Page 51 of A Gentleman Never Keeps Score
Hartley shifted awkwardly while Nick took a coat off the hook near the door and disappeared outside.
“What’s this really about?” Sam asked. “You have me worried.”
“I’m really sorry,” Hartley said. “I was careless. I wanted to see you, but I didn’t think anybody other than you would open the door. It was reckless, which was just the thing you were scolding me about the other day and I’m so sorry.” His words came out in a rush and ended on a half sob.
“Shh.” Sam came near but didn’t touch the other man. “What’s the matter?”
“Sadie’s having the baby and I’m worried sick.” Hartley’s brow was furrowed with worry, and by the light of the guttering candle, his eyes shone. He usually did such a thorough job of tucking all his feelings out of sight that Sam was startled by the sight of him in distress.
“Has Kate said anything about it not going well?”
“No, no, nothing like that. I just—I don’t want anything to happen to Sadie. Sam, I really shouldn’t have come. Now your brother will know and if anyone saw me come here they’ll know too.” He stepped close enough for Sam to hear when his breath hitched. Sam opened his arms in invitation, and Hartley tucked his head under Sam’s chin, wrapping his arms around Sam’s neck.
“You can always come to me,” Sam spoke into Hartley’s hair, his arms around the other man’s back, holding him close.
“No, I can’t. It’s not safe. I must have been half mad.”
Sam guessed that Hartley had started to worry about Sadie and then the worry started to gather speed like a cart rolling downhill. This didn’t have to do with him, but with Hartley being out of practice in feeling things and caring for people. “Hart, when I told you I wanted you to stay safe, I meant not to get yourself hurt or arrested. There’s nothing wrong with coming here. People come here all hours of the night and day.”
“You don’t let them in at this hour.”
“I can let in whoever I want.”
“If anybody knew me, they’d wonder about you, and you don’t need that. Your brother, Sam. How long do you think it’ll take him to figure out why I came to you? Or what about that constable you told me about?”
Sam’s heart thudded at the idea of Merton seeing Hartley leaving the Bell in the middle of the night, long past closing. “Nick bought your line about the ale,” Sam said, because it was the only answer he could make.
Hartley pulled away, letting the cold air slide between their bodies. “Eventually he’ll figure it out.”
“No, he won’t. I’m careful. And even if he did, he wouldn’t say anything, even to me.” Nick wasn’t nosy, he didn’t ask questions. But what if he did find out? Sam couldn’t quite imagine a world in which Nick knew that Sam went to bed with men, even less one where Nick knew Sam went to bed with a rich, dandified gentleman.
Hartley gave a wintry smile, as if he knew Sam was conceding the point. “I see how it will go,” he said. “You’re such a bad liar, you know. He’d start to wonder. And you’d be ashamed of me.”
“I would never—”
Hartley held up a finger. “Not of me, per se. But of the need to keep a secret. It would weigh on you, because you’re an honest man, and you’re close to your brother. And I would resent you, because I’d envy that you have the option of secrecy.”
Sam was about to protest when he was interrupted by the sound of another brick clattering into the hearth. They both stood wordless for a moment, listening to a peculiar creaking coming from above.
“Sam,” Hartley said. “I don’t think this chimney is safe. We really ought to get out of here.”
The sweep had assured him that the bricks that had fallen were old, not part of the chimney stack. Sam had no idea what that meant. But since the alternative was to believe that the chimney was unsound, and about to topple down and destroy the Bell, he had chosen to believe the sweep. But this time there was a sound like a groaning, deep from within the walls of the Bell. And with it came an echoing clatter, then something was falling from above. The next thing he knew, Hartley wasn’t in his arms, but on the floor.
He scooped Hartley up in his arms, dimly aware that this was the first time he had held his lover so close. The next moments were a vague rush of hollered orders. “The chimney is collapsing,” he shouted into the empty street. A head poked through an upper story window, and then the street was filled with people in nightcaps and hastily donned clothes who either wanted to be clear of the buildings adjoining the Bell or who wanted to watch the spectacle of a building being destroyed.
“I need a doctor,” he shouted. In the moonlight he could see that there was blood on Hartley’s head, but that he wasn’t out cold. His eyelids fluttered and his mouth moved slightly, as if he were trying to talk. Sam knew well what serious blows to the head looked like, and this wasn’t one. But it was still bad, and it was his fault.
It took less time than Sam might have imagined for a building to be destroyed. Until there was no more noise from the Bell, no more clattering bricks, no more heaving groans, he held Hartley close; half his attention was on what used to be the Bell, the other half on the man in his arms. When everything was silent except the voices of the people in the street, he could almost convince himself that it was safe to return, that he had imagined the falling bricks. If it weren’t for the weight of the man in his arms reminding him of the seriousness of the danger, he might have gone back inside.
“Now, what’s going on here?” said a sneering voice.
Sam looked away from Hartley’s to see Constable Merton.
“The chimney is collapsing, and this man was hit by a falling brick.” There was blood on Hartley’s forehead, just a trickle but enough to stain his hair dark.
“At one in the morning? You ought to have closed hours ago.” He held his lantern up to examine Hartley’s face. “He doesn’t look like the sort of man to be prowling about after hours in taverns like yours.”
Sam could not believe he had to explain this when what he really needed was to bring Hartley to a medical man. “He came after hours to get a cask of ale for a laboring mother. The midwife sent him.”
