A Seditious Affair (3 page)

So Silas didn’t ask. Instead he’d learned. He’d read the Tory’s body and the pleas in his eyes, puzzled out his wants and needs, and while he was at it, he’d learned to enjoy the games that weren’t games at all. The ways he could make the Tory bend and break. And that had been a pleasure all on its own . . . but then they’d started talking.

He couldn’t remember which of them had started it, whose chance comment had begun an argument. Had no idea now when the first bottle had been laid out and waiting on his arrival, what day he had said,
Have you read . . .
and
how long after that before the Tory had handed him a book and said,
Tell me what you think.
He didn’t know when the fucking had become just one part of the night’s pleasure, the thing they did before talking.

That was Wednesdays. That had been Wednesdays for a full year now, only a handful missed, so that Silas’s life ran from Wednesday to Wednesday, everything between marking time, and the very sound of Thursday was enough to make him snarl at his shop boy for the aching, empty week to come.

They still didn’t know each other’s names.

“If you ain’t read
Vindication of the Rights of Women
—” Silas said.

“Rights, rights, rights.” The Tory drained his glass. Silas reached for the bottle. “You talk endlessly of rights, but I never hear you speak of duties or the proper maintenance of social order. Every Jack or Jill cannot be master.”

“Speaks a master,” Silas returned. “You’d feel different in my shoes.”

“In your shoes,” the Tory began, then stopped. “Well, in your shoes, I might feel differently about many things. Do you know what day it is?”

“Wednesday.”

“It’s a year.”

“What’s a year?”

“A year since you and I first . . .” The Tory waved a hand.

“Is it? A year, eh?” Silas had no idea what to do with that information.

The Tory sat up. “I mention it because . . . Ah, the devil. I suppose I’ve never told you about Richard.”

“Who’s that?” Lover? Son?

“My friend,” the Tory said. “My closest friend, all my life. Boys together. Lovers since we were fourteen. I thought it would be forever, he and I.”

“Aye? What happened?” Silas asked, since the Tory seemed to want to talk.

“I did. My damned . . . whatever is wrong with me that I want this.” The Tory swept a hand round the room.

“Oi. Nothing wrong with you.”

“Is there not? I am a gentleman of good family. I should not want men at all, and I should certainly not want men to . . . abuse me. But I do.”

Silas had no idea what to say to that. It
was
damned odd, and he’d often thought so. He’d assumed the Tory knew what he was about. “Well, but it does for you, don’t it?”

“It does very well for me, and you don’t need telling so, but why does it do? Why do I like these things?”

“Quot homines tot sententiae,”
Silas observed, a little self-consciously, because he was probably saying it wrong.

The Tory’s brows shot up. “Where did
you
learn Latin?”

“Same school I learned the rest.” From the parson, then from his fellow radicals, then from his books. Self-taught, reading day and night. “It’s right, though, ain’t it? This many men, that many opinions. We all got different ways, and yours is different from most, that’s the long and short of it.” And why was the Tory fretting about this now, when they’d been fucking happily for a year? “Something happen? You all right?”

“Yes. Yes, very well. Just, a conversation earlier this week that made me feel somewhat . . . A conversation with Richard.”

Back to him again. Silas frowned. “So what about this fellow?”

The Tory tipped his head back and shut his eyes. “He is a very kind and caring man.”

“Ah.”

“Quite.”

“No good to you then.”

“Indeed not. I tried to explain, you see. We were, what, twenty-two? I thought he might understand. He didn’t. He was disgusted. It is . . . hard, to see disgust on the face of the man you love above all others. He was revolted by what I asked of him, and then . . . I had to tell him what we had, without that, wasn’t enough for me. That I didn’t love him enough to forget my own filthy wants.”

His voice ached. Silas wanted to hold him, pull him close. “That’s hard.”

“I thought it was right, until I saw his face, heaven help me. And one can’t take that sort of thing back once spoken. My poor Richard.”

“Poor Richard?” Silas repeated. “He couldn’t play a bedroom game or two for your sake, and it’s poor
Richard
?”

“He’s a principled, decent man, and I gave him the choice between doing something that repelled him or ending what we had. I hurt him so much.”

