Chapter Twenty-two
When Sam knocked on the kitchen door it was opened by Hartley himself, holding a bundle of cloth that Sam, after a moment of confusion, identified as an infant.
Seeing Hartley holding a baby was like watching a pigeon play a fiddle. Nothing wrong with pigeons, or with fiddles, for that matter; indeed they were commonplace enough sights. But seeing them in the same place made Sam’s head spin in a way he couldn’t properly name. He nearly walked right out of the house to see if when he reopened the door, the occupants might have arranged themselves in a less bizarre tableau.
“They’re supposed to look like this,” Hartley said, misunderstanding Sam’s confusion. “Kate assures me this is a fine specimen.” He dubiously pulled back the shawl that wrapped the infant and peered at its wizened little face. “There isn’t much of her,” Hartley added. “The other day I bought a gourd bigger than this.”
Sam didn’t ask what Hartley was doing buying gourds. “Half a stone, I’d say.”
“It doesn’t seem right that a person starts out so small and fragile,” Hartley said, wrapping the child more tightly in the shawl and stepping closer to the fire. “I’m afraid a mistake was made somewhere along the line.”
“Yeah, somebody ought to do something about it,” Sam said, smiling. This was the first time he had smiled in two days.
“Calves and lambs are much sturdier.” Hartley cast a skeptical eye at the bundle in his arms. “Better looking, too, if I’m honest.”
“How’s Sadie?”
“Asleep.” A cloud passed over Hartley’s face. “Kate says she’s well, but we all know things can go wrong.” Sam nodded. He wasn’t going to insult him by attempting easy comfort. “How are you, Sam?” Hartley asked, a furrow between his brows. Concern set oddly on him, like new boots that hadn’t yet been broken in. “I’ve thought about you and the Bell every minute.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Sam said, his voice gruff and abrupt. He had been putting one foot in front of the other for the past two days without much thought to how he felt about it. Hell, he had been plodding on that way for years, putting himself last, working himself to the bone, because that was what he wanted. Only now that he didn’t have the Bell to pour himself into did he feel those years of weariness in every mote of his being.
“Sam.” Hartley tipped his head in worry. “Oh Sam. Let me do something to help.”
“No, no, it’s not like that. I’ve got things under control,” he said, afraid that sympathy from Hartley would reduce him to a puddle of emotion. Besides, here was Hartley, a new life in his arms, his hair rumpled and his coat wrinkled as if he hadn’t bothered glancing in the looking glass, and altogether looking more peaceful than he had in the months since Sam first set eyes on him. Sam didn’t want to disturb him with tales of his own hardship, didn’t want to tell Hartley that the Bell was gone, and all his hopes along with it. “You look good,” he said instead.
“Well, I guess fatherhood suits me.” Sam must have looked as befuddled as he felt, because Hartley let out a peal of laughter. “It’s your doing. Your constable came here to make trouble, and Sadie put him well in his place. He thinks she’s my mistress and also quite possibly a royal princess.” The baby started to stir, and Hartley tentatively patted her, probably not so differently to how he might have inspected yesterday’s gourd. “I doubt he’ll cause you much trouble, but maybe next time he comes into the Bell buy him a pint for me?”
For a moment he forgot there would never be a future in which that could happen. No more pints, no more Bell. “How’s your head?” he asked. There was a faint purplish bruise over Hartley’s left eyebrow, but the cut had already healed to a fine line.
“Not bad. Thank you again. I owe you—”
“Nothing. I would have done it for anyone.” And that was true—he wouldn’t have left Merton himself to be crushed by a falling chimney. “But you’re not anyone,” he added gruffly. “And you know it.”
The next words Hartley spoke were a whisper. “When did I get so out of my depth?” Hartley held the baby against his chest, as if she were a shield that would stop Sam from seeing him or knowing what he was thinking.
“Out of your depth?” Sam repeated in confusion.
“With you, Sam Fox.” He gave a sad little smile. “I’ve been trying to pinpoint exactly where I went wrong, when I could have walked away from you without either of us getting hurt.”
