A Seditious Affair(54)
“Really?” Richard took an impatient turn around the room. “You may think not. But when one party has everything and the other nothing, can there be any sort of parity between them? Any justice, any balance, any match? Look at my cousin Verona, married to her penniless sergeant. She has birth, wealth, and beauty. He had nothing. When the first flush of enthusiasm subsides, will he not be ever conscious of his inferior position?”
“I understood she’d been set on him since childhood. And I dare say her birth and wealth will do much to ease their way—”
“Which yours cannot,” Richard retorted. “If you had given your heart to a scullery maid even, you could at least give her the protection of your name and rank, disgrace yourself but elevate her. But in our position—”
“In our position we have nobody to rely on but one another,” Dominic said. “You taught us that, Rich. You have given us safety and companionship in our little society, and we all owe you a great deal. But, my friend, you are not the master of hearts or the arbiter of principles.”
“Easily said, when you seem to have discarded yours.”
“I see. Tell me, is your outrage truly concern for Silas’s well-being? Or are you merely angry that I have presumed to creep out from your shadow at last?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I am tired of missing you, Richard. In fact, I do not miss you. I’m sorry I could not love you as we both wished, back then. But I will not spend any more of my life mourning that we are not a bedroom match, or listening to your opinions on the subject.”
“That is grossly unfair.” Richard sounded strangled.
“You made me feel less of a man. You made me feel unworthy of you.” Dominic was half-shouting now, years of suppressed, unacknowledged hurt rushing through his veins. “I felt unworthy of anyone because I believed what happened between us was my fault. Well, it was not. And if it has taken a self-taught gutter revolutionary to show me that, I can only conclude that Silas’s views have something to commend them after all. Because I will tell you this, Richard Vane, he has been a better man to me than you ever were.”
Richard’s mouth was open, his face patched red and white. Dominic had the distinct sensation that he might have gone too far. But it had needed saying, and with it he had felt the cleansing pain of a bursting cyst, the poison draining away.
“There’s a line of Blake’s,” he went on. “Love seeketh only self to please, to bind another to its delight—”
“That is not what I wanted. It is not.”
“It is not what either of us wanted, I imagine, but it is what both of us did. I wanted you to meet my desires and you wanted me to forget them. Neither of us was reasonable, but we were very young.” He managed a smile. “I love you dearly, my friend. I always will, but even without my tastes, I think we would not have grown well together. The fact is, you want an ally. I prefer a challenge. You want agreement; I want contraries. I want Silas.”
Richard swallowed convulsively. “How can you know? How can you risk yourself with so much uncertainty? What damage might be done by this?”
“What’s the alternative to risk?” Dominic demanded. “Live celibate? Bed whores? Swive each other for the lack of anything better to do, the pack of us alone together? Do you remember we had a conversation about Julius, that inhuman, miserable distance at which he set himself? He’s come back to life—”
“With Harry, who is his equal in birth and a man with whom he can be seen to spend time.”
“As far as any of us can,” Dominic retorted. “I don’t need you to shake Silas’s hand and I don’t want to make him part of our society. He is Ludgate radical to the bone, and I would not change that if I could.”
“You cannot love across a divide,” Richard said. “It’s not possible. The world doesn’t allow it.”
“Since the world would hang me equally quickly whether the prick in my arse was attached to you or Silas, I cannot see it matters.”
“It matters to me,” Richard said. “It is everything. If there is no legitimacy for our affairs, no framework, then we must be our own arbiters of right and wrong. We have to watch ourselves because we cannot let the world do it, and again, Dominic, can you say that this business of yours is fair?”
“I cannot defend the contradictions in my position. I see no way whatever to reconcile my duty and my personal obligations, and heaven knows how this will end. You are quite right about that, and I have no answer. And furthermore, I know damned well that I have more power than Silas in the world outside. He wouldn’t let me forget it, even if I was inclined to. So…I give him the truth. I don’t ask for his; I give him mine.” The shames, the fears, the desires. He stared into the fire. “I have made myself vulnerable to him, I have put my soul in his hands, and he has cherished it. I wish you’d see that, Richard. I wish you understood.”