“ ‘Aye,’ he says. Did it occur to you to consider the consequences had they succeeded?”
Silas folded his arms. “I did consider it. First, they weren’t going to succeed, even if it hadn’t been a put-up job, because there was maybe five of them could catch clap in a brothel without instructions. And second, if they had succeeded, Sidmouth and Castlereagh and the rest could take their chances, just like the people at Peterloo who were cut down and died for their politics. And third, whatever they had planned, did you expect me to inform?”
“No. I can’t say I did.”
“I know what you think.” Silas’s jaw was set, a muscle twitching in his neck. “You’d call what they did murder and anarchy. Well, I call what your government does the same thing, and you know it.”
“Yes, I do. And…Oh, Silas. I don’t know what to say.”
“No need to say anything. You owe me nothing.”
“Edwards won’t appear in court,” Dominic said. “The prosecution won’t risk calling him, but they don’t have to. One of the others, Adams, has turned king’s evidence, and that’s all they need. Your friends will swing, no question, and they’ll swing because my colleagues laid out a path to the gallows and lured them along it. That is anarchy. It is lawlessness at the heart of government, corrupt as a rotting corpse. Peterloo was a tragic mishap, but this? This is judicial murder.”
“Dom? Are you all right?”
“No. I have tendered my resignation.” He managed a smile. “It’s what took me so long to come here. I had to decide, and it was…difficult. I kept thinking that perhaps I should stay and try to make changes, or perhaps I should wait until the election, see if the Whigs would do anything differently, but…No. This is not my England and this is not my party. I stand for my beliefs, but I won’t stand for this.”
“You resigned,” Silas repeated, apparently hearing nothing else.
“I should have done so a long time ago, truth be told. My duty has not been compatible with you, any more than your principles are with me.”
Silas gave a tight smile. “True enough. We were fooling ourselves there. Or making fools of ourselves.”
“Or making sense. Silas, I know working for Richard is very far from what you want, and I always said I would not ask you to change your principles. But I am now; I am begging you. Please stay. Please take Richard’s protection, because…” He took a deep breath. “Because I fear for you without it. I don’t trust my colleagues, my former colleagues. Edwards’s testimony and your conviction would have suited certain people very well. I think that you will be watched, in the hope that you can be caught, and I think if Skelton sees a chance for vengeance, he will take it. If you rejoin radical company, you’ll do nothing but get yourself arrested and bring trouble on them too.”
“Aye.” Silas didn’t sound surprised. “Had a fair idea it would be that way.”
“I’m sorry,” Dominic said. “I know how much your cause meant to you. I’m sorry to have played any part in taking it from you. But it’s gone.”
“I know. Well.” Silas tipped his head back, as if examining the ceiling. Dominic wished he dared step forward and hold him.
“Richard is a powerful man,” he said instead. “If you stay under his protection, at least for a while…” Silas made an impatient gesture of understanding. Dominic took a deep breath. “And if you are my best friend’s bookman, I will always have an excuse to see you. If you wish to see me. May I hope you will?”
That got Silas’s eyes back on him, staring as though Dominic were speaking Hottentot. Silas started to say something, shook his head, and finally got out, “I thought—you weren’t going to want to— Didn’t know if you were coming.”
“I?” Dominic had spent the last days with an increasing fear that it would happen again. He’d dreamed it asleep and imagined it awake: Silas seeing him as part of the apparatus of entrapment and murder, complicit by his silence. His lover, turning away in disgust. “You thought I wouldn’t—”
“You fucking walked away. You turned and left—”
“Is there nothing I have got right?” Dominic propelled himself off the desk and pulled Silas to him, cupping a hand around his lover’s bristly scalp. “Silas. Dear heaven. You idiot.”
“You walked away,” Silas repeated harshly. His body was rigid.
“I couldn’t stay. I felt as though I’d betrayed everything. You, and my office, and my friends, I turned traitor on you all—”