“So why did you? Why did you train him?” Hartley asked.
“He was shaping up to be a proper young ruffian, and I thought he’d be better off in the ring than at the end of a rope.”
Hartley knelt on the bed to get a better angle. “It sounds to me like you did the best you could with the tools you had. If you had been a butcher or a baker you might have taken him on as your apprentice, but you were a boxer, so you trained him to fight. You’re a good man, Sam.” Hartley heard the earnestness in his voice, and decided they were quite done with the soul-baring portion of the evening. He gave a dramatic sigh. “It’s really very tiring to be surrounded by saints. You ought to meet my brothers. Sickeningly decent, every last one of them. Makes me feel such a villain.”
Sam let out a breath of laughter and relaxed slightly under Hartley’s touch. When Hartley shifted his weight onto his hands, Sam groaned. “God, that feels good, Hart.”
Hearing his nickname on Sam’s lips sent curls of warmth spiraling through Hartley’s belly. Feeling reckless, he swung a knee over Sam’s back, straddling him. Now he had a proper grip on Sam’s shoulders, fanning his fingers and watching how his hands were dwarfed by Sam’s body. He shouldn’t feel so safe, alone in a room with a man this large, a man who wanted him. But Sam Fox really was a good man, and Hartley knew he had never been safer. In the kitchen that night Alf had stumbled in with Sadie, Sam had instantly positioned his body between Hartley and what he assumed was an intruder. Any strength Sam had, he’d use for Hartley, not against him.
He slid his hands lower still, skimming his fingers along the length of Sam’s spine, dragging down the dressing gown as he went, but stopping at the small of his back.
“Whatever you like, Hartley,” Sam said softly. Hartley tugged the dressing gown down further, and then threw it aside entirely. The strange thing was, he wanted his hands all over Sam. He wanted to feel every inch of him. Getting another dab of the salve, he smoothed his way back up Sam’s broad back and down his arms.
“You’re touching some irrelevant parts there Hartley,” Sam said, calling back to Hartley’s pronouncement that he wanted to confine their contact only to places that were relevant to orgasms.
Hartley pressed his lips together to keep from smiling, even though Sam couldn’t see him. “I suppose you think you’re terribly droll.”
“Yeah, that’s right, I do.”
He wrapped both his hands on one of Sam’s biceps and couldn’t make his fingers touch. Incredible. “Is that your way of asking me to touch more relevant areas?”
“If that’s your way of asking me whether you can fuck me, the answer is yes.”
Hartley stilled his hands. That hadn’t been what he was asking, but the idea made his head spin. “That’s not my—I mean, I would if that was what you fancied. I’d oblige. But it’s not my favorite way to get off. At least, I don’t think it would be. I haven’t. Never really wanted to, either.” His cheeks were hot and his heart pounding.
“I can take it or leave it. What is your favorite, then? Or, what would be your favorite, if you . . .”
“If I could? God, I liked getting fucked.” The past tense was bitter in his mouth, but it felt good to say it aloud, to admit what he had lost. “Not that I’ve done it much. I just think I would, if I could.”
“Ever do it to yourself? With fingers or with something else?”
“Something else?” he echoed. “If you think I’m sticking a vegetable marrow up my rear, you can guess again. As for fingers, of course I have, but it’s a bit of a hassle.”
Sam’s shoulders were shaking with laughter and Hartley hadn’t been trying to be amusing, so he pinched Sam’s arse. That made Sam gasp and then squirm in a very decorative manner. Hartley rubbed the place where he had pinched, and since that felt good he kept doing it. By the time Sam shifted on the bed to spread his legs slightly further apart, Hartley was already hard.
He dipped his fingers in the salve and traced them down the crease of Sam’s backside, his eyes on Sam’s face to see if this was what he wanted. He had said Hartley could fuck him, but maybe he’d be interested in this instead. Sam’s eyes flickered shut, his lips parted on a sigh. He brought his fingers lower still, circling the pucker of Sam’s entrance. When Sam stilled for a moment, Hartley could almost feel the touch on his own body.
