A Seditious Affair

by K. J. Charles

  Julius’s fine features sharpened. “I beg your pardon? I was under the impression that had been scotched.”

  Dominic hadn’t been involved in that. While Harry had lain ill in bed, the Ricardians had mustered a wide range of society ladies to express outrage at a gross calumny against an unfortunate and handsome young man. Even Lord Maltravers’s fiancée, who was remarkable for her beauty, her youth, and her very large dowry, had been persuaded to add her voice. Since there was no evidence to back up the implications, and thus no choice, Maltravers had been magnanimous, and Skelton had been called off.

  “As far as possible,” Dominic said. “But Maltravers didn’t tell Skelton to leave Harry alone; he told him not to proceed without evidence. If Skelton turns up anything that he can use, Maltravers will support him, fiancée or no. He doesn’t like our set, he loathes radicals like poison, and the Vanes are not in a strong position thanks to the scandals of the past month. Good heavens, Richard must rue the day that Harry was discovered.”

  “He may,” Julius agreed. “I don’t. I shan’t let Harry make things worse, trust me. God knows there are enough people to do that. Quite seriously, Dominic, your Wednesday man—”

  “I know. And no. It is not just the fucking.” It was none of Julius’s damned business, but he felt a violent urge to defend Silas, to speak out for once. Something important had happened, something he wished Richard would understand. He did not need Julius to understand in the slightest, but Julius was amoral and unemotional, and that made him easy to confide in. “The fact is, Richard thinks there is—uh—there is something wrong with me.” Such simple words, so hard to face. “Well, Silas does not, that’s all. And I begin to disagree with Richard myself.”

  “I should hope so. Of course the uncritical acceptance of a bravo is unlikely to change Richard’s mind.”

  “He does not know Silas,” Dominic snapped. “A man may be a lowborn radical without meriting contempt. He has more intellectual curiosity, more fortitude and backbone, than you will find in the entirety of White’s and Boodle’s together, and more commitment to his fellow man in his little finger than you, for example, have in your entire body. He may be wrong, but he is wrong in the right way. Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “No reason at all. My urge to meet this fellow Silas is becoming overwhelming.”

  “No,” Dominic said comprehensively. “He is not a spectacle at Astley’s for your entertainment.”

  “Indeed not. He’s Harry’s mentor, and your motivation to haul yourself out of Richard’s shadow at last. I may tell you that we have all become quite weary of that particular tragedy. I can’t abide melodrama.”

  “Go to the devil. Considering the spectacle you and Harry made of yourselves here—”

  Julius threw up his hand. “Touché, enough said. Jesting aside, my dear Dominic, your, ah, strange bedfellow is no concern of mine except as he may affect Harry. And if Richard is impelled by the alienation of your affections to pursue his own elsewhere, that will doubtless be a good thing for him too. However, I feel it only fair to warn you that he does not appear to think so at the moment.”

  Dominic grimaced. “I’ve no desire to fall out with Richard. You know that. I love him dearly and always will.”

  “But it is, perhaps, time to stop seeing yourself through his eyes.” Julius gave him a surprisingly sympathetic glance. “I think that might be good for both of you.”

  —

  “They’re going to pass, aren’t they? The bills.” John Thomas Brunt strode up and down, turning every two paces because that was all the room allowed. “They’re going to pass.”

  “Of course they are.”

  Silas sipped his beer. It was sour, ill brewed, the kind of thing he’d drunk all his life and never complained. It wasn’t a patch on imperial Tokay.

  He was in Robert Adams’s room, a little human rat’s den in Hole-in-the-Wall Passage, off Brook’s Market. It was precisely as filthy and sordid as the street’s name made it sound, and the men Silas was with were precisely as wretched and ragged and fanatical as gentlemen would imagine radical conspirators to be.

  This was a meeting of the Spencean Philanthropists. An odd name for a radical group, but Thomas Spence, dead now after years of imprisonment and persecution, had loved his fellow man. His beliefs had been extreme to the point to madness: the end of class distinction, of aristocracy, of private landlords; a vote for every man and woman; a legal right for children to be free from abuse and poverty. Dom called that utopian, unrealistic nonsense, clean against human history and human nature. Perhaps you would have more success if you looked beyond fantasy and saw men as they are.

