A Fashionable Indulgence (Society of Gentlemen #1) (13 page)

Even if it wasn’t, he might not be there. Perhaps the shop had been raided in the months since Harry had left. Maybe he’d be at a political meeting, plotting sedition with his Spencean friends in some stinking alehouse, the Green Dragon or Furnival’s Inn. He almost certainly wouldn’t be at the shop, and if he was, he wouldn’t want to see long-gone, faithless Harry.

The glow of a candle through the grimy windowpanes told him Theobald’s Bookshop was occupied. Harry walked to the door and knocked.

There were footsteps, a scrape of the bolt—such a familiar sound that it made Harry’s eyes smart—and then the door was opened, and Silas was there. Crop-haired and grizzled, eyes tired but jaw as firmly set as ever, in fustian trousers and dusty shirtsleeves.

Harry stared at him. Silas stared back, his usual expression of hostility swamped by sudden shock. “Harry?”

“Silas.”

Silas didn’t move. It was as if he didn’t know what to do, or didn’t want to touch Harry in his bloody expensive clothes, and Harry moved forward to embrace him because this was unbearable. Silas was stiff for a second, and then at last his arm came round Harry’s shoulder, pulling him into a hug, and Harry felt as though he were eight again, when Silas had been the unbreakable tower of strength who would always protect him. He buried his face in the coarse cloth of Silas’s coat and squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh God, I’ve missed you so much. Can I come in?”

They sat across the rough table from each other, a bottle of gin between them. Harry gripped the tumbler, its ridges as comfortingly familiar to his fingers as the bite of raw gin was to his tongue. No dainty stemmed glasses and French brandy here. There was a pile of scrawled papers on the table. Silas had swept them up when they sat and put a newspaper on top of the pile, hiding his work. Harry tried not to be hurt by that.

“So, fine ladies, balls, riding in Hyde Park,” Silas said. “All very fancy. Got your own valet?”

Harry nodded, caught between pride and shame. “He’s so helpful.”

“Finds your trousers for you?”

“Tells me things. Finds out what’s going on. That’s what the best people do—”

“Best.”

“You know what I mean. Cousin Richard’s valet knows everything—that’s the redheaded man who came to find me. He’d do anything for Richard, everyone says so.”

Silas snorted. “There’s a fine life for a man.”

“He’s well paid for it. Anyway, my man Ballard is a bit like that. He tells me what my grandfather’s up to, what’s going on.” Harry felt it important that Silas should know he was on friendly terms with the servants, not just his new peers. “He’s a good fellow.”

Silas sloshed out more gin. “Aye, very good. So you’ve a fancy house to live in and clothes to your back, and a pretty lady to wed, and a dozen grown men bowing and scraping.
Very
good.” He tipped his glass in Harry’s direction. “What are you doing drinking gin in Ludgate?”

“You always ask the questions, don’t you?” Harry put his glass down. “God, Silas, I’m miserable. I’ve made a damned mess of—of something and I don’t know how to put it right. I don’t know if I belong there,” he finished in a rush.

“Up west with the gentlemen?” Harry nodded. Silas shrugged. “Then come back.”

“I…” Harry didn’t know what to say. Of course he didn’t want to come back to this little cramped place that stank of ink and dust, to endless work and cracked hands and raw gin. The idea was horrifying. But Silas had opened the door and offered him shelter, unquestioning and unblaming, and Harry felt tears starting in his eyes at it.

Silas gave a rough huff of laughter. “You don’t want to, and I don’t suppose I blame you. But you’ve a place here if you need it. What’s wrong, lad?”

“I made a friend. He taught me how to do this, sound like a gentleman. He worked so hard with me, the best part of two months, training me for twelve hours a day. He taught me everything and made me feel as though I could belong up west, and…I like him. I depended on him more than I knew.” Harry stared at the table. “We argued. He was
foul
to me tonight, in front of everyone.”

“What’d you argue about?”

“This coat.”

Silas frowned. “Why?”

“He doesn’t like it.”

“Doesn’t
like
it? What’s wrong with it?”

“Do you like it?” Silas gave him the incredulous look of a man who had never considered clothing in his life. Harry sighed. “Well, Julius doesn’t.”

“This fellow spent months teaching you to be a gentleman, and now you’re drinking my gin because he doesn’t like your coat?”