“You’re teasing me,” Sam mumbled.
“That’s right I am,” Hartley agreed, and proceeded to do it again. Sam parted his legs further, giving Hartley unfettered access and providing an unsubtle clue. He slid in the tip of a finger. God, it had been a long time since he had touched a man this way. Because just as Sam’s lovers had expected certain things of him, so had Hartley’s few lovers, and touching like this wasn’t it. Adding more salve, he probed deeper. Sam’s hands were twisted in the bedsheets, and Hartley remembered those same strong hands gripping the velvet curtains in his library. But this time he wasn’t holding himself back; he was letting himself go, letting himself have what he wanted. Hartley added another finger and twisted, causing Sam to swear into the pillow and tilt his hips up, rocking back into Hartley’s touch.
“Yes,” Hartley said, “just like that.” He reached underneath Sam’s body and took hold of his cock, which was already hard and wet. Hartley still had all his clothes on, but he pressed his aching length into the back of Sam’s thigh for some relief.
“I’m close,” Sam groaned when Hartley started thrusting his fingers in with purpose and stroking his cock in rhythm. He realized he was rocking into Sam’s leg with the same rhythm, as if this were something they were doing together.
Sam groaned when he came, strong arms spread out on the bed, eyes shut in pleasure. The image would be seared into Hartley’s mind forever. His heart still pounding and his prick absolutely furious with him, he got off the bed and wiped his hand off. Then he brought a cloth for Sam and cleaned him too.
“Is your shoulder all right?” he asked.
“Every part of me is all right. Come here.” Sam patted the bed beside him. “If you like.”
Hartley wished he were the kind of person who could leap unreservedly into his lover’s arms. Instead, he gingerly climbed onto the bed and arranged himself about eighteen inches away from Sam.
“I wouldn’t mind if you touched me,” Hartley said. Sam gave a sleepy smile and stroked Hartley’s hair. “I meant my cock.”
“You touch your cock while I make a fuss over you.”
Hartley unfastened his trousers and pulled himself out, then sighed in relief as he finally touched himself. It wasn’t going to take much. Sam smoothed a hand down his arm, then up his side, covering him with lazy, tender caresses that somehow weren’t too much, didn’t ask for things that he couldn’t give.
His climax washed over him easily. Everything with Sam was, if not precisely easy, at least not impossible, at least not a constant reminder of things he couldn’t have. Being with Sam gave him the hope that he could perhaps live contentedly alongside the demons he would never vanquish.
Chapter Twelve
Away from London, in the crisp autumn sunshine and far from everyone he knew, Sam could almost pretend that he hadn’t lost his entire mind. He could pretend that it was reasonable and sane to have given over a solid portion of his heart to thinking and worrying and caring about Hartley. He was used to caring about people, to offering whatever aid or protection he could. He tried to tell himself that was all he was doing with Hartley, but he knew he was lying to himself.
If he had truly wanted to protect Hartley, he wouldn’t let him attempt a burglary, that was for certain. He wouldn’t let the man do what they had done last night in Hartley’s bed. He wanted to keep Hartley safe, but Hartley was a man who couldn’t be kept safe. His very existence was dangerous; he had been exposed for what he was, for what he and Sam both were. Not only could he not be protected, but being around him meant Sam was courting danger too.
Sam had spent the past ten years watching nearly everyone around him
marry and settle down. First the lads he had grown up alongside, now Nick and Kate, who were plainly in love, whether or not they saw their way to getting married anytime soon. He had been raised by parents, who, however awkward he had found it in his youth, had been thoroughly in love with one another. He remembered his mother worrying the hem of her apron while waiting for his father to come home after a fight. He remembered them staying up late, laughing and whispering, when they thought Sam and Nick were long asleep. His mother had died holding his father’s hand; his father died not too long after, his late wife’s name on his lips.
He hadn’t held out any hope of that happening to him. Since he was fourteen, he had known that he wasn’t one for the girls, and while he knew it must be possible for two men to pair up the way men and women did, he didn’t know any who had done so. He could count on one hand the number of black men he had ever even seen in the places frequented by men who preferred men. Besides, the odds of finding a fellow he was really fond of were long when you only met for expeditious pleasure in dirty alleyways and the seedy edges of parks.