It sounded the other way around to Silas. He felt an urge to take this prig of a Richard fellow and slam his head into a wall, knock some sense into him. Some prancing fop or stick-up-his-arse country squire, no doubt. Some cowardly prick who couldn’t see a good thing when he had one in his bed. It wasn’t as if Silas had made a habit of playing the bully in the bedroom before. He was a heavy-handed man, granted, not one for lover’s knots and soft words, but the idea of hurting or insulting a bedfellow on purpose had still seemed damned peculiar. He’d learned to do it, and like it, for the Tory.

The Tory, whose voice rang with a pain that scraped Silas’s nerves. He was in his late thirties and still mooning over a boys’ affair fifteen years back?

Bloody idiocy. “Maybe you did, but nature can’t be helped. You got your nature, and if this Richard fellow wasn’t man enough for it”—he rode on over the Tory’s protest—“that’s his loss. There’s no way around it with you. A man needs to be cruel to be kind.”

The Tory spluttered into his wine glass. “Damn you. And you’re right. Not that it was Richard’s failing, but that it had to be done.” He sighed. “It was hard, though. It affected our friendship for a long time. And I couldn’t find what I needed, and it wasn’t safe trying.”

“No.” He’d heard all about that.
He’s going to get himself killed,
Jon had said.
Can’t get what he wants from whores, so he goes looking in alleys.
Silas didn’t want to think about that, about the Tory and the stupid risks he’d run. How easily he could have been lost, broken and bleeding. “So what’s this to do with today?”

The Tory hesitated, then grinned, a sudden boyish smile that made him look much younger. “Well, that it has been a good year. That you understand what even Richard does not, and I appreciate your understanding, my friend.” He moved his glass to chink it against Silas’s. “Thank you.”

“Cheers.” Silas could feel his face redden. He drained his glass to cover his confusion, then plucked the Tory’s away and set them both down. “Well, seems to me, if this is an anniversary, it calls for a celebration.”

“Oh yes?” Those dark eyes hooded, already anticipating. He stretched out, arms above his head, something like a lazy movement, but one that brought muscle and sinew into play.

Silas swung a leg over the Tory’s chest and sat firmly, his bulk as effective a prison as any chains. He leaned forward, grabbed the Tory’s wrists, and pushed down, digging his fingers into the flesh till he was sure he’d leave marks. A little anniversary gift for his Tory to cherish till next week, and if that bloody Richard fellow saw them, so much the better. The Tory moaned in helpless protest, attempting to twist free.

“Celebration, I said,” Silas told him. “And I’m going to celebrate you till you won’t walk straight for days.”

Chapter 2

October 1819

“I could wish I’d never found my blasted cousin,” Lord Richard Vane said, with force.

Dominic stretched his legs out in front of the fire. It was a Tuesday night. One day before Wednesday.

He was tired; he always was. His position in the Home Office was no sinecure, although it could have been. There were plenty of gentlemen who drew a wage and did very little to earn it. Dominic did not choose to be one of them.

His work was not enjoyable at the moment. Since the unfortunate incident at Manchester, when concerned magistrates had ordered overzealous yeomanry to control a dangerous crowd, accidentally killing a handful of demonstrators, the country had been aflame. The incident, nothing more than a tragic misfortune, had been given the melodramatic nickname of “the Peterloo Massacre” and stirred up into a crisis by journalists and polemicists, with accusations of murder thrown at the lawful government. Seditious pamphlets circulated ever more widely, fanning the flames of radical dissent, attempting to turn popular anger into revolution.

Dominic didn’t intend to let that happen. But it was hard and draining work controlling the waves of popular fury, and he was tired, and he had very limited patience for Richard’s current problem, his newfound relative Harry.

Still, this was Richard, who very rarely sought help, and Dominic had known for some time he had a weight on his heart.

“You have my every sympathy, dear fellow. What’s the problem with Harry?”

Richard made a face. “I don’t wish to be unjust. He scrubbed up very well. He’s acquired a good manner. He’s very likeable.”

“All that granted, feel free to be unjust. What’s the problem?”

Richard sighed. “Oh, curse it. In confidence, he is . . . not entirely free of his past.”

“I told you,” Dominic said. “I beg your pardon, Richard, but I told you this would happen. What has he done?”