  Perhaps he would. God knew the Spencean group around him was no great advertisement for man’s better nature. Arthur Thistlewood was disgruntled ex-militia, brought to radical politics by resentment and disappointment, and he had gathered other angry men to him. Richard Tidd had profited from the war by repeatedly signing up in disguise and deserting with the bounty he was paid. Neither of them was a man Silas could respect. But there were others. Adams, not a clever man but a decent one, who had been a soldier in the Blues. James Ings, the burly butcher, almost destitute now and desperate to keep his children fed; his benefactor, George Edwards, a quiet, listening sort of fellow, who was giving the Ings family money to live on. William Davidson, the Jamaican, a Sunday-school teacher driven from his place by accusations of indecency. He insisted those charges were motivated by distrust of his race, which Silas could well believe.

  They were beggar revolutionaries, driven by anger and despair, but they were good men, most of them, who believed passionately and unquestioningly in the prospect of a just world, in Spencean ideals, in the things Silas needed to be true, and it was a relief to be among them. This was where he belonged. He needed to remember that amid the dizzying pleasures of Wednesdays and their relentless assault on everything he held dear.

  Not that he disliked arguing with Dom. Arguing with Dom was damn near as good as fucking him. When those dark eyes narrowed in thought, when he bent that formidable determination to confront Silas’s beliefs—not to ignore or dismiss, but to take them on at equal value, so that the pull of his attention became a physical thing—then Silas understood what it was to be important. He mattered, and not for what he could do to Dom’s body either. Dom cared what he thought, and that was sweeter than the Tokay, and more intoxicating too.

  No wonder the gentry would fight to the death to keep their privileges. Silas might himself, after a taste of what it was to count.

  But he wouldn’t forget who he was, and he wouldn’t give up the struggle in the face of a new wave of reactionary tyranny.

  “I don’t like it,” Brunt growled. He was a cadaverous man, hungry looking—wasn’t everyone?—with sallow skin, lank black hair, and deep-set eyes, reminding Silas irresistibly of the creature in Frankenstein. “They’ll come for us. Blood-drinking bastards that they are.”

  “What about your shop, Mason?” Davidson asked. “Any more trouble there?”

  “Another visit, couple of weeks back. Just looking, this time. They’re still sniffing around for the press. Like I’d move it back for their finding.”

  “Wise man,” Edwards said with a smile. “I hope wherever you’re printing they’re our people? There are too many turncoats.”

  “Aye, safe enough.” Silas had no intention of saying more. Someone had informed on him, Dom had said after the first raid, and that was no surprise. The Home Office and the Runners used informants and spies without shame. He trusted everyone around him, but as Euphemia Gordon used to say, Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

  This discussion progressed as they always did. Bitter anger, today about the six bills moving inexorably through Parliament. Coarse jests at the government’s expense. Brunt, who fancied himself a poet, read a satirical ballad of his own composition on how Lord Liverpool’s government schemed to plunder and starve the country; Thistlewood sang a revolutionary song
. More ale.

  It felt so futile.

  Silas thought about it pacing home. Was it the threat of the six bills, the appalling truth of how far the government would go to quell reform? Davidson had said, They’re frightened of us. They know they’re going to lose. But it had had a hollow sound. The radicals were the frightened ones, and they knew it.

  You could be transported! Dom had shouted at him, as if he hadn’t thought about that.

  He didn’t think that was why it felt futile, though. He was used to being afraid, and to not giving up in the face of fear. He was used to digging in grimly when times were bad. He wasn’t used to wondering if, in truth, there was any point to it.

  Perhaps it was Dom. Perhaps a man couldn’t share a bed with a Tory and walk away with his principles intact. Or perhaps he could if the Tory was the gluttonous, reactionary swine depicted in the popular press. Not intelligent, questioning, thoughtful Dominic.

  Silas wouldn’t change his views in the face of flogging or transportation, but he had a terrible feeling that caring had sapped his will.

