are you going to spend the rest of your life alone in your grand house, scheming to get those paintings back? You’re what, two and twenty?”
“Three and twenty.”
“Do you have any reason to think you won’t live for another half century? Are you going to spend all that time alone in your house?”
“I want to go away,” Hartley said, the idea occurring simultaneously to the words leaving his mouth. “I’ve never been to Paris. Or really anywhere at all.” During the past two days away from London he felt as if a weight had been removed from his chest. He wasn’t certain exactly what he wanted to run away from, only that the prospect of doing so was soothing. “Would you come with me? Someplace warm, perhaps.” A terrible idea, an utter fantasy. But he could imagine weeks and months of lazy picnics with Sam, nothing to do but amuse themselves and explore one another. He wanted that daydream of a future more than he had wanted anything in a long while. “Italy,” he said, remembering how he had once meant to run off to a place with blue seas and cheap wine.
“I can’t afford to bugger off to Europe,” Sam said slowly.
“I’d pay your way, naturally,” Hartley said quickly.
Sam regarded him with an expression that Hartley couldn’t quite decipher. “I have the Bell.”
“You could hire someone to cover while you’re gone.” Hartley looked eagerly up into Sam’s face, and was perplexed not to see answering enthusiasm. “I’d pay for that too.” He didn’t have unlimited funds, but surely money went farther on the Continent than it did in England, which was why people were always running off there. He would have to figure out how that worked.
“It’s not that simple.”
Hartley couldn’t see why not, but he nodded anyway. “No, no, of course not. I thought you might like a break.”
“A break?” Sam repeated the words as if they were an insult. “I earn my keep. I do my job. I have a place in the world, even though there are plenty of people who don’t want me to have that much. And that place is the Bell. That’s where my life is. There’s Nick and Kate, my aunts and cousins and everybody else. It’s where I do some good.” He said those last words with a ferocity Hartley had never heard from him. “And you want me to walk away from it, as if none of that matters to me. It sure as hell doesn’t matter to you.”
“Of course it—”
“And all that when not an hour ago you told your brother nobody had visited you in months. Either you like lying or you don’t count me as a person.”
Hartley froze. “Of course I count you as a person. When I said visitors, I meant—” Too late, he realized he had no way to end the sentence that didn’t put Sam into a different category of person than himself. “I meant ladies and gentlemen, all right?” Hartley was a gentleman, however loose his upbringing, however disgraced his current status. Sam wasn’t. “I meant people from my old life.” The people who gave him the cut direct when they passed in the street.
“You meant your equals, which I’m not. True enough.” Sam’s usually warm, open features were closed and hard. He was angry. And Hartley had earned that anger. Really, he ought to be accustomed to being the object of contempt or disdain, but there were some things a person couldn’t get used to. And some sad, pitiful part of him had been so glad that Sam liked him despite knowing what a mess he was.
Hartley sighed, resigned. He pulled his gloves out of his pocket and began tugging them onto his hands. “I don’t know what to say to that,” he said, smoothing the soft leather over his fingers, carefully fastening the buttons. He didn’t know what Sam wanted to hear, but he had a sinking feeling that whatever it was, he couldn’t say it.
“Listen, Hartley, I don’t want to spend time with people who don’t count me as their equal.”
“I do! You are!” Hartley protested. He clenched his gloved hands in his lap.
“When you told Will that nobody had visited you, it sounded like you meant it.”
“Honestly, Will isn’t even my social equal, so I don’t know what you’re going on about.” Hartley felt Sam’s body go rigid beside him.
“Jesus, Hartley.” Sam was on his feet now. “Let’s go back to the inn.”
Every spot on Hartley’s body where they had been touching now felt like it had been plucked bare. He rubbed his side. “I didn’t mean—”
“I’d stop,” Sam snapped. “You’re not going to make it better.”
Hartley half wanted to admit that while he had spent his entire adulthood as a gentleman, despite being all too conscious that he hadn’t come by that designation properly, he now doubted what that status was even worth. It certainly wasn’t doing him any good. The only people he spoke to these days were Alf, Will, Kate, and Sam. All were decidedly not gentry.
But Sam had already started toward the inn, the picnic basket hefted in one strong arm. They walked back in silence.
Chapter Fourteen
Hartley had been prepared to retreat to the house on Brook Street and lick his wounds. He had no reason to leave; he had surprisingly excellent meals brought to him regularly and he subscribed to a lending library, so perhaps he’d simply spend the remainder of his three score and ten as a hermit. At the back of his mind he suspected that most recluses either enjoyed solitude or found it spiritually fulfilling, whereas Hartley, having grown up in a busy household and seldom even having a bedchamber to himself until he moved into this house, found solitude somewhat disturbing. Silence let his mind swarm with unwanted thoughts; solitude filled the room with the difficulties of his own flesh.
