Sam didn’t know how much time passed afterward with Hartley’s forehead resting on Sam’s knee, Sam sifting strands of pale hair through his fingers. When they fumbled for handkerchiefs and cleaned themselves up, that ought to have brought an end to the moment they were sharing, but Hartley still didn’t stand.
“You can stay,” Sam offered. “It’s late.”
“I can’t. I mean, thank you. But I wouldn’t be able to sleep. And I really need to sleep.”
Sam held his hand out to help Hartley stand up. Hartley didn’t take it, but he also didn’t step away, and Sam told himself that was fine. “I’d like to walk you home. I know you can take care of yourself . . .”
Hartley let out a long, soft sigh. “I really can’t, though,” he said with such an air of defeat that Sam wanted to fold him into his arms.
They walked the distance mainly in silence. The rain had abated into a heavy mist that muffled noise and deepened shadows, creating the illusion that they were alone in the middle of the city.
“I’ll call on you next Sunday,” Sam said when they got to the kitchen door. “Same time.”
Hartley nodded.
Sam glanced around. The lane was empty and dark, and they were in a place that would be sheltered from anyone who happened to be looking out a window. “Can I kiss you?”
In the moonlight he could see Hartley frown. “I think it’s best that we don’t.”
Well, that would have put Sam in his place if he had been forming illusions about the nature of their relationship.
“Stop that,” Hartley said, as if he knew what Sam was thinking. “What I meant is, I can cope with small touches that are relevant to orgasms. Kissing isn’t.”
Sam raised both eyebrows. “I don’t know, Hartley. Your lips felt pretty relevant on my cock just now.”
Hartley laughed, a surprisingly husky rumble. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
Smiling at one another in the lonely, midnight shadows of an empty alleyway, not kissing or touching or even speaking, was somehow more intimate than anything Sam had shared with a lover. It felt precious and dangerous, baffling and strange, and judging by the look of acute confusion that replaced the smile on Hartley’s face, Sam was not the only one to feel that way.
Chapter Ten
Sam hadn’t expected Hartley to turn up at the Bell again. Maybe he still thought Hartley above a place like the Bell. Maybe he thought Hartley considered himself above a friendship with someone like Kate.
But there the two of them were, cozied up at table in the warmest corner, sharing a pork pie Nick had made that morning. Hartley was wearing one of those waistcoats with a good dozen buttons. Since meeting him, Sam had been obsessively counting the waistcoat buttons of every man he met, and now knew to a certainty that Hartley had twice as many as anyone else. Did he have his waistcoats specially made? Then he realized he was being daft, because of course a man like Hartley had everything made special for him.
If he was honest, he wasn’t quite comfortable having Hartley in the Bell. First, because he was afraid that by some stray look or word, one of them would inadvertently give away the truth of their relationship. Second, because it was odd to see anyone as rich as Hartley in the Bell. But mainly because it was a strange collision of his worlds to see Hartley here, his silver-blond head bent toward Kate’s dark curls.
The Bell was Sam’s own. After Davey died and the very idea of boxing had been enough to turn Sam’s stomach, he had used his saved-up prize money to buy the place. It had been run to seed and in need of a good deal of work, and the building’s owner had been glad enough to give it to him on a repairing lease. He and Nick rolled up their sleeves and made the place into something decent, something good. Something necessary.
Some black families, like Sam’s mother’s people, had been in England for centuries. But a generation ago, Britain had promised black Americans freedom if they fought against the colonists. Sam’s father had been one of them. But nobody had quite figured out what to do with an influx of former soldiers, many of whom didn’t have a trade and were barred either by law or prejudice from learning one. There were schools, now, and even some apprenticeships, but they wouldn’t do any good if people were cold and hungry, or if they didn’t know about these opportunities in the first place.
That was where the Bell came in. It was a place for people to meet, to find work, to talk to other people like them. And if it came right down to it, it was a place where they knew they could get a hot meal. It was so much easier to make your way when other people had your back, and there was nobody you could count on as much as other people who had been through the same troubles as you.
