A Seditious Affair (21 page)

Nobody sucked cocks that well, but he did his best.

Afterward, they lay together in unusual quiet, until Dominic said, “When I said last time that the Six Acts had to be enforced, I didn’t mean for the good of the country. I meant . . . the Government has to. They—we—Lord Sidmouth cannot pass draconian measures and then not apply them. That would make it appear as though those measures were unnecessary, which will not do. Especially now the king’s passing means there must be a general election.”

“Aye. I worked that out, maybe . . . Friday. Shouldn’t have—”

“I’m not asking for an apology,” Dominic interrupted. “Although if you would occasionally listen, it would make a pleasant change. I wanted to make sure you understand what I was saying.”

“And I do, and what should I do about it?”

“Stop writing sedition; stop associating with seditionists. Take the work Richard offered. Leave the country. I don’t know, Silas. At the very least, avoid snares.”

“You got something in mind?”

“No. Or rather, yes, but I don’t know what, and I couldn’t tell you anyway. Oh, blast it.”

The Home Office knew of an ongoing conspiracy, was working with Bow Street, and Sidmouth himself had a finger in the pie. Of more than that, Dominic had no idea. He’d put himself at arm’s length from radical cases, ostensibly in case his friendship with Harry Vane affected his work, and to ask about them now would at best look like unprofessional gossip-mongering. At worst it might make people wonder why he was asking.

If Silas was involved in a real threat to England’s stability, Dominic had no idea what he’d do. He wanted to tell Silas plainly:
There is a plot discovered. Watch out.
But if he did that, he might be warning traitors. He had averted his eyes from Silas’s seditious writings, but he could not sink so far as to condone action against the country or its lawful government.

So all he could do was pray that his lover had more sense than to be involved. His forty-year-old lover who had just pressed a fight on a pair of gutter-bloods half his age and whose chest as well as face bore painful bruises because he was ready to mete out violence for what he felt right, and damn the law.

Silas was looking at him. Dominic shrugged, helpless.

“Ah, Tory. You don’t make your own path easy.”

“It’s not me making it difficult,” Dominic said, with feeling.

“Course it is. If you had sense, you’d be living the life with your Richard—”

“Not
my
Richard. Very much not.”

“Oh, aye. So wanting to have me pressed, then that offer of work . . . ?”

“Richard will do anything for his friends,” Dominic said. “In my case, that includes offering a means by which my lover might remain safe in a time of such danger that I feel, frankly, sick with apprehension. Silas, if I begged you—”

“Don’t.” Silas’s voice was thick. “I can’t—not if you do that. Don’t.”

Dominic folded a hand, dug his nails into his palm. “You have no idea how much I want to. I want to make you give up your principles almost as much as I should like to give up mine. I’m afraid for you every day. I want you to be safe. I want you warm and fed. I want a thousand things for you that you won’t take from me.”

“I
can’t.
”

“I know. You can’t accept a damned thing except for the trivial matters of my heart, my soul, and my moral certainty. You’ve helped yourself to those quite freely.”

“And your arse,” Silas said. “I don’t mind taking that either. I got to stand on a level with you, Dom, or I’m nothing.”

Dominic inhaled deeply, striving for control. “Heaven preserve me from a man of principle.”

“Ah, you love it. Politics, pricks, and principle, that’s what you like most.” Silas rolled over, straddling him and not gently. Dominic grunted as the man’s weight came down on his chest, and again as Silas leaned back to cup a hand between his legs. “And it seems to me we’ve had enough of two of those.”

“If you say so. Would you like to discuss the forthcoming election?”

Silas’s face was a little more careworn, but his grin was as savage as ever, and his hand was tightening painfully. “Almost right, Tory. One letter off. And I’m going to make you work for this one.”

It wasn’t all that Dominic wanted. He wanted promises and capitulation, or at least acceptance. He wanted Silas to face the way things were instead of fighting battles that had been lost before they started, against a foe too powerful to challenge.

But this, for now, would do.

Chapter 10

Two weeks later, Silas didn’t arrive. Dominic sat in the little anonymous room feeling cold with fear in a way the blazing fire couldn’t quell.

