A Seditious Affair(7)

His voice ached. Silas wanted to hold him, pull him close. “That’s hard.”

“I thought it was right, until I saw his face, heaven help me. And one can’t take that sort of thing back once spoken. My poor Richard.”

“Poor Richard?” Silas repeated. “He couldn’t play a bedroom game or two for your sake, and it’s poor Richard?”

“He’s a principled, decent man, and I gave him the choice between doing something that repelled him or ending what we had. I hurt him so much.”

It sounded the other way around to Silas. He felt an urge to take this prig of a Richard fellow and slam his head into a wall, knock some sense into him. Some prancing fop or stick-up-his-arse country squire, no doubt. Some cowardly prick who couldn’t see a good thing when he had one in his bed. It wasn’t as if Silas had made a habit of playing the bully in the bedroom before. He was a heavy-handed man, granted, not one for lover’s knots and soft words, but the idea of hurting or insulting a bedfellow on purpose had still seemed damned peculiar. He’d learned to do it, and like it, for the Tory.

The Tory, whose voice rang with a pain that scraped Silas’s nerves. He was in his late thirties and still mooning over a boys’ affair fifteen years back?

Bloody idiocy. “Maybe you did, but nature can’t be helped. You got your nature, and if this Richard fellow wasn’t man enough for it”—he rode on over the Tory’s protest—“that’s his loss. There’s no way around it with you. A man needs to be cruel to be kind.”

The Tory spluttered into his wineglass. “Damn you. And you’re right. Not that it was Richard’s failing, but that it had to be done.” He sighed. “It was hard, though. It affected our friendship for a long time. And I couldn’t find what I needed, and it wasn’t safe trying.”

“No.” Silas had heard all about that. He’s going to get himself killed, Jon had said. Can’t get what he wants from whores, so he goes looking in alleys. Silas didn’t want to think about that, about the Tory and the stupid risks he’d run. How easily he could have been lost, broken and bleeding. “So what’s this to do with today?”

The Tory hesitated, then grinned, a sudden boyish smile that made him look much younger. “Well, that it has been a good year. That you understand what even Richard does not, and I appreciate your understanding, my friend.” He moved his glass to chink it against Silas’s. “Thank you.”

“Cheers.” Silas could feel his face redden. He drained his glass to cover his confusion, then plucked the Tory’s away and set them both down. “Well, seems to me, if this is an anniversary, it calls for a celebration.”

“Oh yes?” Those dark eyes hooded, already anticipating. He stretched out, arms above his head, something like a lazy movement, but one that brought muscle and sinew into play.

Silas swung a leg over the Tory’s chest and sat firmly, his bulk as effective a prison as any chains. He leaned forward, grabbed the Tory’s wrists, and pushed down, digging his fingers into the flesh till he was sure he’d leave marks. A little anniversary gift for his Tory to cherish till next week, and if that bloody Richard fellow saw them, so much the better. The Tory moaned in helpless protest, attempting to twist free.

“Celebration, I said,” Silas told him. “And I’m going to celebrate you till you won’t walk straight for days.”





Chapter 2


OCTOBER 1819

“I could wish I’d never found my blasted cousin,” Lord Richard Vane said with force.

Dominic stretched his legs out in front of the fire. It was a Tuesday night. One day before Wednesday.

He was tired; he always was. His position in the Home Office was no sinecure, although it could have been. There were plenty of gentlemen who drew a wage and did very little to earn it. Dominic did not choose to be one of them.

His work was not enjoyable at the moment. Since the unfortunate incident at Manchester, when concerned magistrates had ordered overzealous yeomanry to control a dangerous crowd, accidentally killing a handful of demonstrators, the country had been aflame. The incident, nothing more than a tragic misfortune, had been given the melodramatic nickname of “the Peterloo Massacre” and stirred up into a crisis by journalists and polemicists, with accusations of murder thrown at the lawful government. Seditious pamphlets circulated ever more widely, fanning the flames of radical dissent, attempting to turn popular anger into revolution.

Dominic didn’t intend to let that happen. But it was hard and draining work controlling the waves of popular fury, and he was tired, and he had very limited patience for Richard’s current problem, his newfound relative Harry.