Sam knew he couldn’t explain that to Hartley. What would a man like Hartley know about making his own way?
“Are you going to stand there gawping or join us for a pint?” Kate called, ruining Sam’s half-formed plan of pretending not to have noticed them.
“I thought I ought to actually work, as this is a place of business,” he said, hearing the stodginess in his own voice. He deliberately looked at Kate, not trusting his expression if he saw Hartley.
“Sam. If anyone needs another drink they’ll call for you. I mean, you’ve wiped down that bar seven times and it’s not going to get any cleaner.”
“There was a drop of water,” he protested. “It would have left a mark.”
With an exhausted sigh, Kate got to her feet. “Sorry, Hart, but Sam needs help polishing things that are already clean.”
“Sit down, you,” Sam said, exasperated. “Fine, I’ll join you.” He grabbed a chair from a nearby table and hesitated before deciding where to put it. On Kate’s side? On Hartley’s side?
“Oh bollocks,” Kate muttered, hooking the chair with her ankle and dragging it to the short end of the table between her and Hartley.
Sitting, he turned to Hartley and tried to get out a reasonably normal-sounding “Good day” like he would to any customer, but his voice sounded strange. He probably ought to have cleared his throat. He probably ought to go hide behind the bar.
Hartley was watching him with baffled amusement. “Good day,” he answered. Only then did Sam notice that Hartley had the dog sleeping across his lap.
“Daisy likes Hartley,” Kate said.
“Who the hell is Daisy?” Sam asked.
“I named the dog,” Hartley said. “You can’t go on calling him Dog. It’s rude.”
Sam looked at Kate, expecting her to protest. “Daisy’s a good name,” she said.
“You’ll get fleas,” Sam cautioned.
“Don’t listen to the bad man,” Hartley told the sleeping dog. He was wearing his usual fine clothes, but in subdued browns rather than the blues and greens he seemed to favor. Sam wondered if he had chosen these garments to stand out less at the Bell. If so, he had done a terrible job. He looked bright as a new penny in a coal bucket. Sam was going to have to spend years trying to forget that Hartley had ever been here, wiping and polishing away traces of a foreign substance.
“This pie is incredible,” Hartley said. “I asked Kate what was in it but she won’t tell.”
“Mainly because I don’t know,” Kate said.
Sam looked at the nearly empty dish. “It’s my mum’s pork pie. Well, it was my mum’s recipe, but Nick makes it now. I think he uses porter from the tap and chops the pork shoulder himself.”
“And he makes the pastry with equal parts butter and lard,” said a voice over his shoulder. He turned in his seat to see Nick, still wearing a floury apron. Kate sprang to her feet and kissed his cheek.
“Nick, this is Hartley Sedgwick, an old friend of mine,” Kate said. “Hart, Sam’s brother, Nick.”
Hartley inclined his head and said “Mr. Fox” in a way Sam had only ever heard on stage. Maybe that was how gentlefolk talked to one another all the time. But if Nick thought it strange, he didn’t show it, probably because all his attention was on Kate.
“I’m done for the day and now I’m go
ing to take a nap,” Nick said, his eyes on Kate. Sam supposed he was trying to discreetly invite Kate to his bed.
Kate gave him a frank leer that showed she hadn’t missed his meaning. Then she bent across the table to kiss Hartley’s forehead. “Come back, you hear?”
He didn’t answer, but Sam saw him give her a tight smile. Then Kate disappeared up the stairs after Nick, leaving Sam alone with Hartley.
“You can go back to work, if you need to,” Hartley said, and Sam was tempted to take the excuse. After all, the Bell would soon be filling up with the midday crowd. Hartley looked ready to dart for the door. Then they caught one another’s eye and both froze for an instant before Sam smiled and Hartley made a sound suspiciously close to a giggle.
