A Seditious Affair (27 page)

They took his—Dom’s—coat. That was a cruelty, because it was cold, and because he could smell Dominic on it and he’d held on to that painful comfort. Then they put him in a cell with a number of others, none of the Spenceans, and there he sat, because he had no choice.

Edwards had named Silas as present in that stable-turned-arsenal, and if that was believed, he faced a conviction for high treason along with the rest. And it would be believed because Silas was a man of bad character now. He wasn’t a respectable shopkeeper with a home these days but a vagabond with a conviction for seditious libel. He wouldn’t stand a chance when it was one man’s word against another. And of course, any claims he made about Edwards would be seen as him trying to discredit the witness.

He should have arranged himself an alibi, had one ready and someone to swear for him, instead of trying to find Thistlewood. All he’d done was make things worse for himself, the others, and Harry.

And Dom. If this touched Dom—He couldn’t think of that. But he had to, because they had the coat, a gentleman’s expensive greatcoat, and he didn’t think they’d fail to look at that.

If there was a laundry mark or what have you to identify it as Dominic’s, a letter in some pocket, Silas might have brought his Tory down.

I stole it,
he decided he’d say, because it wasn’t like that could make anything worse, but he couldn’t decide where to say he’d stolen it from. Where, other than Quex’s or Millay’s, could he have encountered Dominic?

Silas slumped back against the clammy wall. He wanted to sleep, but not in this carrion company, where every man would descend on the first to show weakness. At least he’d slept and eaten well recently. Most of his cellmates looked like half-starved, emaciated scarecrows. He’d never been the prosperous one before, but a week in a gentleman’s care did that.

He’d had a week seeing Dom every day. A better week that he’d ever had in his life, in comfort and warmth, with Dominic Frey, who loved him. He probably ought to face the gallows in contentment knowing he’d had that week.

In fact, the thought of it just made him want to hit someone, because if there was anything worse than having nothing, it was having everything and then seeing it snatched away.

Time passed, hours in the dull grime of the cell. The small barred window was too high up to see out, but the little light was fading to twilight when he heard the commanding, ice-cold notes of a wildly out-of-place voice in the corridor outside.

“No, I shall not be patient. I have been patient throughout an excessively long period in this repugnant cesspit, and my patience, sir, has expired. Do you intend to do your duty, or shall I be obliged to raise my voice further?”

Everyone turned, a fair few of them jerking upright as if by habit. No surprise, because if ever Silas had heard the voice of an officer, that was it. Crystal diction, born to command, and cold as a witch’s tit.

The lock rattled. There was a bellow from outside, warning the men crowded inside to move back, and the heavy door was flung open.

A dandy stood on the threshold. He wore a waistcoat that sparkled with silver thread, a pale blue coat, and an expression of frozen revulsion.

“There you are, Mason,” he said. “Come on, I don’t have all day.”

Silas stared at him.

Julius Norreys exhaled through his nose. “I assume you have been struck dumb by your sufferings. I have done violence to my feelings by dragging myself to this dreary locale, I was obliged to converse with the most tedious Jack-in-office to procure your bail, and you might consider my feelings and depart this squalid pit with a little more alacrity. I am quite
distressed.
” The word came with a viper’s hiss. The officer behind him, a stolid, foursquare man, swayed back a little. He looked as though he’d been talked at.

Silas got up. Made his way through the mass of staring men, past the staring officer. Followed the dandy through the corridors of Bow Street.

“My coat,” Silas said suddenly.

“Forget the coat,” Norreys said.

Silas grabbed Norreys’s arm, slim but strong. “No. I
need
it.”

Norreys shot him a look of remarkable malevolence. “You do not. Stow your prattle,
now.
”

Silas had to bite his tongue. He wanted to shake the man, but drawing attention to that accursed coat would be even worse.

They headed past the desks and out of the door, onto the street as though he were a free man.

Norreys’s hand closed on Silas’s sleeve. “If you even consider running, I shall cut your hamstrings,” he said, in a conversational tone. “That carriage, over there.”

“The coat—” Silas began.

“Is Dominic’s. We are well aware of that. Come
on,
will you?”

Silas followed him. It was near dark, but he could see that the carriage bore a crest on the door.

