A Gentleman Never Keeps Score

by Cat Sebastian

  “They were not present in the house when my clerk did an inventory a week after Sir Humphrey’s death,” the solicitor said grudgingly. “I know nothing more.”

  “Thank you kindly,” Hartley said, rising to his feet and executing a perfectly proper bow.

  He hailed a hackney. At least hackney drivers weren’t above taking his money, and that had to be worth something. He thought about directing the driver to Will’s lodgings, because it would be good to see someone who didn’t despise him. But his brother’s lodgings—God, his entire life—were dismal. Hartley didn’t think he could stomach dreariness today.

  Instead he went home, heard that the footman had given notice, and proceeded to make a list of places Sir Humphrey’s paintings could be. Now with even the sorry remains of his old life crumbling around him, exacting this small bit of justice for himself seemed even more necessary.

  Chapter Four

  It was an hour past sunset, but there was no light in any of Sedgwick’s windows when Sam approached. This was the servants’ day out, he recalled, but surely that didn’t mean gentlemen sat around in the dark. He could have spent the rest of the evening deciding between going to the front door (which, he reasoned, would be convenient for a gentleman without any servants to answer himself) or the kitchen door (which was where everybody who wasn’t a toff went on a street like this one). In the end he flipped a coin and went to the mews behind the house.

  He had to knock several times before he heard footsteps. Sedgwick opened the door, his slim figure a mere silhouette against the background of an even darker room. Sam caught a scent that had to be the man’s perfume—perfume, indeed. It ought to have reminded him of how very irrelevant and out of place Mr. Hartley Sedgwick was to him, but instead he found himself taking a deep breath to fill his nostrils with the scent of . . . green woods. And fine candles. He liked it, more’s the pity.

  He realized he had been standing there in the doorway without saying anything for a full half minute. He cleared his throat. “It’s Samuel Fox.”

  Mr. Hartley Sedgwick gave a laugh that sounded strained and nervous. “I know who you are. Come in.”

  They passed through the dark and chilly kitchens and up a set of stairs to the same room they had sat in the last time. It was the library, he supposed, although there weren’t so many books. Sam had thought libraries were supposed to have thousands of volumes, piled right up to the rafters. And even though he couldn’t fathom what any right-thinking person was supposed to do with so many books, he still felt this room to be a bit of a disappointment with its bare shelves. There was also a small table, a pair of hard chairs, and a sofa that had every sign of never having been sat on. Before the hearth lay a rug he supposed had cost a pretty penny even though it was ugly as sin, and in front of the windows hung dark red drapes that probably blocked out all the light during the day. It was not Sam’s idea of a comfortable room, certainly not what he’d want for himself in the imaginary world where he had money for extra rooms. For all he knew, this house had an endless succession of far better and more comfortable chambers, and he was only allowed in the worst of the lot.

  He sat in one of the chairs while Sedgwick prodded the fire with a brass-handled poker. He was in a getup every bit as fussy as the last time. Close-fitting coat, waistcoat glinting with silk thread, pantaloons clinging to his slight form. Sam could have spent a happy hour contemplating the sight of his pantaloons. Virtuously, he dragged his gaze back up to safer ground, landing at that waistcoat. Twelve buttons, six on each side. Not gold this time, but ivory or maybe bone. Whatever it was caught the firelight and made the lad look like he had twelve moons marching up and down the length of his chest. Except—Sam squinted—the waistcoat was buttoned wrong. One of the buttons had gotten into the wrong hole. The rest of the man’s dress was flawless, and it was odd nobody had mentioned the button. Didn’t gentlemen have people to sort out their buttons? Surely they had looking glasses. Hell, Sam had neither and still managed to get his buttons where they belonged, and if he had so much as a spot of soup on his shirt he heard about it from six people before noon. Something about the imperfection, juxtaposed with the plain finickiness of the fellow’s grooming and attire, endeared him to Sam. His mouth quirked into an involuntary smile.

  “So.” Mr. Sedgwick finally ceased prodding the fire, which had been blazing quite sufficiently even before his efforts, and sat in the chair across from Sam. “I’m fairly certain the paintings are at Friars’ Gate, which was Sir Humphrey Easterbrook’s shooting box in Sussex. He used that house to host some of his more, ah, specialized house parties, and if he were to have sent the paintings anywhere, it may well have been there.” He straightened his cuffs and smoothed the front of his waistcoat, as if accounting for all his buttons. When he reached for a stack of papers that rested on a nearby table, something went wrong and the papers fell to the ground. Sam moved quickly to catch them before they landed in the fire, taking care not to get too close to Sedgwick lest he frighten the man as he had the last time. He collected the pages nearest to him and let Sedgwick manage those closer to his own feet.

  “Ah. Yes. Thank you,” Sedgwick said when he once again had all the papers in his hand. With one hand he gripped the papers so tightly they wrinkled under his fingers, and with the other he fidgeted with the hem of his coat.

