A Seditious Affair(90)

Chapter 16


It was ten days later when Dominic finally stepped down from the carriage onto the gravel driveway of Arrandene, Richard’s country estate north of London. He greeted the butler, an old friend, with a few words, and let himself be ushered into the drawing room with promises of tea and Richard. Both arrived within a very few minutes.

“Dom.” Richard clapped him on the arm. “I’m damned glad to see you. You look exhausted.”

“I am. It has not been a pleasant time. Tell me, how has, uh—”

“He is well, I believe. Not the most sociable member of the servants’ hall, according to Cyprian, but refraining from stirring up radical discontent, at least. And doing an outstanding job on the library, which I had not been aware was quite so appallingly neglected. I think you may have done me a service there.”

“We both know that’s not true. I’m sorry, Richard. I’m sorry for everything that I brought to your door, and I’m sorry that I forced you to lie for me—”

Richard had a hand up. “Firstly, you did not. I chose to do that. Don’t take the credit for my self-sacrifice. Secondly…Oh, Dominic, my dear and beloved Dominic. Would you say I had hagridden you since our parting?”

“What? No!”

“I hope not. And yet the phrase sticks in my throat, as insults do when they have the added insult of being true.”

“It is not. Who on earth said— Oh, he didn’t.”

“He told me he would rather hang than allow me to use him against you,” Richard said. “And I believed him. Your werewolf is…devoted.”

“Perhaps you could not call him that,” Dominic suggested, without much hope. When Julius bestowed a nickname, it stuck.

“The point is, that’s what he saw. Me set against you. And I am very afraid he saw that through your eyes.”

Dominic put his cup down. “Rich, listen—”

“No, let me say this. I have made mistakes, I become aware, more and larger and further-reaching mistakes than I could have imagined. I find myself unsure of…things I have not previously doubted.”

Dominic frowned. “Has something happened?”

“No. No. Let us say, I have held certain beliefs all my life, and I now find myself wishing I had been rather less absolute in my convictions.” Richard gave a rueful smile. “It is very uncomfortable.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I expect you know what I mean. It does seem unfair that one should have to rethink one’s beliefs at the advanced age of thirty-seven.”

“On the other hand, ‘The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.’ ” Dominic grinned at Richard’s expression. “Blake.”

“I should be extremely grateful if you would stop quoting that lunatic at me. Dom, I don’t know what you want, and when I find out, I dare say I won’t understand. So I will say just this, with my hand and heart on it: While you wish me to offer shelter to your werewolf, and whatever your relations with him may be, I will do so without question, no matter how much he snarls at confinement.”

“He’s been making himself pleasant then,” Dominic said with resignation.

“Quite. In heaven’s name, go and cheer him up,” Richard said. “Or put him out of his misery; either will do. You won’t be disturbed.”

—

Arrandene’s library was an impressive room even for this house. Panels and shelves and balustrades of oak and books by the yard, leather bound or in bundles of sewn paper awaiting binding. Silas would know what you called those. Quite a lot of them were in piles on the floor, and Dominic could see Silas’s crabbed, determined hand, line after line, on the open pages of the huge ledger on the desk.

The room was quite eighteen feet high, the shelves reaching to the ceiling, and Silas was up a ladder at the top. His cropped hair was neater than before, and he wore black breeches and a sober black tailcoat, in respectable style. Dominic might not have known that clerkly figure from the back, except that he would know Silas anywhere.

Dominic waited for Silas to make his way down, a tome under one arm, before he said, “Good afternoon.”

Silas stilled for a second, as if he were bracing for something, then turned. “Afternoon.”

“Hard at work, I see.”

“Lot to do.” His face was guarded, as if anticipating something, like a blow.

Dominic went over to the desk where Silas was standing and propped himself on the edge. “Let’s get this said. You knew about a plot to murder the cabinet.”

“Aye.”