A Seditious Affair (17 page)

“My grandfather tried to murder me and now I’m rich. Are you in love?”

“Your grandfather did
what
?”

“I’ll tell you later. If you answer the question.”

God, he’d have liked to. Harry was the only one he could talk to about this, the only one who knew Dominic’s world as well as Silas’s own and wouldn’t raise an eyebrow at any bedroom doings, randy little sod that he was. “Don’t be stupid. Look at me. Look at
him,
damn it. Someone like that, what would I be doing—”

“In his home, with him spending all last week planning this for you?” Harry supplied helpfully. “Seeing him at the risk of both your necks, with the Home Office at your heels?”

“Shut your mouth, Harry. Or, no, if you’re going to babble, tell me this. That big cousin of yours.” He wasn’t sure what to ask.
Does he still want Dominic? Does Dominic still want him?

“Richard?” Harry pulled a face. “He’s not happy. They’re not speaking, you know, he and Dominic, because of—well, you. Julius says it’s good for both of them,” he added hastily. “Julius says it’s about time they stopped being in one another’s way.”

“Julius is very welcome to attend to his own affairs,” Dominic said from the doorway. He had a bottle in one hand, three glasses—perfect, clean, long-stemmed crystal—in the other. “Champagne?”

They talked and drank. It was dreamlike. A warm room, unimaginable comfort that the other two took for granted, and Harry, so simply happy, chattering on about his new life, his plans for the future, his unexpected windfall courtesy of the woman he hadn’t married. The phrase “Julius says” recurred about every three sentences. After a while Silas caught Dominic’s eye when Harry said it and was hard put not to laugh.

They talked about the six bills too, Harry darting glances between Silas and Dominic as if unable to believe they wouldn’t go for each other’s throats. He was a little respectful of Dominic, a little cautious. He saw the formidable Tory, Silas supposed, the face Dominic presented to the world. He didn’t know the truth. That was for Silas.

And Dom had been right about the clothes on some odd level. Silas’s respectable appearance was part of this dream where he sat in a warm room talking radical politics to gentlemen who listened and answered and cared what he thought. Where he was with Dom and Harry too, and it was no more than natural to be so.

They ate cold chicken, some sort of fish in some sort of jelly, whatever else was on the table. In other times the food might have been a rare treat, but it was nothing compared to the company. Dominic had opened a bottle of Hermitage, the vintage they’d had before, which Harry tossed back without noticing and Silas sipped slowly because he never wanted to forget the taste of this night.

They were drinking port in the study when the knock came to the door. Silas and Harry both twitched.

“Who the devil—I’ll attend to it.” Dominic got up. “Stay here.”

Silas glanced at Harry, who returned a questioning, tense look. Surely he hadn’t been followed here. He’d been bloody careful.

“What in the name of perdition do you want?” Dominic demanded from the hallway.

“You so often tell me to be more interested in my fellow man, dear Dominic. Regard me, interested.” That in an ironic, well-spoken voice, and Silas needed no more than the sudden light in Harry’s eyes to tell him who the visitor was. Dominic clearly didn’t feel the same enthusiasm, launching into a low-voiced argument rather than bringing him in.

“Silas?” Harry asked. “Will you—would you meet Julius? Only if you’d like to, but, well, I’d like you to.”

The whole evening was madness anyway. “Why not?”

“It’s all right, Dominic,” Harry called, and a moment later Dominic, looking annoyed, entered, followed by the most foppish man Silas had ever seen in his life. He was slim, and pallid as a white rat, all cheekbones and breeding. He had on a waistcoat that looked like it had worn out a seamstress’s fingers for the fancy broidery, a stupidly complicated neckcloth, breeches you’d need to cut off with a razor blade, and like Harry, a jewel twinkling in his earlobe, his a diamond to Harry’s sapphire. In Silas’s estimation, he looked bloody ridiculous. Harry’s smile could have lit the room on its own as he entered.

The dandy glanced at Harry with a little twitch of the lips, then extended his hand to Silas. “Mr. Mason, I deduce. Julius Norreys. I believe we owe you a debt for keeping Harry out of trouble for some years.”

“If only he’d reciprocate,” Dominic put in, while Silas shook the offered hand and grunted some sort of response. “Julius, what are you doing here?”

