A Seditious Affair

by K. J. Charles

  “For heaven’s sake. Now is not the time for bleating and sentimentality. Harry ought to be grateful he’s out of the radical cesspit, not throwing himself back in.”

  “He is, I’m sure, but Julius is of the opinion that the past is not so easily discarded.”

  Julius was the dandy who had taken on the task of reshaping Harry into a gentleman. He was also one of the Ricardians, the little set led by Lord Richard Vane, and perforce one of Dominic’s intimates, if not a friend. Dominic usually disagreed with him as a matter of principle. In this case he merely grunted.

  The past left scars. He knew that; he bore enough. One great, gouged wound inflicted when he had plucked up the courage to stutter out the half-formed desires that were growing unbearably strong and seen the look of bewildered revulsion on his lover’s face. The amputation of Richard from his life not long afterward, like severing a limb, because he’d ruined everything between them with his filthy needs. And the years of little wounds after that from the desperate drive to find the physical satisfaction he wanted and, with it, the rising, choking awareness that nothing would ever compensate for the love he’d not been fit to keep…

  Until Wednesdays.

  One day to go.

  He ought to be paying attention. “Is he talking to his radical friends? Writing letters? Visiting that bookshop where you found him?”

  “He’s been there at least once, I believe,” Richard admitted. Dominic clicked his tongue. “Indeed, but I feel sure it’s more friendship than political enthusiasm. I don’t think he’ll risk himself. He, uh, has an eye to his own well-being.”

  “Good. His well-being would be best served by putting nothing in writing and staying away from revolutionaries. We’re going to be dealing with these people, and harshly.” He yawned. “On which, I must go, Rich. It’s late and I’ve a deal of work tomorrow.” And would be up long into the night, he hoped.

  “By all means. I shall see you soon, my dear.”

  —

  He was up betimes on Wednesday, before his valet arrived, selecting the clothes that the brute liked. Good cloth, good fit, ones that spoke of Dominic’s status in the world. Ones that came off without a valet’s help, because the brute wouldn’t lend a hand. He’d sit with that snarling smile of his and watch Dominic struggle with a tight coat, enjoying his discomfort…

  Maybe he would wear a slightly better-fitted coat after all.

  He wrote a note to the madam at Millay’s to ensure that the right bottle would be waiting. A Moselle tonight. The brute was learning to appreciate a good wine, even if he’d never say so.

  The brute. The rough-spoken, grim-faced man, his thick fingers always chalky with dust, who swived him into oblivion with such savage care.

  Dominic shut his eyes, feeling the swell of arousal. Maybe he should indulge it. He’d spend most of the day in a state of building excitement anyway, until it would be as much as he could do to hold back at the first barked order.

  He let his hand skim over his hardening length. A light touch. The brute wasn’t light. He’d grip viciously, and it would hurt, and he’d demand submission. Dominic on his knees, whispering shameful things—no, crying them aloud, because the brute demanded it. No half measures. No mercy.

  Except that everything he did was a mercy, a pure, agonizing relief to the desires that snarled in Dominic’s gut, like pulling a thorn out of skin.

  Cruel to be kind. Damn his eyes. It was true, though, and they both knew it.

  Dominic flexed his fingers. They’d hurt tomorrow. Quite a lot of him would. Some Thursdays he could hardly move, and he’d often had clear finger marks on his wrists. His hands were the worst though. They cramped.

  The brute insisted on that. Hands on whatever he was ordered to hold, at once imprisonment, obedience, and silent consent. They both knew what it meant, but the brute never spoke of it, never gave the slightest indication, because he understood what Dominic needed. He understood.

  Heaven knew how, when his own dearest friend, the love of his life, had not.

  I don’t want you to stop, Dominic had said. Even if I should say I do. And Richard had stared at him as he would at some monstrous thing and said, But I love you. How could I hurt you? How could you ask me to?

  Dominic had had broken bones that had hurt less. And one forgot the reality of pain once the bones healed. He had a superb memory, and he did not forget words.

  He very definitely didn’t feel like pleasuring himself now. Thoughts of that conversation always had a quelling effect. Not that it would last until the evening.