For Sam, it had been earlier than he wanted to admit, maybe even before that first time Hartley went to his knees. “Do you wish you had walked away?”
Hartley let out a frustrated huff. “No, and that’s the worst part. I’m glad we had this time together.”
That sounded terribly final. Sam’s chest tightened. “Sounds like you’re about to walk away now,” he said, trying and failing to keep his tone conversational.
Hartley sighed, as if his patience were running out. “We didn’t get to finish our conversation the other night, so I’ll ask you again, Sam. What will you do when people come to the obvious conclusion about our friendship? What will you do when your brother suspects?” He shifted the baby into the crook of one arm.
Sam wanted to deny Hartley’s concerns, to once again say that there was nothing to worry about. But regardless of whether Hartley’s concerns were well founded, the fact was he believed them to be true. “Why don’t you let me deal with that if it happens?”
“Because I don’t want you to stop being able to hide.” On the last word he raised his voice, startling a faint whimper from the baby. “I can’t hide anymore, and it caused me a good deal of trouble. I couldn’t face that happening to you.” By now the baby was fussing in earnest. “Oh hush, you. Uncle Hartley is off his head, nothing to worry yourself about.”
Seeing Hartley kiss the baby’s head gave Sam the sensation of his heart being filled with the most improbable butterflies. “I care about you more than I care about the rest of it.”
“You don’t mean—”
“Don’t tell me what I mean,” Sam said gently. “I know the risks, but I also know that the way I feel when I’m with you is worth it. It’s one of the best things—you’re one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. I feel like I’ve been waiting for you, and I didn’t even know it.” He heard Hartley suck in a breath of air, and when those pale eyes looked up at him, their expression was thunderstruck. Sam brought his hand to Hartley’s face, rubbing his thumb along the other man’s unshaved jaw. “Can you trust me to keep loving you? No matter what?” Sam kept his voice soft and low, belying the urgency he felt.
Hartley pressed his cheek into Sam’s palm. “But how would it work?”
Sam smiled at the shift from whether to how. “Can we leave that for later? I have so much to figure out.” There was the Bell, his lease, and about a dozen other moving parts that he was tired of thinking about. Hartley nodded and turned his head to press a lingering kiss into Sam’s hand, and the contact of lips on skin sent shivers of want and need through Sam’s body. “Any chance you might put that baby down for a minute or two and, ah . . .” He jerked his chin in the direction of the stairs.
“Only a minute or two?” Hartley asked, but he was already knocking on Sadie’s door.
Hartley needed this time with Sam to seal whatever unspoken promises they were making their tentative way toward. From the beginning, Hartley had been able to trust Sam with his body. Now that Sam was asking for Hartley to trust him with his heart, Hartley needed the comfort of their physical connection. Since the only words that could do justice to his feelings were buried under layers of stone and shell, he needed his body to say what his voice could not.
They climbed the stairs in record time, Hartley tugging Sam’s hand and not stopping until they had the bedroom door shut behind them. Sam had never been upstairs, Hartley realized. “This is my bedroom,” he said, most unnecessarily, as he gently pushed Sam toward the bed.
When Sam sat on the edge of the bed, Hartley stra
ddled his lap. He unwound Sam’s neckcloth, kissing the skin as he exposed it, his lips soft and hungry on Sam’s warm skin. At first those kisses were nothing but whispers of lips across flesh, but when he sucked lightly on the underside of his Sam’s jaw, the larger man finally let out a groan. “Hartley,” he rasped, his fingers entwined in Hartley’s hair.
“Mmm?” Hartley hummed into Sam’s skin.
“Can I unbutton your waistcoat?” Sam whispered almost solemnly.
Hartley raised his eyebrows in surprise, but he nodded. “Help yourself.” With unsteady hands, Sam worked open the first of the buttons. “I have the salve in the table by the bed,” Hartley said. A silver button landed with a plink on the wood floor.
“Sorry—” Sam started. “Salve?”
“I used your cock on myself the other night,” Hartley whispered, and felt Sam’s hands clamp on his hips.
“How did it feel?” Sam asked, his voice ragged.
“So good. I thought of you the whole time, wishing it really were your cock inside me.”