“Curiosity,” the dandy replied without shame. “Also, reconnaissance, and warning.”

“I beg your pardon?”

The dandy glanced from Dominic to Silas. “Forgive my impertinence, but I understand you gentlemen had a narrow squeak recently.”

Dominic’s face hardened. “And how do you know that? As though I need ask. Curse it, Julius—”

“Don’t blame me, he’s not my valet. A raid on Millay’s, in pursuit of you, I believe, Mr. Mason.” The dandy’s eyes were a very pale frosty blue. “Richard is
angry,
Dominic. That put others at risk, in a house that he has spent a great deal of money to make as secure as possible for all of us.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Dominic snapped. “I’ve taken steps, and we won’t be returning in any case.”

“But Mr. Mason is here now.” He glanced from Dominic to Silas. “Oh, curse it. You should—both of you—be aware that Richard is considering having Mr. Mason removed from England.”

“I beg your pardon?” Dominic said. “
What
did you say?”

“Will he fuck as like,” Silas snarled, uncaring if he soiled this fop’s ornamented ears.

“My dear sir, don’t punish the messenger. You must understand, Dominic, this is intended for your own good, since it is apparent you have run mad.”

“I am not the lunatic here,” Dominic said savagely. “Who the
devil
does he think he is?”

“A Vane, of course,” Harry said. “They’re all like that, my whole family. Why do you think my cousin had to elope? Or my father, come to that?”

“I will have words with Richard. I have tolerated his interference long enough. I will not have this.”

“Don’t let me stand in your way,” Norreys said. “In fact, I shall take steps to be as far out of the way as possible. As will you, dear Harry.”

“I think I’d quite like to talk to Richard too, actually,” Harry said. “He got rid of my valet, the one who killed George, you know. He’ll never face trial, because the Vanes didn’t want him telling the world that my grandfather tried to kill me. He’s just been
removed.
”

Silas shook his head, unbelieving, looked at Dominic. “See? And you say there’s the same law for all?”

“One law for the lion and ox is oppression,”
Dominic said.

“Don’t you fucking quote Blake at me!”

“I intend to quote it to Richard. It is, after all, precisely what the Vane family believes.” Dominic’s nostrils were flared, a little betrayal of the anger gripping him. “Have you any intimation that this is in motion, Julius?”

“No. I had the letter this afternoon. It’s possible that he wrote in anger and may reconsider. You do know that Absalom was at Millay’s at the same time as you?”

“The devil.” Dominic looked shocked. “I don’t know anything. We were in the room for hours after.”

“It seems a serving maid appeared at a run and summarily ejected his partner just at the moment of crisis. He felt, naturally, rather hard done by. So he was not arrested, but you will understand Richard’s feelings. He is of the opinion that Mr. Mason’s association with the pair of you could bring every one of us down.”

There was a nasty silence. “That’s not fair,” Harry said at last. “It’s come about because of me.”

“It’s all of us,” Dominic said.

“All three of you?”

“No,
all
of us. You, Ash, Francis, Absalom, everyone. We’re all breaking the law. If anything, Richard has made us overconfident. Molly houses are raided, Julius, and men like us go to the pillory or to the gallows, and we don’t need the help of radicals for that to happen.”

“Radicals say, change the law,” Silas said. “You don’t want reform; you like things to stay the way they are? Well, this
is
how they are.”

“It is, and I for one have no desire to face the consequences,” Norreys said. “Be extremely careful, Dominic, please. I shall tell Richard that Harry and I will have no part of any press-ganging. I don’t know what Cyprian may have put in motion now, but that is up to you to deal with. Harry, let us leave this, ah, seditionary pair to their evening. Good fortune, Mr. Mason, and a very merry Christmas.”

They made their goodbyes. Dominic showed Harry and Julius out and returned to the study where Silas sat by the fire.

“Are you all right?” Dominic asked.

“Can’t say I’m pleased.”

“Nor I. Blast Julius. I wanted this evening to be a pleasure for you.”

“It has.” Silas reached for his hand. “God damn you, Tory, you don’t give a cove a chance. Listen. If your Richard fellow still loves you—”

“He doesn’t.”

“He must. Talking about having me put on a ship and taken off to America or what have you? To keep you safe, when that’s not what you want? Sounds like love to me.”

