A Seditious Affair

by K. J. Charles

  “It is. It’s madness that the friendship of a radical lawbreaker should mean so much to me. It’s madness that you should have been so kind to a Tory swine. It’s madness that I cannot bear to see you face your just deserts. Richard has already told me in so many words that I must have lost my senses.”

  “There you go,” Silas said. “Me agreeing with his lordship.”

  Dominic reached for Silas’s hand, felt the clasp returned. “And over these last weeks, I might have agreed with you both. Heaven knows I have barely been able to think. But…” Clarity now. Absolute clarity, since that first, urgent kiss. “I cannot walk away. I will not.”

  “You can, and you’d be a damned fool not to. Your position—”

  “Do you care about my position?”

  “Ah, hell. You know what I think about gentlemen. But the only way I want to see you hurt is if I’m doing it.”

  Dominic tightened his fingers. “Silas…”

  “God’s tits, what am I supposed to say? You and me. What sense does that make?”

  “No sense at all.” Dominic felt himself smile at the words, and saw a spark leap to Silas’s eyes as though along a burning fuse.

  “Well, now if you say that…Aye, no, you’re wrong, it makes perfect sense.” Silas was grinning as well. “Because Without contraries is no progression.”

  Dominic blinked. “What does that mean?”

  “Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. That’s Blake again, the printmaker. Contraries. I reckon you ought to read it.”

  “It sounds utter nonsense.” Another of Silas’s disturbing, alien, probably illicit recommendations. Dominic disagreed habitually and strongly with them and loved the challenge of disputing them, the glittering ranks of ideas their arguments brought forth—

  Without contraries is no progression.

  Well, now.

  “Lend it to me next Wednesday?” he suggested, and Silas’s smile was ludicrously boyish on his rough features. “Here, still? It’s as safe as anywhere.”

  “Aye, here. Listen, Tory—Dom. Couple of things. If I get caught up in the law—”

  “I may well hear about it,” Dominic pointed out. “I’ll give you my card, though. Let me know if you can’t make it or—or if you need my help.”

  Silas gave him a look. “Not planning to ruin you, or to help you ruin yourself either. I’ll stand on my own feet, thanks.”

  “And other people’s toes, I have no doubt. I know. But it is only sensible to be sure you can find me, should you need to.”

  Silas brushed his hand through Dominic’s hair, such a tender movement that Dominic felt a sudden pulse of panic. “Silas. Silas, I need to ask. I…Are you happy to continue? As we have been?” Richard’s words pricked at his mind. But I love you. How could I hurt you?

  “Why not?” Silas kissed his ear. “Tell you something. I’m not changing my mind about most of that stuff in that drawer, but I’ll admit, I liked the look of you with those cuffs on.”

  That brought a familiar squirm in his belly, along with a relief so profound it made him ache. “You’re in the wrong line of work. You should serve the law. A gaoler, perhaps.”

  “Watch your mouth, Tory. But if I tie you to the bed, say—aye, thought you’d like that idea—you’ll need some way to say if it ain’t right.” Silas’s fingers ran down over Dominic’s vulnerable throat, the hollow at the base of his neck, exerting just a little pressure. “I like you fighting it every step of the way, don’t get me wrong. I want to play with you all night till you’re begging me to stop, and then do it some more.” Dominic bit back a groan. “But you got to have a way to say if there’s a problem, and that’s all there is to it. I know you don’t want it, but—”

  “You need it,” Dominic finished. “I know. What way do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s no good you saying ‘no’ and ‘stop,’ is it? I don’t give a toss for your ‘no’ and ‘stop.’ I’ve not listened to that in a year; I’m not about to start now.” His calloused hand slid over Dominic’s cheek, and Dominic leaned into it. “But…say you call me Mason, I’ll listen to that. Right?”

  A code word, a way out. It wasn’t what he wanted, and Silas knew it and was doing his best to negotiate a path between Dominic’s desires and his well-being. The care of it left him unable to do anything but nod.