  Sedgwick had suggested that Easterbrook used the place for rude parties, and Sam wondered whether Sedgwick had been there as a guest or something more complicated, but he held his tongue. Instead he asked, “Do you know the people who live there now?” If Sedgwick knew whoever occupied this house, then maybe they could resolve this with some plain speech and a bit of money. Sam had a bit laid by and figured getting rid of this painting would be a fine wedding present for Kate.

  “It’s likely unoccupied. The house is part of the entailed estate, so it can’t have been sold. The owner—my godfather’s son—is on the Continent. I suppose there may be a tenant, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

  Sam frowned. “Do you plan to break into the house and see for yourself whether the painting is there?”

  “Well, yes, unless you have a better proposal.” Sedgwick thumbed through his stack of papers and pulled out a single sheet. “This is the plan of Friars’ Gate. It’s been years since I visited, so the rendering isn’t perfect, but it’s the general lay of the land, at least. It ought to be of some use in figuring out the best way in.”

  Sam took the sheet of heavy cream-colored paper. The rooms were neat boxes, with windows and doors carefully sketched in. He had even drawn trees and shrubberies around the outside. Items were neatly labeled in the darkest indigo ink with an even, feathery hand. It was the finest thing Sam was like to lay his hands on this twelvemonth, and it was the map of a house he was meant to burgle in a quest for lewd paintings.

  “You say this is a shooting box? What’s that?”

  “A small house gentlemen use for shooting parties. It’s just a country house by another name.” Sedgwick said this without any surprise at Sam’s ignorance. Which was good, because Sam thought it was daft to call a house as large as the one sketched out before him—eight bedrooms upstairs, not counting servants’ quarters—a box. He reminded himself that rich people, including the pretty one sitting across from him, were a puzzle he didn’t want to solve. Even if they did have misbuttoned waistcoats.

  Sam filled his lungs with air. “I can’t be breaking into houses in the countryside. That’s not on the table. If anyone sees me, they’ll know I’m the only black man within miles. Even if I’m not, they’ll tell themselves I am, because I’m a stranger. And the whole point of my finding out what happened to this painting is to make life easier for my family, which won’t happen if I’m hanged for a thief. I’m grateful for your help but I can’t take this kind of risk.” Sam prepared himself to be dismissed.

  Sedgwick didn’t answer right away. Instead he nodded slowly. “I see,” he said. “Quite right.” He pursed his lips in a way
that sent Sam’s thoughts careening wildly away from fears of arrest. “Didn’t think of that. I’ll come up with something else, then.” He got to his feet again and started pacing. “Drink? I have brandy but I also brought up some ale, if that’s what you fancy.”

  “I’ll have brandy, thank you.” It was an odd thing to have somebody pour his drink for him, especially a man like this one. “I drink a lot of ale and beer. I keep a public house.”

  “Do you?” Sedgwick looked interested as he gracefully poured two glasses of brandy. “Where?”

  “Near Fleet Street.” Sam wasn’t quite sure why he didn’t just tell him that it was the Bell off Fetter Lane, but it felt safer not to, as if giving Sedgwick the Bell’s name and address would make it easier for the man to slip unwanted into Sam’s thoughts while he worked. Sam thanked him for the brandy and took a long sip, trying his best to keep his eyes on the liquid in his glass instead of on the man in front of him.

  Hartley drained his glass, feeling the warmth of the brandy hit his stomach with acute relief. He had been on edge all day, partly because planning a felony was something new to sink his teeth into, and partly because he knew he was looking forward to seeing Sam Fox again. He had a healthy distrust of large men, but when Fox tried to keep him safe during their first meeting in the mews, it had sent Hartley’s carefully constructed defenses toppling to the ground. Hartley had to bite back a smile whenever he thought of how Fox had so helpfully tried to tell him where he might look for men to keep him company. As if Hartley didn’t know exactly where to go for that sort of thing. But Fox had been sweet about it, and sweetness wasn’t something Hartley had come to expect from men, or really from anybody at all. That tiny bit of kindness had done something to ease Hartley’s usual discomfort, but without the customary edge of fear, he was experiencing something close to attraction to the man.

  No, not close to attraction. It was the real thing. Hartley took in the sight of Sam Fox, trousers straining over thickly muscled thighs, sleeves shoved back a bit to reveal strong forearms. And he was handsome. Lord, was he handsome. True, his nose had been broken a couple of times but it somehow suited him, as if everyone walking around with straight noses had resorted to something embarrassingly obvious. He wore his hair cropped so close to his scalp that Hartley wondered if he sometimes had his head shaved, and that suited him too. Everything about him, from his head to his boots, was utilitarian; not shabby so much as having the air of a body that was well lived in.

  At that moment Fox glanced up and caught Hartley watching him, but his eyes didn’t betray any distaste. Hartley did not want to dwell on the fact that he could no longer differentiate between the absence of distaste and actual interest. He suspected, based on Fox’s knowledge of establishments such as the Cross Keys, that his tastes might not differ greatly from Hartley’s own. That didn’t mean he wanted anything to do with Hartley, however, and as Hartley wasn’t going to bed with anybody, it wasn’t worth thinking about. Still, he smoothed back a lock of hair from his forehead as he caught the man’s eye.