Sam bucked his hips up helplessly. “Oh fuck, Hart. Jesus fuck.”
“I know you would make me feel good.” Hartley, still straddling Sam’s lap, ground down so Sam could feel his arousal. “You’d be gentle. You’d care what I wanted.” He punctuated each sentence with another thrust of his hips.
“God yes, I’d do whatever you needed. You know it.”
Hartley kissed Sam’s shoulder. “You’d fuck me now if I wanted you to.”
Sam stilled. “Is that what you’re asking for?”
“I think it is. I know it would be fine. Or, rather, even if it wasn’t, I’d ask you to stop, and you would. And then it would just be something unpleasant that happened. It wouldn’t have to mean anything. And you’d be with me, so I’d be safe.” Sam held Hartley tight against him.
When Sam shrugged out of his coat then tugged his shirt over his head, Hartley let his gaze trail hotly over Sam’s body.
“See something you like?” Sam asked.
A wicked grin spread across Hartley’s face. “We’re just two extraordinarily good-looking people about to fuck. I wish I had a looking glass.” It was shameless bravado, and Sam must have known it, because he stifled a laugh while undoing the rest of Hartley’s waistcoat buttons.
When they were both naked, Hartley climbed on top of Sam and leaned in for a kiss. He had always thought kissing intrusive and messy, but Sam’s kisses started out gentle and soft. With one hand Sam cradled Hartley’s head and with the other he caressed Hartley’s back, and before Hartley knew it he was thrusting his hips forward in a rhythm that matched their kissing, rubbing against Sam’s own erection.
“Ease off,” Sam said, his voice strained. “I’ll come in about half a minute if you keep going.”
Hartley put some space in between them. “Would you touch me?” Hartley asked, and Sam, bless him, didn’t need to be told twice. He moved his hands to Hartley’s lower back and then to the curve of his arse, touching, squeezing, spreading. Now Hartley’s breaths were coming fast, his movements ragged. Sam traced his fingers into Hartley’s cleft, seeking out sensitive skin as he thrust his hips up.
“You want this,” Sam said, almost wonderingly, as Hartley groaned and pressed back into his touch. He fumbled on the table beside the bed for the salve.
“I want you,” Hartley clarified. “Inside me. I’ve hardly been able to sleep for imagining it.” He took both their cocks together in his hand and stroked. “And if we can’t, then we can’t. We’ll both be fine.” Slowly, patiently, Sam worked Hartley open with slick fingers while they kissed, until Hartley was babbling and bossy. “Now, Sam. I can’t wait.”
“Go ahead,” Sam said, his voice rough.
Hartley knelt over him and took hold of Sam’s cock, positioning it against his entrance. Sam clenched his jaw and twisted his fingers in the bedsheets.
Hartley knew a moment of doubt. A cock was very different from fingers, very different from the glass prick. But he relaxed and let his body adjust.
“This all right?” Sam asked, because of course he did. Hartley smiled.
“Oh Sam. Yes.” As Hartley began to move, Sam rested one hand on Hartley’s hip and with the other reached over his head to grip the bedframe, his bicep bulging with the tension of holding fast. Hartley took a moment to thank whatever providence had led him to this man, and then drew Sam inside him.
“You’re a good man, Hart,” Sam said as they lay on Hartley’s soft bed, the covers pulled over them. Hartley made a scoffing sound. “I mean it. How many men do you think would have taken Sadie in and rocked her baby into the bargain. You really are decent, Hart.” Sam put his hand up to Hartley’s cheek.
“Sod off,” Hartley said, but didn’t pull away. His voice was ragged and his hair fanned out chaotically where his head rested on Sam’s shoulder. He looked peaceful, sated, and utterly well-fucked. Sam wanted to shower him with all the praise he deserved.
“Softhearted.”
“I’m responsible for both Sadie and Alf. They’re not much more than children,” Hartley protested. “People can get into a lot of trouble at that age.”
“Like I said, decent.”
Hartley wrinkled his nose. “One decent thing I could do would be to give you a sum of money to finance the Bell’s repairs. Not a loan. No strings attached. Just a gift.”