  “Good enough, then. Come on, let’s have a drink.” Silas rose, hitching his still-open trousers up, and went to get the discarded glasses. He passed Dominic his, then hauled him off the floor by his free hand and tugged him over to the bed. “I don’t know about you, but I’m meaning to enjoy this.”

  Chapter 6

  Dominic sat by the fire in the private rooms at Quex’s and relished the solitude. He needed it.

  He had only just returned to Quex’s now that Richard had decamped to his country house for the hunting. Richard’s departure had been delayed by Harry’s convalescence and the various scandals hitting the Vane family—Harry’s radical past, his grandfather’s death “cleaning his gun,” a female cousin’s elopement with a common soldier. Dominic had felt for Richard, in truth. He knew how much the family name meant to his friend, and the series of scandals had caused ill-suppressed glee among the gossipmongers. The Vanes were a noble family of high regard; it seemed to Dominic that his peers in society were almost as enthusiastic to see them taken down a peg as the most extreme radical of the streets would be.

  He’d tried to speak to Richard, to offer his sympathy. It had not gone well.

  In any case, Dominic had been too damned busy for social calls, even had he been welcome in Richard’s company. He’d barely had a night free, except for the Wednesdays that he guarded with fierce single-mindedness, and Silas was the same, and for much the same reason.

  “Dominic?” It was Absalom Lockwood, the Whig lawyer. “Good God, haven’t seen you here in an age.”

  “I’ve been occupied.”

  “I’m sure you have.” Absalom collapsed into a chair, so that the brandy slopped up the side of his glass. “If I propose confusion to Sidmouth, will you drink?”

  “You don’t need to propose confusion,” Dominic said. “We have no shortage of that.”

  “Ha.” Absalom took a mouthful of brandy. “Do you support these measures?”

  Dominic stared into the fire. “Something must be done. You know that. There is not a man of property who does not fear for his possessions, his security. The rule of law, the influence of religion, the very Crown are under threat. The radicals are calling for the use of force against the House of Commons, against the better classes—”

  “Nobody denies there is unrest,” Absalom said. “Its extent is grossly exaggerated, in my view. And can you believe that the answer to discontent is to attack the liberties at the heart of the British constitution?”

  Dominic let his head flop back against the chair. “No.”

  Pause.

  “I beg your pardon?” Absalom said.

  “I said, if you must have it, no. No, I do not believe Sidmouth’s bills are the answer.”

  The Home Secretary was pushing through a new raft of legislation, terrifying in its severity. Every meeting for radical reform is an overt act of treasonable conspiracy against the king and his government, he had decreed in Parliament. The bills would restrict public meetings dealing with the subjects of church and state, prevent men from taking up arms, and give magistrates the right to search for and seize them, even in private houses. They would vastly increase the taxes on printed matter as an open attack on the reading poor. And they would punish blasphemous and seditious libel with harsh penalties, including up to fourteen years’ transportation for a second conviction.

  Silas had already been gaoled for that once.

  “I don’t think it’s right,” he went on. “Heaven knows, I fear revolution here. Heaven knows the radicals must be muzzled lest they bite. But this, what Sidmouth proposes, this is not England.”

&n
bsp; “How do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to see this country overthrown. I believe in the existing order, not in the power of the mob, and I don’t want to see England suffer what France has. Reformist bleating is dangerous. But the England I want to preserve is not a place where men are forbidden to meet, forbidden to speak, obliged to stand by while their houses are invaded. My stars, Absalom, I want to defend my country, but if these are the measures it takes?” He tossed back a mouthful of brandy. “It is as though a surgeon should inform a patient that in order to cure his ailment he is required to cut off his head.”

  “Ha! Precisely,” Absalom said. “Sidmouth is concerned with the success of the operation, and has no regard for what it will do to the body of the patient.”

  “Things will be worse if these bills pass,” Dominic went on. “Much worse. The radicals are shouting for a voice, and Sidmouth’s response is to take away the voice they have.”

  “You sound like a Whig.”

