“If you’re like most Runners, put your hand out for bribes, and buy your wife a pretty dress.”
Dominic shot him a glare. “Let’s say I’m the other kind.”
“The kind who gives justice evenhanded, doesn’t say there’s one law for the rich and one for the poor?”
“I…strive to be that kind. Yes.”
“Then why are you asking me?” The brute indicated Dominic with his glass. “You know bloody well you arrest this man, and your brother-in-law takes the consequences. That’s how it ought to be, same law for all. But it ain’t, is it?”
“It should be.”
“But it ain’t. Because my sort can’t afford to bring a prosecution, and your sort can afford to pay one off. What’s this man done? What’s the crime?”
“Why does it matter?”
The brute shrugged. “Laws aren’t always right.”
Dominic wasn’t having that. “That is seditious talk.”
“Seditious my arse. Or yours, because you know damned well we’d both swing for what we just did. You telling me that law’s right?”
“It’s the law of the land.”
“Oh, well, shall we trot round to Bow Street then? ‘Hello, Mr. Redbreast, this fellow buggered me, and I loved it. String us up’?”
“That’s not the point.”
“It is.” The brute sat up. He wore the formidable scowl that indicated thought. “It’s exactly the point. When the Duke of Cumberland cut his valet’s throat—”
“That is slander!” The wine splashed over Dominic’s fingers. “Don’t repeat that.”
“Oh, come on. Half of London knows he did it. Word is, he fathered a child on his own sister.”
“Well, he didn’t,” Dominic snapped. “Either. That’s a gross libel put about by muckrakers and rabble-rousers.”
“Aye? Well, let’s call it an analogy then and just imagine Cumberland cut his valet’s throat. You think he’d hang for it?”
Dominic sat back. “Perhaps not,” he admitted. “No.”
“So there’s not one law for all, in the first place. And are you going to prosecute me for sodomy? Turn king’s evidence?”
“No.”
“So there are laws you don’t think will be enforced and laws you don’t think should be enforced. Right. Now, say this—what was it?—brother—”
“Wife’s brother.”
“Right. Say what his mate did was rape. Left a few girls bleeding, and your wife’s brother kept it quiet. Are you sitting here asking me what I reckon you should do?”
“No,” Dominic said again.
“What are you doing?”
Dominic sighed. “Hanging him high, and be damned to my wife. I see what you’re saying. But this isn’t the same thing.”
“Why not?”
Dominic wasn’t entirely sure. Because sedition was a serious crime, but it lacked an immediate victim? Because it was one thing to upset a theoretical wife, quite another to bring trouble down on Richard?
He stared into his glass, watching the liquid swirl. “Oh, blast it. I don’t need you to tell me what’s right. I know what’s right. I just don’t want to do it.”
“I’m not going to tell you to do wrong, if that’s what you’re hoping. You can choose that for yourself.”
“You’re a comfort.”
“You don’t come to me for comfort,” the brute pointed out. “Tell you this, though. I never heard how the right thing to do was to betray your friends. Not ever.”
“No.” Dominic tossed back the remainder of his wine, held out the glass for more. “No. I can’t quite reconcile that either.”
“You got to choose your side.” The brute sloshed out the Moselle as if it were gin. “I was saying that to a lad I know just a couple of days ago. He’s another one trying to make a circle square by thinking. Well, sometimes you can’t. You got to stand by your friends or your duty, right? Can’t do both, and you got to choose.”
“That’s it precisely,” Dominic said. “And I don’t want to.”
The brute looked at him. Then he put down his glass on the side table, reached out a powerful arm, and gripped Dominic’s shoulder, pulling him over, and Dominic let himself be pulled until he could rest against the brute’s shoulder, leaning into his strength, and feel his steady heart.
“It ain’t much fun doing what’s right, sometimes.” The brute’s voice was quiet. “I’ve done it and paid for it and been sorry for my choices even when I couldn’t’ve chosen otherwise. Sometimes there’s no way that means you can look yourself in the face afterward. I know this much, Tory: You’re wrongheaded in your politics, but you’re a decent man. Whether you’ll make the right decisions, I don’t know, but I’d back you to try your best, and if your friends can’t see that, they’re fools.”