Sam gave his head a quick shake. “I already said I don’t need it.”
“Neither do I.”
“I don’t want your money.” He heard Hartley suck in a breath and felt his body stiffen. “Not because of how you got it, you silly git.” He kissed Hartley’s hair.
“Then why? I tell you, it would be a trifling amount to me.”
“But it wouldn’t be trifling to me. If five hundred pounds—” he made up that sum, since he couldn’t fathom how much it would cost to repair the Bell “—means nothing to you, but means the world to me, then I don’t see how we bridge that gap.”
“I’m trying to!” He propped himself up on his elbow and looked at Sam. “That’s why I want to help, but nobody will let me. Will won’t take my money, Alf says he’d rather work for you than for me, and I had to badger Sadie into accepting a blasted christening cup. I feel like you all know you’d be contaminated by touching anything that comes from my purse. It makes me feel so dirty, Sam, as if—”
“Hush,” Sam said, smoothing his hands down Hartley’s back. “It’s not that. Sometimes people need to get on by themselves, to know that they’re building good things with their own hands.” That was what Sam had been telling himself—that the work he did at the Bell wouldn’t be good enough unless he did it on its own, that accepting money would be cheapening what he thought of as service and turning it into ordinary work. But there was no shame in plain work, and maybe he needed to think his way around that over the next few days. But he couldn’t think straight with Hartley so near.
“I care about you more than I know how to manage,” Hartley finally said, looking up at Sam with wet eyes. “More than our circumstances will allow.”
Sam’s voice rumbled. “I think you care about me just the right amount.”
“I want more than occasional nights, more than hushed conversations outside the pantry. I want a life with you. When one of us needs something, I want us to take for granted that the other one will help.” There was a note of helplessness in his voice, and his words came in a whispered rush. “I love you, and I want to keep loving you, all the time, without your demons or mine coming in the way. But we can’t have that, and even if we could—”
“Damn it, Hart. I love you too. God.” He could hear his own frustration. “I don’t know how we do this.” When he looked down, the grim resignation he saw in Hartley’s face made him doubt that they could ever see their way through. “But we will, though. Hear me? We will.”
Chapter Twenty-three
During the next week, Sadie got back on her feet and the baby thrived. Winter set in, leaving its fr
osty traces on morning windowpanes. The household settled into something like a rhythm. Hartley mostly fended for himself, Alf ran errands, and Sadie stayed in the kitchen. The baby either nestled in a shawl across her mother’s chest or slept in a cradle Alf found in the box room. Only after several days did it occur to Hartley that this must have been Martin’s cradle; he waited for some kind of distaste to set in, but it didn’t happen.
Hartley found himself spending most of his time in the kitchen. At first he pretended it was because he couldn’t be bothered to haul his own coal up to the library, and the kitchen was both warm and conveniently located to the food. He maintained that pretense for maybe two days before acknowledging to himself that he just wanted to hold the baby and make idle conversation with Sadie and Alf.
Sadie informed him that babies reared on the most modern scientific principles required regular fresh air. Hartley, who was rather taken with the idea of children being raised according to any principled system whatsoever, volunteered to take the infant for an airing in the park. He ordered Alf to sell two of his waistcoats and a coat that had lately seemed a bit too fine, intending to use the proceeds to purchase the best pram money could buy.
“You that hard up?” Alf asked when Hartley handed over the garments.
“No,” Hartley said. “Well, not exactly. I live within my means. If I don’t have ready money, I need to either sell something or touch the capital.”
Alf’s gaze traveled around Hartley’s bedchamber. “I suppose I never thought about someone who lives like this not having money. If Sam had taken you up on your offer to pay for the Bell’s repairs, what would you have sold? I suppose it would have cost more than a few brass buttons.”
Hartley busied himself in arranging his shirt studs in a drawer. “I would have sold the house.”
Alf let out a low whistle. “Maybe you can sell it anyway? Just to spare Sadie the trouble of having to sprinkle salt on the windowsills to keep out the evil spirits that live in the attic.”
A Gentleman Never Keeps Score Page 21