  “I do not. I have no desire to give revolutionaries anything. But…they are still Englishmen. Not foreign agents provocateurs, not Bonapartists. Englishmen who disagree with the government. And they are wrong, and dangerous, but if we cannot prove our case to be the better one, if we can only counter them by throwing away the rights and liberties that we have held precious for centuries, what does that say for our case?”

  “Sidmouth is a reactionary fool,” Absalom said. “And a coward at heart, and like all cowards, he is far too forceful. I couldn’t agree with you more, and there is something I doubt I have said to you before.”

  Dominic tipped his glass to acknowledge that. “Wearisome times. I hope your fellows can talk these bills down in the House. And that is not something I would often say.”

  Absalom nodded. “What will you do if they pass?”

  “If that is the law of the land…” Dominic made a face. He was Home Office, Absalom a barrister, both of them employed by the law, both of them enthusiastically breaking it in their private hours, given half a chance.

  Absalom’s expression suggested he knew what thoughts were passing through Dominic’s mind. “Let us pray the House can be persuaded. I am worried things have gone too far, though. There’s a deal too much fear.”

  They discussed the ins and outs of the situation for a while longer. Dominic had not spoken in depth to Absalom in some time and found the man to be rather more amenable than he remembered. That, or he was comparing him to Silas.

  Silas, incandescent with rage, pacing up and down their room in Millay’s, hissing imprecations because he wanted to shout. Silas afraid.

  Fourteen years’ transportation for seditious libel. Dominic knew what that meant. Silas would be chained into the hold of a rotting prison hulk for months, waiting for a berth in the stinking bowels of some merchant ship. Once that came he’d be shipped across the oceans and sold into indentured service. Slavery by another name.

  There was every chance it would kill him. He would certainly never return. And it would happen if that law passed, and he was arrested again, which seemed all too probable because his response to the threat of the six bills was to fight. He was writing furiously as Jack Cade, bellowing his anger at injustice and repression. He’d released two pamphlets on the topic of Lord Sidmouth in the preceding week, either one enough to make a conviction for seditious libel a foregone conclusion.

  I really ought not to be sharing his bed, Dominic thought, staring into the fire.

  But, heaven help him, how they were fucking. They kissed now, all the time, and if he’d thought Silas had been brutal before…

  I own you. Harsh words breathed into Dominic’s ear as he strained against the padded cuffs that chained his wrists and ankles to the bed. Harsh hands digging into his flesh. Every scrap of you. You’re mine.

  Silas had fucked him to the point of tears the last time. Twice himself, not permitting Dominic to spend, and then again with a china consolateur while he’d lain tied and helpless, Silas whispering savage words into his skin along with kisses…

  “I seem to have lost your attention,” Absalom remarked, rising. “I said, I must go.”

  “I do beg your pardon. I have a certain amount on my mind.”

  “So I imagine. I shall leave you to your reflections. Or not,” Absalom added as the door opened. “Good evening, Julius. What brings you back to London? No, don’t tell me, I must leave. Tell Dominic, if you can hold his wandering thoughts.”

  Dominic waved a hand in greeting as Julius took the vacated chair. He was a very handsome man, if one liked cold good looks, with fair hair and light blue eyes, exquisite in dress and vicious of tongue. He and Dominic had clashed for years, mostly because Dominic’s sense of duty was offended by Julius’s relentless refusal to care about the world around him, but in part because Julius had had the good fortune to share a bed with Richard once and the sheer unmitigated gall to walk away the next morning. In recent weeks, though, as Julius’s successful love affair and Dominic’s disastrous one had progressed, they seemed to have found a quite unexpected mutual liking. It was the first shoots of what felt like friendship, and Dominic was grateful for it.

  “Why are you back?” Dominic asked. “I thought you and Harry would be at Arrandene past Christmas.”

  “Yes, so did I, but really, my dear fellow. Richard.”

  “What about Richard?”

  “He is as sociable as a bear, but without the charm. What on earth has happened between you two? I mentioned your name, and he was, frankly, explosive.”