“It’s puce, you see,” Harry said, feeling utterly ridiculous. “He doesn’t like puce.”

“The man’s an imbecile,” Silas said conclusively. “One of those dandies, nothing on his mind but clothes?”

“No! That is, yes, he dresses beautifully, and he
does
care about dressing well because it’s a kind of art—” Silas’s incredulous look didn’t encourage Harry to develop that theme. “But he’s not an imbecile. He’s a very intelligent man.”

“Then he didn’t fall out with you over a pink coat, did he?”

“Puce. No. No. I…I did something bad. To him.”

Silas poured more gin. Harry took up the glass.

“Um, Silas. You remember that pamphlet you wrote, about how a man can make what use he pleases of his own body, and the law should have no say in it…”

“Oh, aye. Like that, was it?”

God bless his radical utilitarian heart. Silas regarded what people chose to do in bed with no more interest than he took in their clothes. If it made them happy and nobody else miserable, he didn’t give a damn.
Bigger fish to fry,
he’d have said.

“I liked him. We liked each other. But I’ve got to marry my cousin, you see.” He gave Silas a quick explanation. “And I agreed to the private engagement and I…didn’t tell him, my friend, because he’d said we had to stop our, uh, association when I got engaged. And he found out and he wasn’t very pleased.”

“Right.” Silas frowned. “You don’t hear the quality to be great respecters of marriage.”

“No. I don’t think Julius is, really. He doesn’t care much for very many people, he doesn’t like to be…
entangled,
he calls it. Involved in people’s lives. But he cared for me. And I lied to him and did exactly what he asked me not to do. Oh God.”

“None too bright of you.” Silas planted his elbows on the table. “What about this woman, then?”

“I don’t know. I honestly feel as though she hates me.”

Silas’s brows contracted. “You’re going to marry a woman who hates you?”

“I’ve no choice. Gideon said, in plain words, I’ve to marry her or be disinherited.”

“There’s a word for tupping for money, lad.”

“I know.” Harry laced his fingers together. “Not that I think she’ll want to. She doesn’t like me at all.”

“And what then? You get a couple of children on a woman who doesn’t want you touching her, and spend the rest of your life, what, drinking? Wearing coats?”

“What else can I do?” demanded Harry. “I’m no use to Gideon unless I make the marriage he wants. If Verona refused me, I suppose he’d have me marry someone else, but I still have to do what he says, don’t you see?”

“Or what?”

“Or he cuts me off without a penny! Weren’t you listening?”

“I’m listening,” Silas said grimly. “That bad here, was it, that you’d rather wed an unwilling woman on an old man’s orders?”

Harry opened his mouth, shut it again. Thought of Silas’s rough commands, and hard work, and George Charkin’s stupid jokes. Hunger and fear of arrest. A home given without question, and hours working in silent, competent harmony, and the absolute knowledge that, no matter what a damned disloyal fool he’d been, Silas would always, always bar the door with his own body rather than see him caught.

“No,” he said. “It wasn’t. I miss you so much. Please, tell me what you’re doing. I’ve had enough of myself.”

Silas was busy, was the answer to that. There was fierce agitation in Manchester still, rage across the country. Men sharpened their homemade pikes and cried out against the government that ignored the demands of the people.

“And it’s bad times. Bad and getting worse. No work and no bread, and people angry in the streets. Had to double the print run for everything I’ve written on Peterloo.”

“Are you being careful?” Harry asked. “You won’t be caught?”

Silas shrugged. “It has to be done. Can’t just sit here.”

“One of my—Richard’s—friends works in the Home Office,” Harry blurted out. “Against sedition.”

“Does he. Who’s that, then?”

“Dominic Frey. I’m not sure quite what he does.”

Silas made a face. “One of the hounds at our heels. I’ve not come across him myself, heard the name often enough, though. Friend, you say?”

“He’s a decent fellow.” Harry felt an urge to apologize for Dominic. “A high Tory, but I’m sure he’d be fair.”

Silas snorted. “The just man working for the unjust king. That sort went to the guillotine in France, one and all, no matter how fair they thought they were.”

Harry didn’t want to consider that. He shifted uncomfortably. Silas regarded him with a penetrating eye. “You know what your problem is?”

“I wish you’d tell me.”

“You don’t know what side you’re on. You don’t know if you’re worker or gentleman, radical or Tory.”