  That’s what we’re asking for, he reminded himself. A voice. If we could speak in Parliament as I speak to Dom, if they’d but listen to us as he does to me…

  Ha. That was utopian beyond anything Spence had dreamed up. Silas stuck his icy hands in his pockets, hunched his shoulders against the cold, and walked home alone.

  —

  He got to Millay’s far too early the next Wednesday. Zoë insisted on taking him into the kitchen for a mug of tea rather than have him kicking about the house.

  “In a hurry for your appointment?” she asked.

  “You watch yourself, minx. How’s young Peter?”

  “A stubborn, pigheaded little brute, just like his godfather. Don’t change the subject, Silas Mason. You’re not going to hit my handsome Tory today, are you?”

  “Since when’s he yours?”

  Zoë laughed, her ample bosom quivering in the low-cut gown. “He’s my best customer. Tips like a king, never makes extra work, and oh, those pretty eyelashes.” She fluttered her own. “They’re wasted on a man. Or maybe you don’t think so?”

  Silas glowered, not with any real menace. He’d known the Shakespeares since they were children. Their mother’s master had dumped them on the street when he’d faced financial reversals, on the grounds that they were freeborn and not his obligation. Zoë had been nine, Jon seven. Silas, a few years older, had kept an eye out for them in the rough-and-tumble of the Ludgate streets, until they’d found a perch in Belle Millay’s little empire. She’d dressed them up as pages while they were small enough to be fashionable; as they’d got older, she’d offered them other work around the house and left selling their flesh up to them. Work at Millay’s had given Jon much of the experience he needed to start Quex’s, and when age and obesity restricted Belle’s movements too much, she had put the assignation house that bore her name in Zoë’s capable hands.

  Silas occasionally wondered if any of the gentlemen even knew who ran the business of their pleasures.

  Which reminded him. “Do you deal with a fellow called Foxy David, Zo?”

  “Doesn’t everyone? Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondering. Is this like Will’s place? How secure do you have it here?”

  Zoë gave him a look. “Foxy’s master pays for security. It isn’t worth anyone’s while to talk. His lordship and friends are the geese that lay the golden eggs.” A filthy grin slid over her face. “We just arrange the stuffing.”

  They cackled together; then Zoë sobered. “You worried about something?”

  “Feeling skittish today, that’s all. Sidmouth’s bills, damn his eyes.”

  “I heard you’ve been raided. You be careful, Silas.”

  “I’m careful as I can be.”

  “And that’s not very careful. I know. Just don’t bring my sweet Mr. Frey down with you.”

  “He’s not yours,” Silas growled. “Ain’t it time yet?”

  “Impatient.” Zoë rang the bell and exchanged a few words with one of the girls who slipped through the back ways of the maze-like house to keep the bedrooms decent. She turned back with a frown. “What’s bothering you?”

  “Ah, I don’t know.” Silas made a face. “Nerves and imagination. I’m getting old, Zo, that’s the truth. Too much on my mind. These bloody bills, the raids…the Tory. Stupid bastard. I don’t know what I should do about him.”

  “What’s for you to do?”

  Silas shrugged awkwardly. “Make sure he’s all right. You know.”

  “Not really,” Zoë said. “He’s gentry. They always come out all right, that’s how it works. Why do you care, anyway?”

  “Been bedding him for a twelvemonth and more. You get to like a fellow.”

  Zoë laughed. “Silas boy, I bedded my husband for years, and I nailed him into his coffin myself in case the bastard climbed back out. You’re in the wrong house for sentimental talk.”

  “True. Aye, well.” He met her quizzing look, shrugged again. “Like you say, he’s got pretty eyes.”

  “Have it your way.” Zoë tapped his hand. “But, Silas? I said eyelashes. I didn’t say a word about his eyes.”

  —

  Mistress Zoë greeted Dominic with her usual calm smile, but he couldn’t help feeling she was looking at him oddly.

  “Mistress?”

  “I beg your pardon, sir, you have a…” She indicated the side of his face with a finger. “May I?” She stopped him there, under a gas lamp, to brush at his temple, regarding him the while, and gave a little satisfied nod. “There, sir. Your companion has already arrived.”

  “Thank you,” Dominic said, baffled, as she escorted him on.