  “I don’t know.” Julius gave him a look. Dominic turned his hands up. “I don’t. Well, you know that I, uh…my Wednesdays.” Julius inclined his head. “I ran into Richard. He made some comments…” Not kind comments either. He’d seen the marks on Dominic’s wrists and launched into harsh words of shock and rebuke with a note of anger that Dominic couldn’t understand. “He demanded that I justify myself.”

  Julius raised a brow. “How authoritative of him.”

  “Well, you know Richard,” Dominic said, automatically defensive. “He has ever been our moral hub.” Julius snorted. “But no. I didn’t quite feel as though I had to. We exchanged a few words. I quoted a line of poetry, somewhat flippantly, I admit, and he turned on his heel and walked away. He has not spoken to me since.”

  “That seems an extreme reaction. Unless it was Byron? Richard does loathe Byron.”

  “So do I. No, it was a poet and illustrator of entire obscurity, a man named William Blake. He is a radical freethinker and eccentric to say the least, but produces work of quite remarkable beauty.”

  “Good heavens, you have the most catholic literary tastes. What was the line in question?”

  “Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.”

  Julius’s brows shot up. “Written in a contrarian spirit, you understand,” Dominic hastened to add. “The man is insane, of course, but the work is fascinating.”

  “I can see why it speaks to you then,” Julius observed. “So you said that to Richard—”

  “And he reacted as though I had struck him.”

  “I…see. Are you aware that he’s in love?”

  “What? Richard? With whom?”

  “I have no idea,” Julius said with enraging disinterest. “I know only that he has given his heart impossibly—I have this from him, you understand, so I cannot comment on what constitutes an impossibility. Under the circumstances, the restraint of desire may be a sensitive subject.” He gave Dominic a paternal smile. “It isn’t you. I asked.”

  “You are ever helpful,” Dominic said. “Who the devil— He didn’t tell me this. He might have spoken to me.”

  “I suppose he might,” Julius agreed. “Then again, my dear fellow, you might consider whether Lord Richard Vane has taken kindly to being replaced in your affections by a radical gutter-blood.” Dominic stared at him. Julius returned a sardonic look. “Is that village-idiot expression because you thought Richard approved of
your liaison?”

  “Richard and I have not been lovers for a long time—” Dominic began.

  “But you’ve been the loves of one another’s lives forever,” Julius put in, interrupting him. “Oh, really, Dominic. The pair of you have been mourning that affair for a decade; nobody else has ever taken your respective places. When I went to bed with Richard, you might as well have been in the room. I felt positively crowded.”

  “But—” Dominic groped for words. “It’s been years. You just said he was in love elsewhere.”

  “So he tells me, dear fellow, but you know, I think Richard is very well used to having your heart, if not the rest of you. You, or at least his youthful idea of you, have long been the ideal against which the rest of us are found wanting. And now his lost love is hopelessly smitten not just with any other man but with a bravo from the slums of Ludgate. One can see why he finds that trying.”

  “I am not smitten,” Dominic choked out.

  “Well, you’re giving a damned good impression of it,” Julius said. “I assume it’s not just the fucking? Richard seems to believe you’re lost to carnal delights, but then, I don’t think he is considering matters very clearly.”

  “My affairs are none of Richard’s business. Or yours.”

  “Of course they’re not. So is it just the fucking?” He held up a hand to stave off Dominic’s response. “I don’t ask from idle curiosity. Harry cares very much for your Silas. He’s worried.”

  “So he should be. Silas is determined to run his head into a noose. These damned bills of Sidmouth’s—”

  “I have heard all about that, believe me. It’s why we’re back, in fact. Half the guests down at Arrandene were high Tory, puffing and blowing approval. I had to get Harry out before he made a display of radical sentiment at the dining table.”

  Dominic pointed a warning finger. “I tell you, Julius, if Harry mixes himself up in politics in any way whatsoever—”

  “He won’t.”

  “I mean it. He could destroy Silas just by association at this stage. The entire narrative of Sidmouth’s policy is that reform leads to murder and treason, and that cursed story of the fire—”