It was Wednesday, the day of King George III’s burial in Windsor. A state funeral, with magnificent pomp, for the old monarch that most of his subjects had half-forgotten in life, the streets of Windsor lined with Life Guards and Foot Guards, all of them drawn from London.

There had been something coming. He’d gleaned it from crumbs and careless words and a sense of subdued excitement in the office. The radicals had planned to strike tonight, in the absence of so many soldiers, and the Home Office was many, many steps ahead. Dominic’s colleagues knew exactly what was going on, and they would be ready.

He’d wanted, desperately, to warn Silas, in case he was part of such a mad plan. He couldn’t do it, and he couldn’t not. If there was a real conspiracy and Silas part of it, a warning would be flat treachery. If Dominic didn’t warn his lover, Silas’s fate would be the most terrible of all penalties: hanging, drawing, and quartering. Which he’d deserve, if he was a traitor, but . . .

Dominic had paced around Richard’s room like a caged animal the day before, going over and over the same ground—
What do I do? What do I do?
—until finally Richard had said, “Do you trust him?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a simple question. Do you believe that he is, as you have said, a good man with different opinions? Not a murderer, not a Bonapartist, not a traitor?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Then if you are correct, he is not involved in a conspiracy to take London by force,” Richard had said. “In which case your warning would be not just a shameful betrayal of duty but an unnecessary one, and perhaps even an insulting one. If you trust him, Dominic, then
trust
him.”

So he had. And now Silas was not here.

Dominic waited. Waited and waited, until past midnight, feeling colder with every moment that passed, and then left. Walked back home in a state of frozen despair. Did not take a hackney to Ludgate to beat fruitlessly on the door of the bookshop, did not flee to St. James’s Street to demand what Harry knew, did not do anything. Because if there had been treason and Silas had been arrested, everything was over and it was too late. He had been a traitor by his silence as much as Silas by his act.

He roamed his rooms, but they were full of Silas. The study in which he’d given Silas Harry for Christmas and where, later, Silas had fucked him in front of the fire, holding the poker tight against Dominic’s throat so he had gasped for breath. The bedroom where, for the only time in their whole year and a half, they had slept and woken together. The bookshelves everywhere, all of them shaped by Silas’s voracious reading.

Dominic did not sleep that night.

He went into the office the next morning to get the news in the spirit of a man condemned. He felt like one. But at least he’d know; at least then he could engage Absalom, who loved a lost cause. He could fight. He
would
fight.

Except there was no fight to be had.

Nobody was talking about a conspiracy. Nobody mentioned a plot, or a revolution, or an arrest. The place was as dull as ditchwater. Dominic looked around, not quite understanding what had or hadn’t happened. He asked five people, “What news?” and received yawning, uninterested answers. At last he went to Skelton.

“Good morning. Are you busy?”

“Not at all.”

“I thought you might be,” Dominic said recklessly. “Was there not something on last night, in your line?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I heard talk of some outrage planned the day of his majesty’s funeral.”

“Oh, that? No, I fear you’re rather behind the times, Mr. Frey, that didn’t come off in the end. No trouble at all.”

Dominic blinked. “Then what
did
happen last night?”

“Nothing that I know of.”

“No,” Dominic said. “Something must have happened, something—What was it?”

Skelton looked up at him, baffled. “I have no idea. Are you all right, Mr. Frey?”

“Confused. I fear I have got myself in a muddle. Do excuse me.”

He fled back to his desk, thinking frantically against the exhaustion. If nothing had happened, where the devil was Silas? Bow Street? He could go straight there, but he couldn’t ask if they had Silas in custody . . .

Blast it.

He abandoned his desk with a brief word of excuse, strode to the street, and hailed a hackney to take him to Ludgate. He meant to walk the last few hundred yards, down Paternoster Row, but in fact, once he saw the gap in the roofline, he ran.

Theobald’s Bookshop was a blackened wreck, flour-dusted by the night’s light snowfall, the roof fallen in, the windows smashed. A breeze stirred the ashes, sending the burned ghosts of pages twisting into the air. The nearby houses were charred but still standing.

He became aware of a couple of people watching him. “What happened?” he demanded, and his voice did not sound like his own.