  She slipped away as he went into the room. Silas was there already. He looked around swiftly, grunting, “Evening,” as Dominic opened the door.

  “Good evening to you.” Silas didn’t respond. He was looking at Dominic oddly. “Silas?”

  Silas came over and took Dominic’s chin in his hand, tilting his face to the light. Not a move of domination, more as though examining his features, as Mistress Zoë had done. Heaven knew what smear of the streets he had on his face to elicit that intent look. “What are you doing?” Dominic asked.

  “Nothing.” Silas let him go. “You’ve got pretty eyes.”

  “Pretty?” Dominic repeated, with a ludicrous, unmanning pulse of pleasure. “Pretty?”

  “Pretty as a girl.” Silas brushed a thumb over Dominic’s lips. “Pretty eyes, pretty mouth.”

  That sounded as though it would be the prelude to some humiliation. But Silas didn’t continue. Just looked at him.

  “Silas?”

  “Dom.” He rasped the word. “Ah, hell. I think about you all the time.”

  There seemed to be less air in the room suddenly, less light, the space contracting around them. “About me,” Dominic repeated.

  “You. I was at a meeting, but all I had in my head was you. What you’d say, what you’d think.” His fingers pushed through Dominic’s hair, over his scalp, making him shiver. “I want to talk to you, not other folk. In the fight twenty-five years, and I’ve never doubted for a minute, and then you…”

  “My friend called me a Whig the other night,” Dominic whispered, and that was perhaps the worst sweet nothing ever offered to a lover but Silas’s expression showed he understood precisely what it meant.

  “Ever since I kissed you…” Silas moved closer, lips so near Dominic’s, not touching, quite.

  “Before. Wednesday by Wednesday.” Wednesday by Wednesday, week by week, I have become yours for the taking.

  “Aye. Aye, that’s the truth.” Silas’s breath over his skin made it tingle. “It’s ruining me.”

  “It—”

  “Ruining me. Making me doubt, making me fearful—ah, fuck it.” Silas ducked his head and rested it heavily on Dominic’s shoulder. Dominic put his arms around him like an automaton. “Hell’s tits, what have we done?”

&nbs
p; He sounded despairing, and Dominic felt a moment’s panic. “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. Except, I can’t seem to…Rot it. I thought about giving up.”

  “Don’t do that,” Dominic said without thinking, and Silas’s head came up.

  “See? That ain’t what you’re meant to say, is it? Jack Cade tells you he wants to give it up, before these God-rotted bills even pass, and you say ‘don’t’? What kind of bloody useless Home Office man are you?”

  Dominic choked on a laugh, felt Silas’s shoulders shake, but it wasn’t funny and they both knew it. “Are you serious? You want to stop your, uh, work?”

  “No. I don’t. I can’t. That’s my life, understand? All my life, everything I’ve worked for, my people.” He didn’t say friends. He never spoke of friends. It had occurred to Dominic to wonder if his grim, snarling, driven lover had friends. “I don’t want to, but I’m thinking about it. Because we fuck on Wednesdays? Because a highborn Tory deigns to look down into the gutter?”

  “Don’t give me that,” Dominic said sharply. “You know that’s not what this is. You’re finding yourself less certain in your certainties? Well, so am I.”

  “And you shouldn’t be,” Silas gritted out. “Where does this leave us after? Me turning my back on everything I ever believed? You handing in your resignation? Where?”

  “After. After what?”

  “After…Christ, I don’t know. There’ll be an after, though, won’t there? After I’m arrested, after I’m transported. After you find some gentry-man—”

  “I had fifteen years to do that and failed,” Dominic said. “Why would that change now?”

  “Because you got pretty eyes.” Silas sounded lost. “Such sodding pretty eyes.”

  Dominic grasped his face, pulled him close, kissed him. Hard, leading this time. Pushed him backward, the pair of them stumbling together, mouths locked, until Silas’s back hit the wall, until he made a noise in Dominic’s mouth and grabbed his hair in one hand, arse in the other. They kissed ferociously, silently, each pulling the other closer, gentleman and ruffian locked together, until Silas broke off with a gasp.