A Seditious Affair(47)

He was running off his pamphlets after hours at his cousin’s printshopprint shop now, finding himself, to his own shame, too fearful to do the work on the handpress. Someone had exerted influence at the Home Office in some way Dominic hadn’t chosen to explain, but Silas hadn’t noticed any shadows on his tail in the last few days. That wasn’t going to last, though. Sidmouth’s bills were still going through Parliament, but Silas had a deep, sick conviction they’d pass, and when they did, the legitimate voices for reform would be silenced or driven underground, and the government’s men would swoop like vultures on them all.

The measures might not pass, he repeated to himself. Even Dominic didn’t like them. Surely there weren’t enough reactionaries, surely the Whigs and the moderate Tories would oppose…

He couldn’t quite make himself believe it.

These were his days. Hunger and desperation around him, writing with ever more anger and a growing sense of furious futility, and all of it harder and sharper because of Dominic, who loved him.

There were, Silas had learned from Zoë, men with tastes far odder than Dominic’s. Men who wore devices all the time, under their clothes: spiked things that dug in or consolateurs that stayed in place while you went about your business. Not something Silas would want. And yet, in some peculiar way, it was what he had, because Dom’s words stayed with him like a spiked collar, scraping at his skin, the points digging in sharp at unexpected moments, but always producing a steady hum of pain.

Wednesday by Wednesday, week by week, I have loved you.

Like Silas hadn’t. Like he didn’t dream of the Tory asleep and awake, like he hadn’t shamed himself with fantasies of lives together, like he hadn’t surrendered in his soul as much as Dom ever had on his knees. Like he didn’t want to give up everything he’d ever fought for, every scrap of it, for his dark-eyed beauty.

He feared in his bones that he’d give in if Dom asked, and Dom knew it and didn’t ask. Silas loved him more for that, with a heart so poorly suited and so unaccustomed to love that he felt it might burst its banks like one of London’s choked, fetid rivers.

He had no idea what to do with what he felt.

If you truly cared, you’d make him stop this before he runs his head into a noose. Silas told himself that every day. He might have been able to do it except that Dom had been left before, by that worthless, oversized prick who’d hurt him again and again, and Silas would not walk in that bastard’s shiny-booted footsteps.

He kept a weather eye out for spies on his way to the address he’d been sent. It was up west, near Grosvenor Square, a place called Bishop’s Yard. He’d had to look that up, and found it backing on to Mount Street, where Dominic lived. Convenient for him; a good few miles on foot for Silas.

That seemed oddly selfish—for Dominic, not for gentry in general—right up to the moment Silas gave the false name he’d been supplied, and the leather-jerkined man in the yard replied, with utter boredom: “Here about the binding? Gawd, him and his books. First floor, up the back stairs and round.”

“Hold on. Where’m I going to?”

“Mr. Frey’s. Go on, get on. It’s too cold for chat.”

Disbelieving, sure this was wrong, but unwilling to draw attention, Silas went through the indicated door and up the stairs. He knocked.

A housemaid answered. “Delivery? Oh, no, you’re the book man.” She looked him up and down, gave a little sniff. “Well, in you come.” She ushered him into a book-lined study, curtains drawn and fire blazing, warmly decorated in shades of red that made him think of the wines they had drunk. “I’ll let the master know you’re here.”

And then, a few long moments later, Dominic. He walked in with a word of courteous greeting, shut the door, and took Silas, astonished and unresisting, in his arms.

Silas allowed himself one long, greedy kiss, because he couldn’t not, then wrenched away. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Possibly.” Dom’s eyes were sparkling darkness. “Probably. On the other hand, I do have some small powers of planning. You are chilled to the bone.”

“It’s damned cold out.”

“Bath,” Dominic said. “I had one drawn. No, I am quite serious.”

“You can’t just put a passing bookseller into a bath,” Silas growled. “You don’t think the servants will notice?”

“The servants have all gone home but one, and she is leaving now,” Dominic said, rather smugly. “I gave them the evening off. You and I, my friend, have the place to ourselves. And I don’t think we will be able to repeat this, so shall we not waste our time in argument?”