He smiled to think that he had met Hartley in an alley of sorts, then had to stamp on the idea that what existed between them could ever amount to anything.
“The gate is on the other side of the village, but if we take this lane we can approach the house from the stables,” Hartley said. They had met that morning as arranged after spending the night apart, Hartley in his fine bedchamber and Sam in a room he shared with three other men, one of whom snored like a bellows. Hartley had brought a small hamper of sandwiches, insisting that the innkeeper’s wife wouldn’t let him leave on a long country walk without provisions.
Lit by morning sun rather than flickering lamplight, Hartley looked young and a bit frail. He looked exactly like someone a country innkeeper’s wife might fret over. He wasn’t skinny, not exactly, but there wasn’t much of him. His nose turned up pertly and was sprinkled with a smattering of freckles that had been invisible in weaker light. His eyes, which had seemed pale and shrewd in London, now reflected the dusty greens and browns of the autumn countryside.
“If you know this place so well, why did you take the trouble to draw out a map?” Sam asked after they had taken a few turns at Hartley’s direction. He remembered that map, all straight lines and precise penmanship, tidy and orderly to a fault while still being decorative. Much like Hartley.
“Until I put it on paper, I wasn’t sure I did remember it properly. There was always a chance my memories weren’t reliable.”
Sam looked over and saw the familiar set of Hartley’s jaw. “I think your memories are pretty reliable, Hartley.”
Hartley’s shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath. “I’m afraid so.”
When the house came into view, Hartley went still.
“We don’t have to do this,” Sam said.
“You spend a lot of time reminding me that we don’t have to do things.” They were beneath an oak tree that had lost half its leaves, casting Hartley in a dappled light, shadow and sun playing across his face.
“I think you need the reminder,” Sam countered.
Hartley glanced away. “He didn’t make me do anything I didn’t agree to, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Sam made a scoffing sound. “Do you think you owe him a fair hearing or something?”
“No, I just—”
“How does a kid agree to anything like that, Hart? Especially when the man was making you promises.”
Hartley crossed his arms and scuffed the toe of his boot in the dirt and leaves before him. “I don’t know what you’re imagining, but I chose to sell my body—”
“Stop,” Sam growled. “I hate that expression. If you fucked for money, that isn’t selling your body any more than a bricklayer sells his body by building a wall for money.”
“I fucked for money, then.” His chin was up, as if daring Sam to take issue with that bald statement.
“So? I let men blacken my eyes for money.” Sam leaned against the broad trunk of the tree. “My father used to tell Nick and me the story of what he did when he was in the colonies.”
Hartley shot him a startled glance. “I hadn’t realized.”
“He was a blacksmith’s assistant in Virginia. Decent work, he’d always say. Safe work. Sometimes he’d get an extra chicken to put in the pot if he had done someone a favor. Usually people were civil to him. But after the war started, he ran off to join the British army. He knew that if he even survived the war and made it to England, the only work he’d get would be dangerous. He was lucky to get work at all. He worked on the wharves, sometimes fighting for wagers until Kate’s father took him on to train. But he said every punch he took, every drop of blood he shed, every time he broke a bone—all of that was his choice, because he was free.”
Hartley remained silent for a long moment. “I think if your father knew you were comparing his tribulations as an enslaved person to my bedding a man for the promise of advantage to my brothers, he’d be a bit put out.”
“It’s not the same, and I’m not saying it is,” Sam said, exasperated. “But my point is that sometimes what seems like a choice really isn’t.”
“Maybe so. But what good does that do me now?”
“I think that because you blame yourself for what happened, you think you deserve to feel the way you do about being touched.” Hartley drew in a sharp breath, and Sam knew he was on dangerous ground. “And that you deserve the shunning you’ve been getting. You don’t deserve either of those things, Hart.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe not. I’m not trying to tell you how to feel. Whatever you feel, I like you just the same. You know that, don’t you?”