  Wednesday. At last.

  —

  Dominic was working through a pile of reports, mostly notable for their uneducated hands, poor spelling, and obvious spite, when there was a rap on his door.

  “Mr. Frey.” It was Thaddeus Skelton. A little older than Dominic and a colleague he respected, although Skelton was of the lower orders. He operated with a ruthlessness that was outside what Dominic, as a gentleman, could stomach—which was why they had different sorts of men here, of course—and got the work done with pleasing efficiency.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Skelton?”

  Skelton smiled at the form of address, a little twitch that made his long whiskers ruffle. Not all the men of Dominic’s standing bothered to give him that courtesy. “I wondered if you’d like to come along with me tomorrow.” His smile broadened. “I’ve got a line on Jack Cade.”

  “Have you, by heaven?” Dominic sat upright. “Have you indeed. Tell me all.”

  Skelton swung in, closing the door behind him. The pamphleteer who wrote sedition under the pseudonym of Jack Cade was a big enough fish that he wouldn’t want him poached by one of their colleagues. “It’s not certain. But I’ve a man in among the radical scum and particularly the Spenceans.”

  Dominic snorted. He did not like the Spencean philosophy, a chatter of rights and equalities mouthed by gutter revolutionaries. They intended to steal land from its rightful owners and share it out among what they called “the people.” Dominic did not share their idealistic views of mankind and had a fair idea of what would happen to their utopia of property in common after a couple of years. “Go on.”

  “My man has nosed out that the Cade pamphlets are coming from a political bookshop owned by a Spencean type. There’s gossip it houses a hand press. Now, here’s the meat of it, Mr. Frey.” Skelton’s eyes gleamed. “This man, the owner, used to be known as a pamphleteer in his own right, a free-thinking Benthamite, but he’s not produced anything in the last two years—”

  “The period Cade has been writing. And we know from his work that Cade holds Spencean beliefs. You think this man is Cade, printing his own works?”

  “It would explain why we’ve not found his printer.”

  There were plenty of hand presses in London, plenty of angry radicals, plenty of printers who could keep a secret. Still, it was a good lead, and Skelton was no fool, and if they could snap up Cade, that scabrous treason-monger who wrote too well, that would be a solid blow to the seditionists. “Excellent. Yes, I’ll be there with pleasure. I’d like to see you bring Cade in.”

  Skelton’s smile showed they understood one another. Many Home Office senior men liked to claim credit for underlings’ triumphs. Dominic’s presence would prevent anyone else taking Skelton’s glory, and he would ensure that the man received full recognition. That modest supportiveness had won him a great deal of loyalty and meant his name was attached to a great number of successes.

  “Tomorrow then, Mr. Frey. Bright and early.”

  Dominic had a strong suspicion he would not want to rise early, after a Wednesday night with the brute. Still, Jack Cade would be worth it. “Very good. Where’s the place?”

  “Ludgate. The shop is called Theobald’s.”

  Dominic felt a cold sensation crawling up his neck. “Theobald’s. Theobald’s Bookshop?”

  Skelton raised a brow. “Aye, that’s the one. You know it?”

  “I recall ta
lk of a blasphemy prosecution, some time back.” He recalled it because he’d looked into the damned place just a few months ago, but his admirable memory was well enough known that Skelton simply nodded.

  “That’s the one. The prosecution didn’t come off in the end, but the man’s an atheist without question.”

  “Tell me, how sure are you that this shop, or its owner, is linked to Cade? What are our chances of success?”

  “Fair, I’d say. George Edwards, my man, is certain there’s something there. The owner’s one Mason, a man of bad association. He was part of the Gordons’ group a decade back, if you recall that precious pair. Flogged for his part in their riot of the year eight, did four months for seditious libel three years later, but we’ve not made anything stick since. A slippery fish, but he’s on the hook now. If he’s not Cade himself, he’ll lead us to him, and if not that, there’ll be something else. I smell it.” Skelton twitched his long nose as illustration and grinned.

  “I shan’t argue with your nose,” Dominic agreed. “Excellent. I will be with you tomorrow.”