There was a long pause.

“Did you ever have someone, like that?” Dominic asked.

“No. Well. Got married, but—”

“Married?”

Silas shrugged. “I was not much over twenty; she had a brat on the way. Annie, her name was. She wanted me to leave off the politics, though, soon as we wed, and I wouldn’t. Then the child was stillborn. She left not long after.”

“What happened to her?” Dominic asked.

“No idea. Not seen her in years.”

“You’re still married?”

“For aught I know. That a problem?”

Dominic opened his mouth, shut it again, and finally said, “I suppose not. You don’t sound . . . affected.”

“I think about my boy sometimes.” He didn’t even know where that had come from. It was true, but a truth for nobody’s hearing. “He never had a chance. Little white scrap of a thing. I’d have liked him to have a chance. But as for Annie, it was twenty years ago. Most people don’t care that long.” He took a breath, made himself say it, because it was only fair, after this. “You do, for your Richard. He does for you.”

“Not like that. Not at all.” Dominic dropped to his knees by the chair. “I love him dearly and always will, even if I am inclined to wring his neck at the moment. But I very much doubt that he wants me back, and I am quite sure he would not know what to do with me if he had me. You, on the other hand . . .”

“Aye.”
Make the effort. Smile.
“Aye, I know what to do with you. How long have we got?”

“Nobody is returning until ten o’clock tomorrow.”

Silas looked around the glorious, elegant comfort of the room. “Can I fuck you in here?”

Dominic took his other hand, clasped them together. “Silas, my firebrand, you may fuck me wherever you choose.”

Chapter 8

The House passed the Six Acts in the last days of 1819, sending out the old year on a roar of popular anger and discontent. Dominic was glad he’d seen Silas the night before. He didn’t want to see his lover’s fear.

Fourteen years’ transportation on a second conviction for seditious libel. That was law now. A law intended to make people afraid, and it had worked, because Dominic was terrified.

Silas would be fearful and angry but not silent. Of course he would not be silent. He would find a way to write, somehow, of that Dominic was sure. Because Silas had true courage, which looked into the face of consequence, and was afraid, and fought on.

If Dominic had had that courage, he might not have spent quite so long in a limbo of unconfronted misery.

He had written to Richard at Arrandene. The letter had probably ruined his friend’s Christmas; it had certainly shadowed his own. He had told Richard in plain words that to move against Silas would be to end a lifetime’s friendship and informed him that they would speak on Richard’s return to London. Richard had made an appointment with him, his note a single curt line, and now it was time.

Dominic waited in the private room at Quex’s, where two men might safely shout at each other on unlawful topics, feeling sick.

He’d loved Richard so overwhelmingly, for so long, before he’d known what his prick was for, let alone that what he wanted to do with it was wrong. His entire youth had revolved around big, comforting Richard, the marquess’s younger son. Dominic remembered it all. His parents’ intense pride, never spoken aloud, that their clever third son had graced their old but undistinguished line by winning the Vanes’ patronage. The charmed circle Richard had always cast around his friends, so that Dominic had walked unscathed through the schoolboy brutality of Harrow. Their first tentative, bewildering embrace under an ancient oak on the grounds of Tarlton March, Richard’s family seat. Dominic had kissed the marquess’s son in the marquess’s lands, and even then, the sense of transgression had shivered through him with terrible pleasure. He remembered the first confused, sticky groping and spending, and the way they had laughed because it was too absurd and too perfect. The bad times, when Richard had needed someone to weep with. The first time Richard had fucked him.

He’d grown into manhood in the knowledge that he and Richard, against all the odds, were one. David and Jonathan, they’d called themselves, Achilles and Patroclus, and forgotten that neither of those stories had a happy ending. They’d had their own Garden of Eden, and sure enough the curse of knowledge had come upon them, with Dominic’s growing, sick awareness that what they had wasn’t enough.

He had spent fifteen miserable years knowing himself to be the man who had despoiled paradise.

Silas was not paradise regained or anything like it. He was rough, inarticulate, or far too articulate and always at the wrong times, a grimy self-taught artisan with an exquisite apprehension of beauty and a compassion as savage as his sense of justice. And he was isolated and in danger, and Dominic had had enough of it.