  “So,” he said, settling back into his chair, crossing his legs before him with only a little bit of exaggerated grace. “I’ll slip into the house and take the painting myself.” Strictly speaking, he didn’t need Fox there, although if he correctly remembered childhood mischief, sneaking in and out of buildings was always easier with someone to hoist one up through high windows. Going it alone, on the other hand, would make it less awkward to accomplish some other petty acts of revenge while he was there. “But how will I know which is the painting of your friend?”

  There was a slight pause before the man answered. “How many paintings of naked girls do you suppose there are?”

  Hartley laughed, and he wasn’t sure whether he was nervous or amused. “Enough so that I won’t be able to carry them all out myself.” Naked girls and at least one naked boy; Easterbrook’s tastes were eclectic.

  “Christ. What kind of bastard was this fellow?”

  “Oh, a thoroughgoing one, I assure you. I could, I suppose, burn the canvases, but smoke coming out of the chimney of an empty house would draw rather more attention than I’d like. Or,” he mused, tapping his fingers to his lips, “I could use a knife.” That would be pleasantly violent. “Perhaps you could tell me what the painting looked like.” Hartley tried to remember the details of some of the portraits, but it had been long ago, and he had always made such an effort to avoid looking at the walls. “Is there any chance she posed with a tiger rug? I vaguely recall one like that.”

  “Couldn’t tell you. Never saw it. And I wouldn’t like to ask my friend the details.” He swirled the brandy in his glass, the tumbler dwarfed by his large hand. “She’s black. Not as dark as me, but there’d be no mistaking her painting as one of a white girl, I don’t think.”

  Hartley was not in the practice of being charitable, but he felt a sense of allegiance with Mr. Fox’s friend. If life as an outcast was unsavory for a gentleman of means, then it would be downright dangerous for a woman of the class likely to be on intimate terms with Mr. Fox. “You’d imagine that would narrow down the field, but with Easterbrook it wouldn’t. He liked to collect paintings of people who wouldn’t otherwise pose for him.” Hartley had never quite understood the man’s motives in wanting lewd portraits of respectable shopkeepers’ daughters, but chalked it up to Easterbrook being generally awful.

  Fox nodded. “Before you go breaking into houses, don’t you want to be sure the paintings weren’t sold? Or given away?”

  “I’m almost positive they haven’t changed hands,” Hartley assured him. “Or, if they were, not in England.”

  Fox’s brow furrowed skeptically. “How can you be so sure?”

  “I called on the agents who handle that sort of painting, and they hadn’t bought anything from Easterbrook.” That had been a bizarre series of errands, the strangest aspect being that the dealers in obscene art were the only people who had treated him better than a leper in weeks. It had been an odd reminder that there were shadowy corners of London where he might build a life for himself, if only he could make peace with having lost his old life. But he didn’t want to make peace with the wrongs that had been done him. Today his thoughts were trained on revenge, and it was the closest thing to peace he had felt in a long while.

  “Honestly,” he continued, fiddling with a button on the underside of his sleeve, “if they were anywhere that people saw them, I’d have found out almost immediately.” One of the paintings, albeit one that had been kept within a private cabinet in Easterbrook’s bedchamber rather than the more public library, was of Hartley himself, and he hadn’t changed so greatly since sixteen that he would be unrecognizable. If the paintings had changed hands, the whispers about him would have been very pointed indeed, and Philpott wouldn’t have been confused when Hartley asked about the art collection. “If you, ah, understand my meaning.”

  Fox regarded him with warm brown eyes. “I don’t, but I don’t need to, do I?” There was no pity there, no contempt, only the understanding that Hartley had secrets, the understanding that a man was allowed his share of things that didn’t bear talking about.

  Hartley swallowed. “No, I suppose not.” He considered telling Fox everything, letting him know exactly who he was getting mixed up with. He had no reason to believe that Fox would be repulsed by him even if he possessed all the sordid details of Hartley’s past. But if Fox really wanted to know, he could find out easily enough without Hartley having to talk about it.

  “All right then,” Fox said, slapping his thighs in a way that suggested he thought it was high time that they be getting on with things. “I can’t let you steal the painting for me. It’s not fair for you to do all the dirty work. What do you get out of it?”

  Hartley pressed his lips together into a mirthless smile. “Trust me that I’d get something out of it. You’ve only given me an idea that would likely have occurred to me sooner or later.” For two months he had been thinking of revenge, and now he ha
d a way to chase after it. Destroying the paintings would do Martin no harm, and nothing would ever again harm Sir Humphrey, but Hartley decided that destroying the paintings had the flavor of revenge, and revenge was a taste he was increasingly hungry for. “And I just realized I can bring mineral spirits. That’ll nicely ruin the paintings without going to the trouble of burning them or the effort of slicing them apart. Or a pail of paint. See, I can manage this on my own quite nicely.”

  Fox looked skeptical. “You’ll need a lookout.”

  Hartley waved his hand dismissively. “I’m not worried about being caught.”

  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.