Page 50 of A Gentleman Never Keeps Score
“I beg your—He’s never said anything of the sort to me,” Hartley protested. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe not. But here you are with your house and your cravats, gold coins falling out of your pockets—”
“Alfred, you are drunk.” He snatched the cup of ale away from the boy.
“Look, all I’m saying is that if I were to take up with a person, I’d want them to be my equal. Otherwise one person holds all the cards and it might start to seem more like the sort of thing I did at the docks and you did upstairs.”
Hartley sucked in a breath. He had to bear in mind that Alf was very young, and was likely letting his own experience color his judgment. “I should never have let you drink half this much,” Hartley managed, feeling his cheeks flame. “It seems the wildest flight of fancy on your part to imagine that any of this piddle has occurred to Sam. He’s a decent-minded person.”
“Oh mate.” Alf shook his head. “You have a bad case of it.”
“If he any reservations along those lines, he hasn’t said a single word about it.”
“What could he say about it? Oh Mr. Sedgwick, please renounce all your worldly goods so we can live in beautiful and noble squalor together.” He said this last sentence in a slightly mincing tone that Hartley suspected was supposed to be an imitation of his own accents.
“Utterly foxed,” Hartley muttered. But still, he suspected Alf was partly right, in that a person of Hartley’s class could hardly manage a lasting friendship with a person of a different background, let alone something more than a friendship. This, he told himself, was a point of merely theoretical interest: Sam surely was not looking for anything more complicated or enduring than their current arrangement. Hartley was perpetually struck with amazement that Sam wanted him around at all.
The night dragged interminably. Hartley filled Alf’s cup until the lad fell asleep in his chair, then proceeded to clean the kitchen. When the pots were scoured and the surfaces wiped, he was left with nothing to do, so he cleaned it all again. Muffled noises were coming from Sadie’s bedchamber and none of them sounded in the least promising.
“Don’t leave her,” Hartley said the second time Kate entered the kitchen in search of clean linens and broth for Sadie. “If you need something, shout for me and I’ll get it. Just don’t leave her.”
Kate tilted her head. “She’s strong, you know.”
“I do know. But she shouldn’t be alone. She ought to have her mother or her sister.” Not a confused employer and a snoring boy. “She deserves better.”
“Maybe you need to get rid of your idea of better. Your boots are better than mine, but they won’t fit my feet. So to hell with better. Your boots and your ‘better’ can both go fuck themselves. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m busy, and she’s busy—” she gestured at Sadie’s room “—and sodding everyone but you is busy. Go to sleep. There’ll be plenty of work that needs to be done tomorrow, and right now there’s nobody in this house that’s fit to do it.”
Hartley was not going to be able to sleep and he saw little point in even making the attempt. How could anyone sleep under these conditions? Sadie might die. Her baby might never live. It was appalling that this was how people came into being and Hartley had a mind to lodge a complaint, or, since that was not possible, to weep onto someone’s shoulder.
Hartley checked that Alf was safely arranged on his chair, grabbed his topcoat, and headed outdoors. He didn’t even need to think about where he was going; there was only one possibility, late though it was. If the windows above the Bell were dark, he’d go back home, he decided. But there was a flicker of lamplight inside, and when he knocked on the door it wasn’t long before he heard footsteps.
Sam was sweeping bits of crumbled brick and soot from the floor around the hearth when he heard a quiet tapping on the door.
“The hell?” Nick asked. “It’s gone midnight. There’s somebody at the door every night these days. It’s no better than running a cathouse.”
“Might be Kate,” Sam pointed out. He swept the soot into a tidy pile and was about to dump it into the dustbin when he heard Hartley’s voice.
“Is Sam in?”
“Yeah, he’s in. Don’t know where else he’d be at this hour,” Nick said. “But he’s about to go to bed and so am I, so—”
“It’s fine, Nick,” Sam said, approaching the door. “This is Kate’s friend, Hartley.”
“That’s right,” Nick said, realization dawning. He held the door open for Hartley to enter, then shut it against the chill of the night. “She said she was going to your... who is she, now?”
“My friend,” Hartley said. “Sadie is my friend.” There was a moment of empty silence as it seemed to occur to Hartley that he needed to explain why he was here at such an hour. Sam wracked his brain to come up with an excuse, but he wasn’t cut out for deceit. Inspiration struck Hartley first. “Kate sent me for a cask of ale,” he said, and Sam wouldn’t have known it for a lie if he hadn’t sent Alf home with a full cask of their best porter only a few hours ago. But it was as good an excuse as any.
“I’ll get it sorted,” Sam started to say, but they were interrupted by a loud, echoing clatter that began deep within the bowels of the building and culminated in a crash and puff of soot.
“That’s another one,” Sam said with a sigh. “And I just finished sweeping up.”
“Makes three tonight,” Nick said.
“We’ll get the sweep in again tomorrow, I suppose.”
“Wait. You’ve had three bricks fall from the chimney tonight?” Hartley asked. “That’s not a good sign.” Nick shot Sam a glance because that’s exactly what Nick had been saying all day, only Sam wouldn’t listen.
In the near darkness, Sam regarded Hartley levelly before turning to his brother. “I’ve got this, Nick. There’s nothing more we can do tonight. Why don’t you go to Kate’s rooms so you’ll be there when she gets home?”
