“I have no idea,” Norreys said calmly. “That, I hope and trust, has been decided in my absence. I was charged with retrieving you from durance vile. Greater minds, supposedly, have been applying themselves to the problem of what to do with you now.”
“Dominic—”
“If I were you, I should practice calling him Mr. Frey. You don’t know him. Remember that, if you remember nothing else. Now give me the whole story, from the start.”
—
The coach halted in a mews somewhere, at the back of a row of tall townhouses that were doubtless gracious from the front. An expressionless servant in dark green livery waited at a back door. “You’re to go to the book room, sir,” he murmured, taking Norreys’s hat, stick, and greatcoat deftly.
Norreys led the way, evidently knowing the house well. He waved Silas into a room that—
Books. Even with everything weighing on him, the fear and despair and bewilderment, all he could see for a moment was books. Five sets of shelves, running around the entire room, hundreds of books, right there within a few feet of him, filling the room with the smells of leather and paper and print. And a well-upholstered chair in front of the fire, with a little table by its side and a candlestick. A space just for reading.
Silas had never wanted anything so much in his life.
Someone coughed, and he belatedly noticed that there were two other men in the room.
Familiar men. He’d seen them both that day they’d come to fetch Harry away. Lord Richard Vane, standing maybe six inches taller than Silas, imposing and set faced. And his valet Cyprian, Foxy David himself, slender and sly in dark green livery, with his hair thickly powdered white.
“Good evening,” Norreys said. “Richard, this is Mason. He has been charged with high treason on the basis that he was part of the Spencean group that plotted the assassination and present at Cato Street last night.” He paused, wincing. “Unfortunately, both of these allegations are true.”
“What?”
“Indeed, but—”
“No buts. Get him out of the country.” Lord Richard jerked a hand at Silas, as though brushing away a fly.
“I posted his bail,” Norreys said mildly. “And more to the point, he assures me that he declined to be involved in the conspiracy. It sounds—”
“A lifetime in sedition and plots is involvement enough,” Lord Richard interrupted. “No, Julius, he must be got rid of, at once. If it were not for Harry, I should refuse all assistance. This is outrageous.”
“If you would hear me,” Norreys snapped. Silas looked from him to Lord Richard as they argued, talking about him like he wasn’t even there, and to Cyprian, who might as well have been not there himself for all anyone looked at him. Wealthy men, dictating how the world would be. Again.
“It is the only reasonable course of action,” Lord Richard said flatly. “We must have him out of the country.”
“I don’t like it, Richard. Dominic won’t like it either.”
“I don’t give a curse for Dominic’s opinion! His urge for degradation ceased to be tolerable at the point where it threatened the rest of us. I will not indulge his perversity to his ruin or Harry’s. This man is guilty of treason—”
“You are not listening—”
Lord Richard didn’t stop. “And Dominic will accept an end to this insanity, all of it, or I will make him.”
“You won’t,” Silas said.
Lord Richard turned his head slowly. Cyprian blinked once.
“I beg your pardon?” Lord Richard spoke in that authoritative voice, the one that was supposed to make you quail and retreat to your place. Well, Silas chose his own damned place.
He strode forward, glaring up into Lord Richard’s face. “I said, you won’t. You’ve hagridden Dom for fifteen fucking years, and I won’t have you giving him another dose of what’s wrong with him. It’s not his doing I’m mixed up in this, and you, friend, you aren’t making me into a stick to beat him with because you don’t like his ways. I’ll do whatever’s needed, I’ll let you ship me out the country if that’s best for him and Harry, but I won’t stand here and listen to you talk like that about a better man than any of you. I’ll not take a fucking thing from you, if it comes with that attached. So you”—he jabbed an aggressive finger—“you keep a civil tongue in your head, or I’ll go back to Bow Street right now and stand my trial. You needn’t fear for your lordship’s secrets,” he added unpleasantly. “I don’t inform.”
Lord Richard stared at him, face unreadable. Silas glared back. In the corners of his vision, Norreys and Cyprian were both very still.