A Seditious Affair(46)

Silas gave him a rueful look. “Nor I, of Jon and Zoë’s. Feel a bit stupid, to be honest.”

“Possibly not as stupid as I do.”

“No, probably not. That Zoë, she might save your arse but never your face. You ever had a woman, Dom?”

“What? Uh, no, as it happens. I was with Richard until my twenties, by which time I was quite sure I had no curiosity to satisfy. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering. Way you looked. I don’t know.” Silas shifted. “We’re tangled all to hell in each other’s meshes, and I don’t know anything about you.”

“You know everything about me. You know how I want to fuck and what I want to read and what matters to me. You know all that even when I don’t.”

“I damn near got you caught,” Silas growled. “Led them here and tied you to a fucking bed to wait for them.”

“If you imagine I didn’t notice you trying to free me when you should have been running for your life—”

“I’m not a traitor.”

“You’re a damned fool.” Dominic walked up to him, brushing a hand over his prickly hair. Silas looked away, shamefaced and awkward, and Dominic was almost sure he knew why.

Almost, and there was a wide, deep gap between that and certainty, but if he could not humiliate himself with Silas, where could he?

“Silas,” he said softly. “As Mistress Zoë has deduced, as my friend has told me, as I suspect you know too—”

“Don’t. Don’t say it.”

“I must. I have been coming to love you for a long time, you damned seditious brute, as I almost found the courage to tell you earlier. Wednesday by Wednesday, week by week, I have loved you.” He ran his hands gently down Silas’s sides, to his hips. “I know the burden this puts on you, and that it is a crackbrained, dangerous way to go on, but I also know what it is to lay my life waste. I will not do it again.”

“Say that when I lead the hounds to your door,” Silas growled.

“We’ll have to make sure you don’t.”

Silas made an inarticulate noise of frustration. “Christ’s blood! What am I to do? What the hell do you think I’m going to do?”

“Continue as you were, I expect. I don’t ask you to be less of a radical. I certainly shall not be less of a Tory. It is a matter of personal triumph that I have made you care for me anyway, you revolutionary swine.”

“Who says?” Silas growled, tugging him close. He brushed a hand through Dominic’s hair, pushed at his head in order to kiss the side of his neck. Dominic shivered. “You blasted…ah God, Dom.” Silas’s arms tightened around him, so hard it almost hurt. “Don’t say it, eh? Don’t tell me. It’s bad enough already.”

“Why is it bad?”

“The more you have, the more you have to lose. Your lot have all the advantages and we’ve got one. When you have nothing, you’ve got everything to fight for.” His voice dropped almost to inaudibility, whispered against Dominic’s skin. “And you just gave me everything, so how do I keep fighting now?”

Then stop, Dominic wanted to say. Please. If you do, I can shield you. I’ll drive Skelton off, I’ll make it all go away, and you can—

What? What would a firebrand do once extinguished? What would Silas do without his cause, or his pride?

Dominic held him in silence, listening to distant shouts, and wondered why this had to be impossible.





Chapter 7


They were next due to meet on the last Wednesday before Christmas.

Silas had little enough Yuletide spirit. He had nobody to share Christmas with, for one thing, with Harry gone to be a gentleman. He’d never made a fuss about the day, but Harry, with that irrepressible joy of his, had put up greenery and candles too, when the extravagance could be justified, and usually found something decent to make a meal. Silas, atheist to the core, had grumbled about waste and foolish superstition, but now there was no Harry after six years, and the prospect of a cheerless, lonely Christmas was bleak.

Not that he’d have it different. Harry had been a useless mouth to feed, that was all; if he was now rich and safe, that just spared Silas a responsibility. The boy would be a bloody fool to come back even to visit anyway, and Silas was glad to know he wasn’t. It was for the best.

It was bitter cold these days, the wind howling through the gaps in the bookshop walls and windows, and times were hard. Sales weren’t bad, but so many of the people around him were out of work, all of them needing help that nobody else would give, and then there was the endless, endless expense of printing.