“The Hobhouse boys, that’s what happened, sir,” a woman offered. “Couple of wretches from Ave Marie Lane with a grudge against Mr. Mason on account of he thrashed their thieving brothers for ’em. Set the place lit on Monday night. Could have burned the whole street, the little—”

“Arson?” Dominic stared at the wreckage. “Monday?”

“Monday night, about two of the clock, when we was all abed—”

“Where’s Mason?”

“Ooh,” said his informant. “Well, sir, I couldn’t say—”

“Did he get out?”

“Aye, sir, aye,” said the woman’s companion soothingly. “No fear of that. He was fighting fire with the rest of us till past dawn. Got out with the clothes on his back, nothing more.”

“God’s mercy he still had his skin,” the other said.

Dominic muttered agreement. “Where is he?”

That, it seemed, nobody knew. Silas had watched his home and place of business, with all his stock, burn to the ground, and then he had disappeared into London. Nobody had seen him since Tuesday morning. They had all been much more interested in the Hobhouse boys’ arrest. There had been a witness who had raised the alarm, it seemed; the scum would hang. As if Dominic cared.

Silas was penniless, homeless, and he hadn’t come last night.

Harry would know.
He’ll have gone to Harry,
Dominic told himself, and embraced the hurt that thought gave, because it meant Silas was safe and warm instead of lost on London’s bitter streets. Dominic didn’t allow himself to wonder why Harry would not have said anything to him. Silas had surely gone to Harry.

It was not yet midday. He went straight to Julius’s rooms, since Harry was as likely to be there as at his nominal home with Richard, and found the pair recruiting their strength with coffee, ham, and eggs.

“Dominic, welcome,” Julius said as he entered. “Good God, what’s wrong?”

“Silas,” Dominic snapped at Harry. “Where is he?”

“Silas? I’ve no idea. Has something happened?”

Dominic stared, mouth open. “You don’t know? But . . .”

“Sit down.” That was Julius at his elbow, forcing him into a chair. “Coffee. Drink that and then enlighten us. What’s going on?”

“The bookshop burned down on Monday night. Arson, some bully’s grudge. He’s lost everything and he’s gone.”

“Where?” Harry demanded, white-faced.

“He doesn’t know, my love. That’s why he’s here,” Julius said. “Apply your intelligence. Has he family?”

Harry shook his head. “A cousin. William Mason, the printer. I doubt he’d go there, though; he’s always been careful with contact. Because of the, you know, writing.”

Julius nodded. “Other radicals then. Who?”

“Uh . . . Some of the Spenceans, maybe, but they’re all poor as church mice. I’m sure they’d help if they could, but he wouldn’t want to be a burden. That’s the problem. It would need to be someone he could trust, who could afford to help, but also someone he wouldn’t taint by association.” Harry met Dominic’s eyes, his deep blue gaze full of urgent desire to be believed. “That’s the reason he wouldn’t come to you. He wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Or, presumably, you,” Julius said. “So where
would
he go? Or, and I regret to be the one to say this, what if he hasn’t gone anywhere? Was he injured in the fire?”

“Not that I could learn,” Dominic said. “But he’s alone on the streets, and it’s cold.”

“My understanding is that this man is not an imbecile,” Julius said crisply. “Or do you both believe he’d rather freeze to death than ask for help?”

“But his books burned,” Harry said. “His
books.
”

“Yes, yes, wounded animal, I take your point. Then think of a burrow, dear boy, while Dominic drinks some more coffee, and both of you at least pretend to mental fortitude.”

Julius’s astringency won him few friends, but it focused the mind. Harry threw out a few names, none with any great certainty, none Dominic knew.

“What about Millay’s?” he asked after a while. “Mistress Zoë and he seemed good friends.”

“Millay’s is the last place he’d go after leading the hounds there once already,” Harry said. “I’ll try some of the old crowd—”

“No, you won’t,” Julius said. “
No.
You will not go visiting among the radicals, and that is all there is to it.”

Harry was a cheerful, feckless, pleasure-seeking young man, but as he turned on his lover then, he resembled Richard at his most autocratic. “If Silas needs me, I will go.” His tone brooked no contradiction.

“I’m afraid Julius is right,” Dominic said. “There’s trouble brewing, which—well, suffice to say, if you visit half a dozen radicals, there’s every chance you’ll be seen and noted doing it. Don’t.”