Hartley looked away, but not before Sam saw his eyes grow bright. “Oh, damn you. I don’t like you at all, just so you know. I think you’re terrible.” But he stuck his hand out, reaching blindly for Sam’s. Sam grabbed it and squeezed, his larger hand almost completely enveloping Hartley’s.
In the end, they hardly had to break in at all. The French doors leading to the garden were latched, but creaked open when Sam gave them a shove with his shoulder.
The drawing room smelled of dust and damp and all the fine furniture was gone, but it was unmistakable. Hartley clenched his fists and realized he was gripping Sam’s coat sleeve like a frightened child. Absurd. It was only a house, a collection of bricks and wood and plaster. He had come here only a few times with Sir Humphrey, when the baronet had hosted house parties of the disreputable sort.
After having lived in London society for a few years, the only thing that Hartley now found surprising about Sir Humphrey’s parties was that the man had dared bring Hartley. The other gentlemen had brought women—courtesans, opera dancers, sometimes girls who had been more or less picked up off the street. Looking back, maybe the other men had thought Hartley was a guest. Or perhaps some of those men were planning to visit one another’s beds as surely as Sir Humphrey was going to visit Hartley’s; perhaps the women were nothing more than a screen. Hartley had since encountered some of those men and they had never alluded to Sir Humphrey or his parties; every last one of those men had cut Hartley dead after the letters became common knowledge. Now he wondered if they had secrets like Hartley’s own, and had cut him rather than be found guilty by association.
“It’s empty,” Sam said, unnecessarily.
“I suppose Martin sold off the furnishings.” He would have had to sell off everything not nailed down in order to pay off the legacy duties, Hartley supposed. “That’ll make it easier to search. We ought to check every room, one by one,” he whispered. Something about an empty house made him want to keep his voice low.
Sam nodded his agreement and they passed through the ground floor rooms in near silence. Hartley didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. The paintings could be on a wall, stacked on the floor, or even removed from the frames and rolled up. Had Sir Humphrey sent them here to adorn the wa
lls during a party? Or had he some other motive in removing them from the London house? Was there a possibility that Martin had sold them after all, but somehow Hartley hadn’t found out?
With every door they opened, Hartley held his breath, not sure what he’d see on the other side. But so far there were only empty rooms.
“Hell of a lot of rooms,” Sam said, his voice low.
“This is nothing,” Hartley said. “It’s maybe a third of the size of the family’s principal seat in Cumberland.”
Sam muttered something about the guillotine that Hartley didn’t quite catch. “Is this how you grew up? In a place like this?”
Hartley had to stifle a laugh. “No. God no. I grew up in a sort of semi-genteel poverty. There were always too many mice and not enough beds to go around. Plenty of books but never any ready money at all. How I use to envy proper ladies and gentlemen.” He had imagined that anyone who lived in a decent house and had clean clothes would never have to worry about getting enough to eat. With a child’s belief in magic lamps and good fairies, he had thought that if only they were gentlemen, he and his brothers could be safe. So he had set about to make sure his brothers got to be gentlemen. All his worst choices, all the troubles that had been visited on him and his brothers, stemmed from that fundamental error. He supposed Ben was happy enough despite not having a penny to bless himself with. As for Will, he was infinitely worse off than he would have been if Hartley had never intervened, never begged Easterbrook to use his influence for Will’s advancement in the navy.
As they climbed the stairs to search the upper floors, a noise came from above.
“Probably rats,” Hartley whispered. Sam didn’t answer.
Hartley directed Sam to the room that had been his own. It was partly the instinct to walk a path he had followed many times before, but also a feeling of dreadful certainty in the pit of his stomach. The door was shut, of course, and when they opened it, the draft dislodged a cloud of dust that made them both cough into their sleeves. Before it cleared, Hartley had a fleeting sense of relief that he hadn’t come here alone. Sam’s solid presence beside him was a reassuring reminder that it was not seven years ago.
A Gentleman Never Keeps Score Page 12