Harry’s father had turned his back on the noble Vane family to elope with a radical agitator. Their son had been brought up in the midst of sedition; when Richard had found him, he was working in a bookshop that peddled radical politics. Richard had claimed that Harry had rejected revolution and sedition in his quest to become a gentleman. Dominic did not believe leopards changed their spots and had a wager with Julius that the boy would disgrace himself by Christmas.

“He’s got a stack of the Peterloo pamphlets in his bedroom,” Richard admitted. “Some of the worst kind.”

“For heaven’s sake. Now is not the time for bleating and sentimentality. Harry ought to be grateful he’s out of the radical cesspit, not throwing himself back in.”

“He is, I’m sure, but Julius is of the opinion that the past is not so easily discarded.”

Julius was the dandy who had taken on the task of reshaping Harry into a gentleman. He was also one of the Ricardians, the little set led by Lord Richard Vane, and perforce one of Dominic’s intimates, if not a friend. Dominic usually disagreed with him as a matter of principle. In this case he merely grunted.

The past left scars. He knew that; he bore enough. One great, gouged wound inflicted when he had plucked up the courage to stutter out the half-formed desires that were growing unbearably strong and seen the look of bewildered revulsion on his lover’s face. The amputation of Richard from his life not long afterward, like severing a limb, because he’d ruined everything between them with his filthy needs. And the years of little wounds after that from the desperate drive to find the physical satisfaction he wanted and, with it, the rising, choking awareness that nothing would ever compensate for the love he’d not been fit to keep . . .

Until Wednesdays.

One day to go.

He ought to be paying attention. “Is he talking to his radical friends? Writing letters? Visiting that bookshop where you found him?”

“He’s been there at least once, I believe,” Richard admitted. Dominic clicked his tongue. “Indeed, but I feel sure it’s more friendship than political enthusiasm. I don’t think he’ll risk himself. He, uh, has an eye to his own well-being.”

“Good. His well-being would be best served by putting nothing in writing and staying away from revolutionaries. We’re going to be dealing with these people, and harshly.” He yawned. “On which, I must go, Rich. It’s late and I’ve a deal of work tomorrow.” And would be up long into the night, he hoped.

“By all means. I shall see you soon, my dear.”

He was up betimes on Wednesday, before his valet arrived, selecting the clothes that the brute liked. Good cloth, good fit, ones that spoke of Dominic’s status in the world. Ones that came off without a valet’s help, because the brute wouldn’t lend a hand. He’d sit with that snarling smile of his and watch Dominic struggle with a tight coat, enjoying his discomfort . . .

Maybe he would wear a slightly better-fitted coat after all.

He wrote a note to the madam at Millay’s to ensure that the right bottle would be waiting.
A Moselle tonight
. The brute was learning to appreciate a good wine, even if he’d never say so.

The brute. The rough-spoken, grim-faced man, his thick fingers always chalky with dust, who swived him into oblivion with such savage care.

Dominic shut his eyes, feeling the swell of arousal. Maybe he should indulge it. He’d spend most of the day in a state of building excitement anyway, until it would be as much as he could do to hold back at the first barked order.

He let his hand skim over his hardening length. A light touch. The brute wasn’t light. He’d grip viciously, and it would hurt, and he’d demand submission. Dominic on his knees, whispering shameful things—no, crying them aloud, because the brute demanded it. No half measures. No mercy.

Except that everything he did was a mercy, a pure agonizing relief to the desires that snarled in Dominic’s gut, like pulling a thorn out of skin.

Cruel to be kind.
Damn his eyes. It was true, though, and they both knew it.

Dominic flexed his fingers. They’d hurt tomorrow. Quite a lot of him would. Some Thursdays he could hardly move, and he’d often had clear finger marks on his wrists. His hands were the worst though. They cramped.

The brute insisted on that. Hands on whatever he was ordered to hold, at once imprisonment, obedience, and silent consent. They both knew what it meant, but the brute never spoke of it, never gave the slightest indication, because he understood what Dominic needed. He
understood.

Heaven knew how, when his own dearest friend, the love of his life, had not.

I don’t want you to stop,
Dominic had said.
Even if I should say I do.
And Richard had stared at him as he would some monstrous thing and said,
But I love you. How could I hurt you? How could you ask me to?