A Seditious Affair (11 page)

Silas lifted his weight off a little. Dominic moaned a protest and felt Silas smile against his open mouth. Then there was that big, familiar, calloused hand encircling both pricks together, between their bodies as they lay heart to heart.

“You’ll take this, Tory,” Silas said, and dipped his head. Mouth meeting Dominic’s with reverent care, moving gently. Hand pulling and sliding. Kissing Dominic and bringing him off at once with the kind of careful lovemaking he’d never wanted, that Silas
knew
he’d never wanted and was forcing on a pinned, bound, and helpless man because Dominic could not resist or object. He could do nothing but let Silas make love to him, and it set him coming as hard as the most brutal, humiliating fuck ever had.

It took him a moment to gather his wits, as Silas buried his face in his shoulder, gasping his own relief. Dominic could feel both chests heave together, Silas’s hand trapped between their bodies.

“Get these damned cuffs off,” Dominic managed.

Silas sat up and pulled Dominic to a sitting position, still straddling his legs. They stared at each other. There was unfamiliar uncertainty in Silas’s face now, an odd set to his mouth, as if he wanted to smile and wasn’t quite sure whether he could or should.

“Do you know,” Dominic said, “if you’d asked me earlier, I’d have said things between us were already as disastrous as they could be. How wrong I was.”

“There’s not much can’t be made worse.” Silas’s face was closing up, going stony.

“The cuffs?”

Silas grunted. Dominic twisted to let him unsnap the mechanism, made so as not to require a key. He turned back, took a deep breath, grasped Silas’s prickly jaw in both hands, and brought their mouths together again.

There was a startled instant, and then Silas’s lips were open to his, and this time it was equal. Long, curious kisses, careful on bruised lips, little exploring movements now as though it were the first time. Kissing that wasn’t desire or frustration, but something much, much more terrifying. He ran his hands over Silas’s cropped, paper-dusty hair, down his strong back muscles, felt the need shudder through them both.

At last Dominic pulled away, just a little. “What are we doing?”

“Making it worse.” Silas’s fingers skimmed Dominic’s face. “Didn’t plan to.” He ran a thumb over Dominic’s lips, which felt swollen under the pressure, a little raw. “But I couldn’t say goodbye without.”

“I don’t want to say goodbye.”

“Nor I, you Tory bastard. I . . . this last year . . . well. Learned a lot about wine, that’s for certain.”

“Silas . . . my friend . . .” Dominic straightened. “Oh, the devil with it. I
don’t
want to stop.”

The sudden energy in his voice had Silas sitting up too. “Aye, well, what choice have we got?”

“None. You’re a seditionist, I’m Home Office. The sane thing to do is end this illegal and immoral business forthwith. You go back to your democratic libels and I attempt to have you arrested.” He took a deep breath. “Or, alternatively, we risk your liberty, my reputation, and both our damn fool necks, and I’ll see you here next Wednesday.”

Silas’s mouth was open. “Tory . . .”

“You could call me Dominic, you know.”

“Daft mouthful of a name,” Silas muttered.

“Or Dom.” He hadn’t meant to say that. Nobody but Richard called him Dom. Nobody but Richard had ever kissed him as though he were the only man alive, until today. “If you like.”

“Dom,” Silas repeated, almost shyly, then shook his head. “What I’ll call you is a Bedlamite. How can we carry on? That’s madness.”

“It is. It’s madness that the friendship of a radical lawbreaker should mean so much to me. It’s madness that you should have been so kind to a Tory swine. It’s madness that I cannot bear to see you face your just deserts. Richard has already told me in so many words that I must have lost my senses.”

“There you go,” Silas said. “Me agreeing with his lordship.”

Dominic reached for Silas’s hand, felt the clasp returned. “And over these last weeks, I might have agreed with you both. Heaven knows I have barely been able to think. But . . .” Clarity now. Absolute clarity, since that first, urgent kiss. “I cannot walk away. I will not.”

“You can, and you’d be a damned fool not to. Your position—”

“Do you care about my position?”

“Ah, hell. You know what I think about gentlemen. But the only way I want to see you hurt is if I’m doing it.”

Dominic tightened his fingers. “Silas . . .”

“God’s tits, what am I supposed to say? You and me. What sense does that make?”