  Skelton went out. Dominic got up, closed the door behind him, leaned against it, and said aloud, “Hell’s teeth.”

  Theobald’s Bookshop. The nest of sedition from which Richard had plucked his long-lost cousin Harry Vane just a few months ago.

  Harry had worked there for six years, and it would be some tiny place with one or two assistants at most. Of course he would have been involved in whatever sedition was brewed there. And as for “the Gordons’ group”…

  Harry Vane’s parents, who had called themselves Alexander and Euphemia Gordon, had been a pair of rabble-rousing demagogues who had fled England to escape retribution for their part in provoking a riot. Now their son was mixing with the cream of London society. Richard had sponsored him to join the best clubs, arranged him a voucher for Almack’s, presented him to the world as cousin and friend, and given the little swine lodging in his own home. If this man Mason—Harry’s old friend, his former employer—wrote treason as Jack Cade and Harry was implicated in his crimes, if it became widely known that both Harry and his father were revolutionary democrats…

  This was a disaster in the making, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it.

  He couldn’t stand in the way of the law. If this Mason was Jack Cade, he had to be stopped. Cade wrote his bloodthirsty snarling attacks on the state too damned well, with a vicious, hate-filled power that got under the reader’s skin, and appeals for justice and fairness that were fallacious but sufficiently emotional to push at the most rational reader’s beliefs. A very talented man.

  Dominic couldn’t prevent the raid for Harry’s sake. Cade was too important.

  Dominic made himself think it through. It had been months since Harry had worked in the bookshop, and he had done so as Harry Gordon. Could anyone link that name to the young gentleman Harry Vane?

  Yes: Mason could. Mason, who might be Jack Cade. And such a dyed-in-the-wool radical might well feel no fondness for the apprentice who had deserted him to become a gentleman.

  Harry—that smiling, likeable young man for whom Richard had pledged his credit—was almost certainly going to find himself in very bad trouble and infect Richard with it too. And there wasn’t a great deal that Dominic could, in conscience, do about it.

  —

  He still didn’t know what to do by the time the brute arrived at Millay’s.

  Dominic stood by the grate, watching the flames. The room was blissfully warm, though it was a chill autumn evening, and cold rolled off the brute as he tramped in. There was silence for a moment as he shed his coat—too damned thin and patched for this weather. Dominic stared into the fire. He could feel the brute’s gaze like a touch as he approached.

  “You.”

  Dominic looked around. The brute’s shrewd eyes were on him. They were a muddy, mongrel mix of shades, a dirty blue-brown-green sort of blend with no name, and Dominic had an unnerving feeling that they read him too well.

  “You look like you’re thinking about something.”

  Oh no, no, he didn’t need talking now. He needed to forget it all, so he could deal with it after. He opened his mouth to protest, but the brute put one cold, powerful hand over it, a deliberate insult, and his lips curled into that mastiff grin that made Dominic’s scalp prickle. “Who the fuck said you could think about things that I don’t tell you to?”

  And there it was. The rush of humiliated arousal that flooded everything else, washing it all away. Dominic bowed his head, or tried to, as the brute’s fingers tightened on his jaw.

  “Do I need to concentrate your mind? Reckon I do.” The brute released him with a shove. “Strip.”

  Dominic undressed, hands shaking. Coat, waistcoat; pulling his fine lawn shirt over his head—

  “Stop.”

  Dominic froze, arms high, cloth over his face, and felt the brute nearer. Felt his heat, his bulk. A rough hand slid over his bared, vulnerable belly and down the front of his breeches, forcing a reaction. He became aware he wasn’t breathing, and inhaled hard.

  “Huh.” The brute was an indistinct shape in the dim light through the cloth that muffled Dom’s face. He felt a possessive hand curling over his stand, sliding between his legs. “Very nice. If I wanted a tuppenny upright in a back alley.”

  Dominic could feel himself trembling. From the strain of holding his arms up, or from the brute’s caress, his hands so gentle as they ran up Dominic’s sides, over his chest.

  They didn’t know each other’s names; they’d never kissed. Still, it felt like a lover’s touch.

