But this, for now, would do.
Chapter 10
Two weeks later, Silas didn’t arrive. Dominic sat in the little anonymous room feeling cold with fear in a way the blazing fire couldn’t quell.
It was Wednesday, the day of King George III’s burial in Windsor. A state funeral, with magnificent pomp, for the old monarch whom most of his subjects had half-forgotten in life, the streets of Windsor lined with Life Guards and Foot Guards, all of them drawn from London.
There had been something coming. Dominic had gleaned it from crumbs and careless words and a sense of subdued excitement in the office. The radicals had planned to strike tonight, in the absence of so many soldiers, and the Home Office was many, many steps ahead. Dominic’s colleagues knew exactly what was going on, and they would be ready.
He’d wanted, desperately, to warn Silas, in case he was part of such a mad plan. He couldn’t do it, and he couldn’t not. If there was a real conspiracy and Silas part of it, a warning would be flat treachery. If Dominic didn’t warn his lover, Silas’s fate would be the most terrible of all penalties: hanging, drawing, and quartering. Which he’d deserve, if he was a traitor, but…
Dominic had paced around Richard’s room like a caged animal the day before, going over and over the same ground—What do I do? What do I do?—until finally Richard had said, “Do you trust him?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a simple question. Do you believe that he is, as you have said, a good man with different opinions? Not a murderer, not a Bonapartist, not a traitor?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Then if you are correct, he is not involved in a conspiracy to take London by force,” Richard had said. “In which case your warning would be not just a shameful betrayal of duty but an unnecessary one, and perhaps even an insulting one. If you trust him, Dominic, then trust him.”
So he had. And now Silas was not here.
Dominic waited. Waited and waited, until past midnight, feeling colder with every moment that passed, and then left. Walked back home in a state of frozen despair. Did not take a hackney to Ludgate to beat fruitlessly on the door of the bookshop, did not flee to St. James’s Street to demand what Harry knew, did not do anything. Because if there had been treason and Silas had been arrested, everything was over and it was too late. He had been a traitor by his silence as much as Silas by his act.
He roamed his rooms, but they were full of Silas. The study in which he’d given Harry to Silas for Christmas and where, later, Silas had fucked him in front of the fire, holding the poker tight against Dominic’s throat so he had gasped for breath. The bedroom where, for the only time in their whole year and a half, they had slept and woken together. The bookshelves everywhere, all of them shaped by Silas’s voracious reading.
Dominic did not sleep that night.
He went into the office the next morning to get the news in the spirit of a man condemned. He felt like one. But at least he’d know; at least then he could engage Absalom, who loved a lost cause. He could fight. He would fight.
Except there was no fight to be had.
Nobody was talking about a conspiracy. Nobody mentioned a plot, or a revolution, or an arrest. The place was as dull as ditch water. Dominic looked around, not quite understanding what had or hadn’t happened. He asked five people, “What news?” and received yawning, uninterested answers. At last he went to Skelton.
“Good morning. Are you busy?”
“Not at all.”
“I thought you might be,” Dominic said recklessly. “Was there not something on last night, in your line?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I heard talk of some outrage planned the day of his majesty’s funeral.”
“Oh, that? No, I fear you’re rather behind the times, Mr. Frey, that didn’t come off in the end. No trouble at all.”
Dominic blinked. “Then what did happen last night?”
“Nothing that I know of.”
“No,” Dominic said. “Something must have happened, something— What was it?”
Skelton looked up at him, baffled. “I have no idea. Are you all right, Mr. Frey?”
“Confused. I fear I have got myself in a muddle. Do excuse me.”
He fled back to his desk, thinking frantically against the exhaustion. If nothing had happened, where the devil was Silas? Bow Street? He could go straight there, but he couldn’t ask if they had Silas in custody…
Blast it.
He abandoned his desk with a brief word of excuse, strode to the street, and hailed a hackney to take him to Ludgate. He meant to walk the last few hundred yards, down Paternoster Row, but in fact, once he saw the gap in the roofline, he ran.