“What’s this?” he managed.

“Get
in.
”

Silas climbed in. Norreys followed after, slammed the door, and rapped on the roof with his cane. The coach moved off. Silas hadn’t been in many coaches, since London wasn’t too big to walk and he’d never felt the need to go anywhere else, but those he remembered had been bone rattlers. This one had a smooth motion that barely jolted at all.

“Right,” Norreys said. “First things first. Dominic assures us you cannot have been part of this conspiracy because you were committing crimes against nature with him well into yesterday evening. Is he deluding himself? Were you part of this? And don’t lie to me. We are going to prevent you from having your neck stretched either way, for Harry and for Dominic, but we need to know what we’re up against.”

“I knew about it,” Silas said. “Wasn’t at Cato Street for it, didn’t want to be part of it.” He set his teeth, knowing the next thing wouldn’t be believed. “I went to stop them. The whole thing was government entrapment. I wanted to warn them.”

“So you
were
there.”

“Aye, too late. A man, a government spy, saw me on the street. He’s claiming he saw me in the stable.”

Norreys’s breath hissed out in the darkness. “Very well. Now listen to me. You are going to cooperate with us, fully and without argument. If you are tried for conspiracy to murder and treason, let alone convicted, you will damn Harry for good, and if you do that, you gutter-blood werewolf, I shall kill you myself if I have to mount the scaffold and fight the executioner for the privilege, do you understand?”

Silas understood that very well, and it was a relief in this quagmire to know that someone competent and determined had an eye on Harry. “I hear you. Cooperate in what?”

“I have no idea,” Norreys said calmly. “That, I hope and trust, has been decided in my absence. I was charged with retrieving you from durance vile. Greater minds, supposedly, have been applying themselves to the problem of what to do with you now.”

“Dominic—”

“If I were you, I should practice calling him Mr. Frey.
You don’t know him.
Remember that, if you remember nothing else. Now give me the whole story, from the start.”

The coach halted in a mews somewhere, at the back of a row of tall townhouses that were doubtless gracious from the front. An expressionless servant in dark green livery waited at a back door. “You’re to go to the book room, sir,” he murmured, taking Norreys’s hat, stick, and greatcoat deftly.

Norreys led the way, evidently knowing the house well. He waved Silas into a room that—

Books. Even with everything weighing on him, the fear and despair and bewilderment, all he could see for a moment was books. Five sets of shelves, running around the entire room, hundreds of books, right there within a few feet of him, filling the room with the smells of leather and paper and print. And a well-upholstered chair in front of the fire, with a little table by its side and a candlestick. A space just for reading.

Silas had never wanted anything so much in his life.

Someone coughed, and he belatedly noticed that there were two other men in the room.

Familiar men. He’d seen them both that day they’d come to fetch Harry away. Lord Richard Vane, standing maybe six inches taller than Silas, imposing and set faced. And his valet Cyprian, Foxy David himself, slender and sly in dark green livery, with his hair thickly powdered white.

“Good evening,” Norreys said. “Richard, this is Mason. He has been charged with high treason on the basis that he was part of the Spencean group that plotted the assassination and present at Cato Street last night.” He paused, wincing. “Unfortunately, both of these allegations are true.”

“What?”

“Indeed, but—”

“No buts. Get him out of the country.” Lord Richard jerked a hand at Silas, as though brushing away a fly.

“I posted his bail,” Norreys said mildly. “And more to the point, he assures me that he declined to be involved in the conspiracy. It sounds—”

“A lifetime in sedition and plots is involvement enough,” Lord Richard interrupted. “No, Julius, he must be got rid of, at once. If it were not for Harry, I should refuse all assistance. This is outrageous.”

“
If
you would hear me,” Norreys snapped. Silas looked from him to Lord Richard as they argued, talking about him like he wasn’t even there, and to Cyprian, who might as well have been not there himself for all anyone looked at him. Wealthy men, dictating how the world would be. Again.

“It is the only reasonable course of action,” Lord Richard said flatly. “We must have him out of the country.”

“I don’t like it, Richard. Dominic won’t like it either.”