“No sense at all.” Dominic felt himself smile on the words, and saw a spark leap to Silas’s eyes as though along a burning fuse.

“Well, now if
you
say that . . . Aye, no, you’re wrong, it makes perfect sense.” Silas was grinning as well. “Because
Without contraries is no progression.
”

Dominic blinked. “What does that mean?”

“
Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.
That’s Blake again, the printmaker. Contraries. I reckon you ought to read it.”

“It sounds utter nonsense.” Another of Silas’s disturbing, alien, probably illicit recommendations. Dominic disagreed habitually and strongly with them and loved the challenge of disputing them, the glittering ranks of ideas their arguments brought forth—

Without contraries is no progression.

Well, now.

“Lend it to me next Wednesday?” he suggested, and Silas’s smile was ludicrously boyish on his rough features. “Here, still? It’s as safe as anywhere.”

“Aye, here. Listen, Tory—Dom. Couple of things. If I get caught up in the law—”

“I may well hear about it,” Dominic pointed out. “I’ll give you my card, though. Let me know if you can’t make it or—or if you need my help.”

Silas gave him a look. “Not planning to ruin you, or to help you ruin yourself either. I’ll stand on my own feet, thanks.”

“And other people’s toes, I have no doubt. I know. But it is only sensible to be sure you can find me, should you need to.”

Silas brushed his hand through Dominic’s hair, such a tender movement that Dominic felt a sudden pulse of panic. “Silas. Silas, I need to ask. I . . . Are you happy to continue? As we have been?” Richard’s words pricked at his mind.
But I love you. How could I hurt you?

“Why not?” Silas kissed his ear. “Tell you something. I’m not changing my mind about most of that stuff in that drawer, but I’ll admit, I liked the look of you with those cuffs on.”

That brought a familiar squirm in his belly, along with a relief so profound it made him ache. “You’re in the wrong line of work. You should serve the law. A gaoler, perhaps.”

“Watch your mouth, Tory. But if I tie you to the bed, say—aye, thought you’d like that idea—you’ll need some way to say if it ain’t right.” Silas’s fingers ran down over his vulnerable throat, the hollow at the base of his neck, exerting just a little pressure. “I like you fighting it every step of the way, don’t get me wrong. I want to play with you all night till you’re begging me to stop, and then do it some more.” Dominic bit back a groan. “But you got to have a way to say if there’s a problem, and that’s all there is to it. I know you don’t want it, but—”

“You need it,” Dominic finished. “I know. What way do you mean?”

“Well, it’s no good you saying ‘no’ and ‘stop,’ is it? I don’t give a toss for your ‘no’ and ‘stop.’ I’ve not listened to that in a year; I’m not about to start now.” His calloused hand slid over Dominic’s cheek, and Dominic leaned into it. “But . . . say you call me Mason, I’ll listen to that. Right?”

A code word, a way out. It wasn’t what he wanted, and Silas knew it and was doing his best to negotiate a path between Dominic’s desires and his well-being. The care of it left him unable to do anything but nod.

“Good enough, then. Come on, let’s have a drink.” Silas rose, hitching his still-open trousers up, and went to get the discarded glasses. He passed Dominic his, then hauled him off the floor by his free hand and tugged him over to the bed. “I don’t know about you, but I’m meaning to enjoy this.”

Chapter 6

Dominic sat by the fire in the private rooms at Quex’s and relished the solitude. He needed it.

He had only just returned to Quex’s now that Richard had decamped to his country house for the hunting. Richard’s departure had been delayed by Harry’s convalescence and the various scandals hitting the Vane family—Harry’s radical past, his grandfather’s death “cleaning his gun,” a female cousin’s elopement with a common soldier. Dominic had felt for Richard, in truth. He knew how much the family name meant to his friend, and the series of scandals had caused ill-suppressed glee among the gossipmongers. The Vanes were a noble family of high regard; it seemed to Dominic that his peers in society were almost as enthusiastic to see them taken down a peg as the most extreme radical of the streets would be.

He’d tried to speak to Richard, to offer his sympathy. It had not gone well.

In any case, he’d been too damned busy for social calls, even had he been welcome in Richard’s company. He’d barely had a night free, except for the Wednesdays that he guarded with fierce single-mindedness, and Silas was the same, and for much the same reason.

