Page 9 of A Gentleman Never Keeps Score
Fox didn’t even twitch an eyebrow at this obvious lie, for which Hartley was grateful. “You ought to be.”
“Be that as it may, I’m choosing not to.” He had made plenty of bad decisions already; adding one more to the tally hardly seemed to matter. He got to his feet and walked to the window. The curtains were drawn, and it was too dark to see outside anyway. He smoothed his palms against the velvet of the curtains because it gave him something to do, something to feel other than the angry thudding of his heart. “It’s my neck.” The words came out snippier than he meant.
“All right, now. No worries.” The words were low and soothing and they came from right behind him. Hartley turned so his back was against the window. Fox stood about two feet away, slightly farther than normal speaking distance, but he was so large that he seemed to loom over Hartley. As if sensing his fear, Fox took a step back and held up his hands in surrender.
“You don’t need to do that,” Hartley said.
“Maybe not. I reckon there are a lot of things I don’t need to do. But I know what it looks like when a person is afraid, and it’s not something I fancy seeing.” There was something in the way he frowned that made Hartley think maybe Fox had his share of bad memories. And of course he did. Hartley knew he was hardly alone in misfortune, although lately his own troubles had consumed his thoughts like a nagging toothache—tiny, in the grand scheme of things, but really quite bad enough to be all one thought about.
“I’m not usually like this.” Hartley’s voice was a whisper.
Fox waited a moment before answering. “Like what?”
Jumpy as a cat? Snappish and clumsy and rude? Hartley didn’t even know where to start. “I’m usually very genteel,” he said with what he hoped was an obviously ironic sniff. “Sophisticated, even.”
Fox’s face broke into a wide grin, and Hartley realized it was the first time he had seen the man smile. One of his eye teeth was chipped and Hartley found he liked it. “Your waistcoat is buttoned wrong. Is that what the sophisticated gentlemen of London are doing this season?”
Hartley glanced down, squinted, and saw that Fox was right. “Oh blast. I need spectacles.” Or he needed another valet, but that was dashed unlikely. He bent his neck to see where he had gone wrong. Right at the top button. He was going to have to unbutton the whole thing and start over.
“Don’t,” Fox said, when Hartley had undone the top button.
“Pardon?”
“I really don’t care what state your buttons are in. And, besides, it’s—” He stopped abruptly, as if realizing that he shouldn’t end the sentence in whatever way he had been planning, which only made Hartley absolutely need to know what he hadn’t said.
“It’s what?”
“Rather... adorable, if I’m honest.”
Was Fox making an approach? If so, Hartley was on familiar—if uncomfortable—ground for the first time this evening. He cast his eyes down, then looked coyly up at the other man. “You can unbutton them yourself, if you like.” Scripted lines in a bad play, and he was weary of it all. It was a fool’s errand to try this again. It had been ages since he managed to go through with it; there had been a few moderately successful ventures after Easterbrook was through with him, when the pleasure had slightly outweighed the terror of the encounter. But in the three years since inheriting this house, he had hardly even wanted to try, and there was no reason to believe things would be different with Fox.
Fox didn’t move any closer, though. Instead he frowned. “I didn’t think you liked being touched.”
Perhaps he hadn’t been making an approach, which was rather mortifying. But how had Fox figured out Hartley’s problem? Probably when he had gone half off his head during last week’s brandy spill. “I don’t,” he said, pitching his voice low and trying to imbue it with as much of an invitation as he could muster, “but you can do it anyway.” That was what he had done in the span between Easterbrook’s death and inheriting the house: one-sided encounters where he let things happen to him.
Fox let out a sigh. “No, mate, that’s not what I want. I don’t want you to let me touch you. There’s no fun in it if I think you’re just going along with it.”
Hartley felt the words like a slap to the face even though Fox’s tone was kind. Fox’s gentle rejection was a stark reminder of everything Hartley had lost. He smiled tightly and thought of revenge.
Chapter Five
The sun rose on one of those perfectly crisp autumn days that made it hard to believe muck and fog were in the near future. Hartley considered staying in bed until the sun went away.
“You! Wake up!”
Hartley rolled over to see one of his few remaining servants looming over his bed. “Why?” he asked.
“The girls gave notice,” Alf said. “Their mum won’t let them come back. Said you’re depraved.”
Hartley rubbed his eyes. “That’s not giving notice,” he argued, sitting up. “That’s just quitting.” It was just past Michaelmas, one of the quarter days when servants typically came and went, so the departure of a few servants wouldn’t have mattered if he had any hope of replacing them.
“Right,” Alf said. “But where does that leave me?”
“Do you want to leave as well?” Then Hartley would be utterly alone in this house. “I’ll pay your wages through the next quarter.”
Alf rolled his eyes. “You don’t need to worry about my delicate sensibilities, mate.” When Hartley acquired Alf, the boy had been fifteen years old and loitering in an alleyway near the docks infamous for its supply of all manner of prostitutes. Hartley had gone there in one of his ill-fated attempts at liaison; Alf had said what was needful and named his price. Before matters went much further, Hartley saw that the boy was scarcely out of childhood, and offered him a pallet in the kitchen and work around the house.
“But I’m not doing your cooking,” Alf went on. “So either you hire a proper cook or we’re eating pie from that dodgy place in Moorfields you like so much.”