“I don’t give a curse for Dominic’s opinion! His urge for degradation ceased to be tolerable at the point where it threatened the rest of us. I will not indulge his perversity to his ruin or Harry’s. This man is guilty of treason—”

“You are not
listening—”

Lord Richard didn’t stop. “And Dominic will accept an end to this insanity, all of it, or I will make him.”

“You won’t,” Silas said.

Lord Richard turned his head slowly. Cyprian blinked once.

“I beg your pardon?” Lord Richard spoke in that authority voice, the one that was supposed to make you quail and retreat to your place. Well, Silas chose his own damned place

He strode forward, glaring up into Lord Richard’s face. “I said,
you won’t.
You’ve hagridden Dom for fifteen fucking years, and I won’t have you giving him another dose of what’s wrong with him. It’s not his doing I’m mixed up in this, and you,
friend,
you aren’t making me into a stick to beat him with because you don’t like his ways. I’ll do whatever’s needed, I’ll let you ship me out the country if that’s best for him and Harry, but I won’t stand here and listen to you talk like that about a better man than any of you. I’ll not take a fucking thing from you, if it comes with that attached. So
you
”—he jabbed an aggressive finger—“you keep a civil tongue in your head, or I’ll go back to Bow Street right now and stand my trial. You needn’t fear for your lordship’s secrets,” he added unpleasantly. “I don’t inform.”

Lord Richard stared at him, face unreadable. Silas glared back. In the corners of his vision, Norreys and Cyprian were both very still.

Lord Richard’s gaze flicked over to his valet, back to Silas. “Cyprian.”

“Yes, my lord?”

“Deal with this for me. Whatever seems necessary.” Lord Richard turned on his heel and left the room.

Silas looked at the closed door, at Norreys, at the valet. Norreys’s mouth was slightly open. He appeared bereft of speech.

“Excuse me,” murmured Cyprian. He stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him.

“What the devil?” Norreys said. “What the
devil
? He’s as mad as Dominic. It must be contagious.”

“What did he tell him to do?” Silas demanded. It came to something when he was looking at Harry’s fop like the man was an ally. “What did that mean?”

Cyprian reentered on silent feet, closing the door without a sound. “Very well.”

“Very well what?” demanded Silas and Norreys, in chorus. Norreys shot him a glare and went on, “Perhaps you could disclose your intentions? Mason and I are a little confused.”

“I don’t know what I intend yet, Mr. Norreys,” Cyprian said calmly. “But Lord Richard gave me free rein, so I dare say I’ll use it. If you could both follow me?”

Half an hour later, Silas was washed, brushed, and wearing his best new clothes, which had been retrieved from Quex’s. While that had been seen to, he’d repeated the full story twice. Cyprian had listened in unreadable silence, brown eyes abstracted, fingers steepled. He’d thought for a moment, sat forward, reeled off a lengthy list of instructions, and packed the highborn, exquisite Mr. Julius Norreys off to do his errands. The peculiar thing was, Norreys had seemed entirely unsurprised.

And now here Silas was, clean and smart and being shaved by the best valet in London, because apparently he wasn’t fit to shave himself.

“You have no idea of the privilege this is,” Cyprian remarked to their reflections in the mirror. “I haven’t shaved anyone but my lord, and myself of course, in, let me see, four years, five months, and sixteen days.” He angled Silas’s jaw, scraping the bristle away. “While we’re on the subject, don’t
ever
speak to my lord like that again. He’ll tolerate a great deal for Mr. Frey, but I won’t. Mind your tongue or I’ll make you wish you had.”

The cutthroat blade whipping over Silas’s skin didn’t allow for response. Cyprian went on. “Now let’s recap; I want you clear on your role. You accepted the place as Lord Richard’s bookman some days ago. You were engaged to put all the various Vane libraries and collections in order.” He jerked the razor away at a movement from Silas. “Don’t do that when I’m shaving you.”

“I never asked you to,” Silas growled. “And I want to know what you’re doing.”

“Saving your neck,” Cyprian said. “Could you let me get on with it?”

“Bollocks. That’s not what your master asked, and you know it. He wanted me out of the country, wants nothing to do with me, and I can’t blame him, yet here you are spinning a story to say I work for him. What are you up to?”