  A long moment, both of them breathing shallowly. Then the brute took hold of a nipple and pinched, hard, making Dominic gasp. “Well, get on.”

  Dominic pulled the shirt the rest of the way off and bent to remove his top boots, bowing at his tormentor’s feet. Pushed down breeches and drawers until he stood naked under the brute’s unsparing gaze.

  “Turn.” The brute pushed him against the four-poster bed. “Arms up. Hold the rail.” Dominic curled his fingers around the wood of the top rail so that he was facing the bed, naked, vulnerable.

  “Legs apart. Further.” A kick at his ankle. “Further, I said.”

  “Please,” Dominic whispered, skin shuddering with awareness. “Please.”

  Work-hardened fingers trailed down his spine, the rough skin scraping his. “Please what?”

  “Don’t hurt me.” Such a lie, such a damned lie.

  A knee between his, shoving his legs still further apart. He felt the stretch in his arms, gripped the rail desperately. “I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to ride you cock-horse till I’m done and make you suck me after. And I’m not going to let you spend.” A hand on his balls, clamping hard. “Not till you’ve begged me, maybe not even then. I’m going to bring you to your knees, Tory, where you belong. And if I catch you fucking thinking, I’m going to do it twice.” His fingers tangled in Dominic’s hair, pulled hard, dragging his head back. “You’re mine to play with, and I’ll use you as I please. Understand?”

  “Yes.” The piercing, exquisite shame of it. “Yours.”

  “Good.” A rustle of cloth behind him, and Dominic could already feel the strange peace that only this brutal treatment brought, shutting out all the memories and obligations and misery. He closed his eyes and surrendered.

  —

  “This is good.” The brute lay back on the bed, a glass in each hand. Dominic’s arms still hurt too much to hold anything after what must have been a good half hour hanging off the bed rail. It had been a painful relief to be forced to his knees at last. He lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, emptied. “Just a moment now.” The brute sipped again. “This is what you call a Mozle, right?”

  “A Moselle, yes.” Dominic would have wagered his purse the mispronunciation was deliberate. “French this time. Last week’s bottle came from the Rhine. I think I prefer the French vineyards.”

  “Do you now.” The brute took another sip, c
onsidering. “It’s growing on me, I’ll give you that.”

  “Don’t drink it all before I can lift my arms again.”

  The brute smiled down at him. “You’ll think of me tomorrow.”

  Dominic thought of him every day, but tomorrow would definitely be memorable. He hurt from the scalp, where the brute’s hand had gripped his hair, to the toes, on which he’d had to stand to keep his precarious balance against the savage fucking. His mind flitted from Not going to want to sit down to At least I’ll be out of the office, and then it all came back.

  “Huh.” The brute was watching him. “You all right?”

  Dominic hauled himself up on his elbows and took the proffered glass. “Yes. It’s just…Ah, the devil. May I ask you something?” The brute grunted. “Well. Suppose I had a duty.” How to phrase this? “Suppose I were a Bow Street Runner, say, investigating a man that I believed guilty of a crime. And suppose I discovered that my investigation would implicate, let’s say, my wife’s brother.”

  The brute was giving him a look. Dominic waved his hand. “I am neither married nor a Bow Street Runner. It’s an analogy. My point is…say my wife’s brother worked for this man. Probably wasn’t greatly involved in his crimes, but knew about them. Is living a decent life now. And to investigate a man I believe to be guilty would be to bring him down and enrage my wife. What should I do?”

  “If you’re like most Runners, put your hand out for bribes, and buy your wife a pretty dress.”

  Dominic shot him a glare. “Let’s say I’m the other kind.”

  “The kind who gives justice evenhanded, doesn’t say there’s one law for the rich and one for the poor?”

  “I…strive to be that kind. Yes.”

  “Then why are you asking me?” The brute indicated Dominic with his glass. “You know bloody well you arrest this man, and your brother-in-law takes the consequences. That’s how it ought to be, same law for all. But it ain’t, is it?”

  “It should be.”

  “But it ain’t. Because my sort can’t afford to bring a prosecution, and your sort can afford to pay one off. What’s this man done? What’s the crime?”