A Seditious Affair(48)

Silas blinked at him. “Right. Bath, you say?”

He’d never had a bath, not in a private way. He washed, like everyone else, under the pump or with a pitcher and a bowl, went to the bathhouse as a luxury. Dom had had people boiling water for this, lugging great pitchers of the stuff up the stairs, and Silas didn’t believe for a second that it was leftover bathwater either. This was for him.

The bath stood in a bedroom, in front of another fire. Coals that could keep half the street warm in a set of rooms for one man that had enough space for twenty. The water was deep enough to soak in up to his neck and so hot that it seared his chilled toes before warming them. He shut his eyes, feeling the soothing heat, and heard a soft tread on the floor.

“How’s that?” Dominic asked.

“Very nice. Thought I needed cleaning up, did you?”

“Honestly? Yes.”

Fair enough. He was dirty, and knew it. It wasn’t possible to be otherwise. His cropped hair kept him free of lice, and he sluiced himself down whatever the weather because he’d read a lot on hygienic living, but there wasn’t much more a working man could do.

Except take a wealthy man as lover, of course.

He harrumphed in response and reached for the washcloth Dominic held out. It was a rare pleasure, scrubbing at himself, sluicing water through his hair, with the frothiest, sweetest soap he’d ever touched. It was Dom’s soap, the stuff Silas had smelled on his skin. He’d smell of it for a little while, carrying the Tory around with him in a cloud, before it wore off with time and grime, and the thought was a painful joy.

The bathwater, when he opened his eyes to look at it, was murky.

“God’s tits,” he muttered. Honest dirt shouldn’t be an embarrassment, of course. Bathing was another luxury the rich kept to themselves, that was all. But in this clean, airy room, the dirt made him feel his place.

Was this Dominic’s bedroom? It had a large bed, with an iron frame that brought ideas to mind and a mirror opposite that added to them. No pictures on the wall, no china or trinkets or silver knickknacks or whatever gentlemen usually had, no anything that spoke of his personality. Just a bed, a chest, and a lot of shelves with a lot of books.

Books and a bed. If the floor had been bare, rather than covered in rugs, and the bed had been smaller and harder, the blankets coarse instead of fine, and the walls dirty, it could have been Silas’s own room.

Dominic had gone out while he washed. Silas could have sworn he heard voices, low, somewhere outside. He didn’t let it worry him. It might be people in the hallway of the building; if it was an unexpectedly returned servant, well, Dom was no fool.

The man in his thoughts came back in a moment later. “Done? Good heavens.”

“Aye, well.” Silas gave his short hair a last scrub and a doglike shake and hauled himself out of the tub. Dominic stood with a towel, a great clean sheet. “Reckon I might get that dirty.”

“It doesn’t matter if you do.” Dominic enfolded him in the towel, warm and dry and the softest thing he’d ever felt against his skin, rubbing it gently over him. “That looks like it feels better.”

“Not so bad. Comfortable things, your luxuries.”

“That’s what they’re for,” Dominic agreed. “Silas, I hope you know—I know you know that I have no desire to change you. Or, at least, that I am not fool enough to embark on any such fruitless quest. You do me very well as you are. You know that, yes?”

“What are you getting at?”

“This.” Dominic stepped away and indicated a neat pile of clothes on the bed.

“What’s that?”

“Christmas. I wanted you here, and I wanted you to be comfortable here, so, uh, I hope they fit.”

Silas picked up the garments with exaggerated disbelief. They were…

They were, in fact, perfect.

Not shining new. Not obtrusive. Not smart. The decent garb of a decent man. Precisely the sort of thing that a prosperous bookseller of the middle sort might wear: a good linen shirt, a decent brown waistcoat and darker coat. A pair of breeches.

“You bought me clothes,” Silas said.

“I have so much.” Dominic sounded a little stifled. “Please, let me give you something of use. I promise, I did consider— Look, could you just try to take this in the spirit in which it’s meant?”

“And what spirit’s that?”

“A radical one, of course. Sharing my wealth. We both know this isn’t going to happen twice, Silas. I hoped to make it good.”

Silas forced out his instinctive reluctance on a breath. “Ah, you bugger. All right. But you’re a prick.”