“Why do I have to pick a side?” Harry demanded. “Julius said the same thing. My old life or my new. Why do I have to
choose
?”

“How can you not? People are starving in the streets. No work, no bread, no voice. And we’re told that’s the way of things, that there’s no need for reform because the country is best served by the old order. Aristocracy. Rule of the best, that means.” He planted a thick, ink-stained finger on the table in front of Harry. “And here’s Mr. Aristocrat Vane, the clothes on your back enough to feed a family for a month, I’ll be bound, come crying to me because you’ve squabbled with a fop over a pink coat. Because you’ve sold yourself and you don’t like the price. Is that the best you can do?”

It would have been better if he’d sounded surprised. He didn’t sound surprised at all.

“You need to think.” Silas sat back. “Decide where you stand, and
stand
there. I tell you this, no man will stand by you until you do.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” Harry wailed. “My grandfather calls me a halfbreed, Julius called me a peasant, you call me an aristocrat. I don’t belong anywhere.”

Silas snorted. “Ah, Harry. You’re your father’s son.”

“I?” Harry almost laughed. “I’m no such thing. I wish I was. I turned my back on you as soon as I saw a chance for myself. I agreed to this marriage for money and I hurt Julius with it—”

“That’s what I mean. Pleasant man, your father, but the most selfish bastard I ever met in my life.”

“What? He gave up
everything—
”

“Aye, he did. Wanted your mother, so he turned his back on his kin, hurt his own father as much as a son could, tore her family apart as well. You think they wanted her to marry a lord’s son? And he did you no good with it. Here you are, neither fish nor flesh. He didn’t want you bred as gentry and he wouldn’t have you set to work. Selfish.”

“I thought you liked him.”

“I did. Very likable man. I
respected
your mother. Ah, I’m not speaking ill of him. He was a good orator, and a good husband to Euphemia, but…whatever he did, he was at the middle of it in his own mind, do you see? Couldn’t look outside himself. A thing was wrong because it felt wrong to
him,
or right because
he
wanted it so. And I’ll say this: There weren’t many of us back then got away without a flogging or a spell in gaol. Alex did.”

“You’re saying he wasn’t one of you.”

“Wasn’t one of anyone, Harry. The way he saw it, we were all part of him. D’you want the word with no bark on it? You’re bent on claiming your grandfather’s money, whatever it costs. You’re going to marry a woman who don’t want you—why’s she said yes, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Asked her?”

“No.”

“Maybe you should,” Silas said. “Your mother would have words for you on that. And this dandy fellow told you his principles and you trampled over them. A lot of self in that, Harry lad.”

“But…” Harry groped for a rebuttal. “But I
have
to think of myself. I have to look out for my future.”

“You want to be rich. One of the nobs.”

“Yes!”

“Aye, well, that’s reasonable. You’re enjoying the high life no end. Why wouldn’t you whore yourself to be this happy?”

“Yes— No, but…”

“But you want to be rich.”

“Well, what else am I to do? I’ve to obey Gideon or be thrown out. I have to care for myself because nobody else cares for me!”

I can’t have you as I want,
Julius had said.
Since I cannot, then I will at least see you happy.

“Maybe they don’t,” Silas said. “But you won’t make the world a better place that way, and it don’t sound like you’ve done much of a job for yourself, either.”

Harry put his face in his hands. Silas gave him a moment, then clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, lad. You’ve made a poor fist of things till now, but there’s many in worse case.”

“I know that!” Harry jerked back, his own anger taking him by surprise. “I’m well aware of my good fortune. I’m well aware I ought to be happy, we
all
ought to be happy as the day is long, and dance the night away on the bodies of starving workers. Well, I’m not bloody happy.” He knocked back his gin. It rasped down his throat like a rusty blade.

Silas watched him as he tried not to cough it back up. “If you can’t be happy, then be something else. Be useful, that would be good. Decorative, if you like. Selfish, if you must. But don’t
whine
about it.” He scowled, rubbing his hand over his short-cropped, brindled hair. “And be careful.”

“Careful?”

“Aye. If you learned anything here, you should have learned that you can’t trust gentry. Not your grandfather, not this woman, not your big cousin, and probably not this fop either.” Silas corked the bottle with a slam of his powerful hand. “So be careful.”