“I have a few minutes,” Sam said. In the center of the table was a pair of gloves that could only belong to Hartley. He picked up one of them and held it against his own palm. He couldn’t have gotten half his hand into it without tearing the seams. They were the sort of gloves gentlemen wore, thin and soft and clean, and would be shredded after a few minutes’ honest work. Sam touched a pair of delicate buttons that fastened the underside of the glove; they would rest against the soft part of Hartley’s wrist. He glanced across the table to where Hartley’s hands gripped a tankard, then upward to the other man’s face. His eyes, pale and disconcerting, were wide.
At first Sam thought Hartley might be afraid, might consider his gloves too close a proxy for his hand. But then he saw that Hartley’s lips were parted with something like a sigh. Not fear, then, but desire. And Sam couldn’t help but feel an answering rush of want. Here, at the Bell, of all places, in plain view of everyone.
Sam ought to put the glove down, pour some beers, get back to his damned job. Instead he turned it over on the table, gave it one final caress, and when he handed it back to Hartley, let his fingers graze over the other man’s palm.
His breath hitched, and from the other man’s stillness, he thought Hartley wasn’t breathing either.
Hartley watched Sam deftly pour drinks, collect coins, and make passing conversation with patrons. This was a public house of the halfway respectable sort. He had guessed as much when he saw the place the other night, but then it had been empty and almost dark. Now most of the tables were occupied by patrons who had the air of tradesmen and clerks. In front of about half the people were dishes of food, either the pie that he had just shared with Kate, or something simpler, like bread and cheese. Maybe a third of the patrons were black. Hartley hadn’t ever seen so many black people at once; he hadn’t ever really thought about it, but he supposed it stood to reason they’d feel at home in one another’s company in the same way Hartley might theoretically feel at home in the company of men like him.
Sam didn’t talk much while he worked, but he acknowledged every person who walked through the door, and he seemed to know everyone’s orders before they even spoke. Customers slid coins onto the bar before Sam asked, and Hartley watched in some surprise as Sam sometimes put those coins not into the till, but into the hands of other customers. Hartley already knew that Sam was preposterously good and kind, but at the Bell he fairly radiated warmth. People drifted toward him as surely as they drifted toward the hearth and the braziers. Hartley, too, had been drawn to him as helplessly as a man on a cold street might yearn for the warmth of a place like the Bell.
Sam Fox was good and kind and warm, and it filled Hartley with perverse satisfaction to know that he was able to satisfy the man’s darker desires. There had been something Sam wanted—fingers twisted in curtains, the strain of muscles not allowed to move—that only Hartley had given him. And Hartley found that he wanted to give him that. It had been so long since Hartley had given anyone anything, since he had even thought of doing so.
Sam returned to the table with two pints of ale and slid into the seat Kate had occupied rather than diagonally from Hartley, as he had earlier that afternoon. He didn’t say anything, apparently waiting for Hartley to talk. Hartley didn’t know how Sam had guessed he had something to say.
“Why did you give money to that woman in the green cloak?” Hartley asked, wanting to avoid the real topic at hand and also curious about what had been going on with the three shillings six Sam had given away.
“She needed it.” Sam, whose expression was usually so open, suddenly seemed very interested in examining a scratch on the table. Hartley was rather too gratified by the prospect of Sam having a secret.
“Do you do that often?”
“How is this your concern?” Sam asked, bristling. “The Bell does decent business, and I give some of the takings to people who need it more than I do.”
“Shouldn’t they go to proper charities?” Hartley set no store by charities and had heard Alf complain at length about rich ladies who tried to rescue happy whores from the streets and send them to church so they could learn to feel ashamed. But he wanted to provoke Sam into saying more. He was probably being a git, but he had never heard Sam speak so passionately on a topic. “You can’t possibly give money to everyone who needs it.”
“God, you sound like Kate. First of all, it’s not charity. Most people don’t like the idea of charity, and most charities set up for black people just want to ship us off to Africa.”
“Really?”