“Dominic?” It was Absalom Lockwood, the Whig lawyer. “Good God, haven’t seen you here in an age.”

“I’ve been occupied.”

“I’m sure you have.” Absalom collapsed into a chair, so that the brandy slopped up the side of his glass. “If I propose confusion to Sidmouth, will you drink?”

“You don’t need to propose confusion,” Dominic said. “We have no shortage of that.”

“Ha.” Absalom took a mouthful of brandy. “Do you support these measures?”

Dominic stared into the fire. “Something must be done. You know that. There is not a man of property who does not fear for his possessions, his security. The rule of law, the influence of religion, the very Crown are under threat. The radicals are calling for the use of force against the House of Commons, against the better classes—”

“Nobody denies there is unrest,” Absalom said. “Its extent is grossly exaggerated, in my view. And can you believe that the answer to discontent is to attack the liberties at the heart of the British constitution?”

Dominic let his head flop back against the chair. “No.”

Pause.

“I beg your pardon?” Absalom said.

“I said, if you must have it, no. No, I do not believe Sidmouth’s bills are the answer.”

The Home Secretary was pushing through a new raft of legislation, terrifying in its severity.
Every meeting for radical reform is an overt act of treasonable conspiracy against the king and his government,
he had decreed in Parliament. The bills would restrict public meetings dealing with the subjects of church and state, prevent men from taking up arms, and give magistrates the right to search for and seize them, even in private houses. They would vastly increase the taxes on printed matter as an open attack on the reading poor. And they would punish blasphemous and seditious libel with harsh penalties, including up to fourteen years’ transportation for a second conviction.

Silas had already been gaoled for that once.

“I don’t think it’s right,” he went on. “Heaven knows, I fear revolution here. Heaven knows the radicals must be muzzled lest they bite. But this, what Sidmouth proposes, this is not England.”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t want to see this country overthrown. I believe in the existing order, not in the power of the mob, and I don’t want to see England suffer what France has. Reformist bleating is dangerous. But the England I want to preserve is not a place where men are forbidden to meet, forbidden to speak, obliged to stand by while their houses are invaded. My stars, Absalom, I want to defend my country, but if these are the measures it takes?” He tossed back a mouthful of brandy. “It is as though a surgeon should inform a patient that in order to cure his ailment he is required to cut off his head.”

“Ha! Precisely,” Absalom said. “Sidmouth is concerned with the success of the operation, and has no regard for what it will do to the body of the patient.”

“Things will be worse if these bills pass,” Dominic went on. “Much worse. The radicals are shouting for a voice, and Sidmouth’s response is to take away the voice they have.”

“You sound like a Whig.”

“I do not. I have no desire to give revolutionaries anything. But . . . they are still Englishmen. Not foreign agents provocateurs, not Bonapartists. Englishmen who disagree with the Government. And they are wrong, and dangerous, but if we cannot prove our case to be the better one, if we can only counter them by throwing away the rights and liberties that we have held precious for centuries, what does that say for our case?”

“Sidmouth is a reactionary fool,” Absalom said. “And a coward at heart, and like all cowards, he is far too forceful. I couldn’t agree with you more, and
there
is something I doubt I have said to you before.”

Dominic tipped his glass to acknowledge that. “Wearisome times. I hope your fellows can talk these bills down in the House. And that is not something I would often say.”

Absalom nodded. “What will you do if they pass?”

“If that is the law of the land . . .” Dominic made a face. He was Home Office, Absalom a barrister, both of them employed by the law, both of them enthusiastically breaking it in their private hours, given half a chance.

Absalom’s expression suggested he knew what thoughts were passing through Dominic’s mind. “Let us pray the House can be persuaded. I am worried things have gone too far, though. There’s a deal too much fear.”

They discussed the ins and outs of the situation for a while longer. Dominic had not spoken in depth to Absalom in some time and found the man to be rather more amenable than he remembered. That, or he was comparing him to Silas.

Silas, incandescent with rage, pacing up and down their room in Millay’s, hissing imprecations because he wanted to shout. Silas afraid.

Fourteen years’ transportation for seditious libel. Dominic knew what that meant. Silas would be chained into the hold of a rotting prison hulk for months, waiting for a berth in the stinking bowels of some merchant ship. Once that came he’d be shipped across the oceans and sold into indentured service. Slavery by another name.