“When I was a kid there were meetings right here at the Bell where people talked about it. Emigrating might be fine for some people, but it’s a rubbish plan for somebody whose family is in England. And it’s a bit insulting when the best idea anybody can come up with is to literally tell us we don’t belong here.” He was leaning forward in his seat, not raising his voice, but speaking with a low urgency. “When I give someone a shilling, or when Nick gives them a hot meal, it reminds them that they do belong here, and that there are people who have their backs. And that even if they don’t have anywhere to go, they can come here.”
It was the longest speech Hartley had ever heard Sam make. “Damn it, you’re decent.” All the more reason to let him know why he ought to stay away from Hartley. “Do you know why you need to use the kitchen door at my house?” he finally asked, staring into his ale.
“Listen, Hartley, you may not have guessed, but I’m not in the habit of calling at gentleman’s houses.” Sam’s voice was low enough not to be overheard by anyone at neighboring tables, but Hartley could hear him well enough to detect the current of frustration underlying his words. “But if I were, I know I’m supposed to go to the back. I don’t need to have this explained to me.”
“Stop. It’s nothing to do with what you’re thinking.” He wrapped his hands tightly around the smooth pewter of the mug. Watching Sam work and hearing him talk, Hartley realized what Sam stood to lose if his name were mixed up with Hartley’s. While Hartley had alluded to his disgrace, he hadn’t ever spelled it out for Sam. But now he needed to. Sam had a business and a family; getting mixed up with Hartley could ruin that. “You know that most of my servants left,” he said, keeping his eyes on Sam even though he wanted to look away to spare himself the sight of Sam’s unease or disappointment.
“You mentioned as much.”
“Well, they had a good reason for not wanting to work for me.”
“You don’t have to talk about this,” Sam said, and Hartley thought he could hear the pity in his voice. That would not do.
“No, I need to.” He hadn’t wanted to, but he couldn’t let things go on with Sam without telling him the truth. If he were a decent person, he wouldn’t go on with Sam at all. “I told you about my godfather.” He braced himself for a reaction, but Sam only nodded. “There was gossip. Nothing concrete enough to put me in the pillory, but certainly bad enough to draw attention to any friend of mine. Any male friend, I mean.” He was almost whispering at this point, half out of discretion and half because his voice didn’t seem to want to come out. His body was braced, as if ready for a physical blow. He knew Sam well enough to know the man wasn’t going to throw him into the street, shouting epithets behind him. T
he worst outcome would be for Sam to politely say they were never going to see one another again, which would hardly be the worst thing either of them had endured, so why did Hartley dread this as he might dread sharp knives or loaded guns. Sam ought to be concerned, he told himself; moreover, he ought to be angry that Hartley hadn’t told him sooner. But still, he clenched his hands, fingernails digging into the bare skin of his palms.
“Who started the gossip?” Sam asked.
“Martin Easterbrook, my godfather’s son.” Hartley frowned. “I can’t think of who else. He resents me for having an inheritance that ought to have been his. And he’s right about that.”
“Can’t say I have much sympathy for people who don’t get left money.”
“Oh God no. I don’t have any sympathy for Martin, either. He’s an ass.” Hartley swept aside long ago memories of climbing trees and swimming in the lake with Martin and Will. “He didn’t take kindly to my seducing his father and doing him out of a London property, which I suppose is natural enough.”
“You didn’t seduce him,” Sam said quietly.
The only way Hartley had achieved anything resembling complacency with his current state was by deciding it was his own fault for making bad choices. If he stopped feeling guilty and ashamed, he couldn’t imagine what other unpleasant feelings would rush in to take their place. So he waved his hand to dismiss Sam’s words. “This is worse than I would have expected from Martin. I always thought him selfish and self-serving, not suicidally vindictive. And telling people I—” he lowered his voice “—prostituted myself makes his late father look almost as bad as me, not to mention how foolish it makes Martin look.” But Hartley had given up puzzling out Martin’s motives at about the same time he decided that revenge would be an excellent way to cleanse his palate of all that bitterness. He realized Sam hadn’t said anything for a while, and glanced up from his ale.
A Gentleman Never Keeps Score Page 10
