A Fashionable Indulgence (Society of Gentlemen #1)
Read A Fashionable Indulgence (Society of Gentlemen #1) Online
Authors: KJ Charles
Tags: #Romance, #Fiction & Literature, #Lgbt
A Fashionable Indulgence
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Loveswept eBook Original
Copyright © 2015 by K. J. Charles
Excerpt from
A Seditious Affair
by K. J. Charles copyright © 2015 by K. J. Charles
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
L
OVESWEPT
is a registered trademark and the
L
OVESWEPT
colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book
A Seditious Affair
by K. J. Charles. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
eBook ISBN 9781101886021
Cover design: Caroline Teagle
Cover photograph: © Period Images
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C
HANNEL,
A
PRIL 1808
Harry Gordon was a wanted man at twelve years old.
He stared over the side of the boat at the dark water as they lurched toward France. This wasn’t his first Channel crossing; it wasn’t even the first time he’d been hurried onto a ship in the night, his ears straining for shouts of pursuit or rapid footsteps. But it was the first time he’d understood what happened to the men they left behind when they fled, and the thought made him feel even more nauseated than the heaving motion under his feet.
Father was next to him, leaning on the rail, head down. Even stooped like that he was a foot taller than his wife. Mother was very short, plump, and round-faced too, but she reminded Harry of the Roman matrons Father had taught him about, the heroic kind who sent legions of men to war because death was less frightening than having to explain why you hadn’t done as she told you. She glared at the starry night above them as though she wanted to outstare God.
It was cold, the wind whipping and tangling Harry’s sweaty-damp hair, adding a chill to the salt spray on his skin.
Three days ago, Father—the radical demagogue Alexander Gordon—had ranted to angry London crowds about the collapse of the government. He had demanded a new rule of the people, for the people. An end to injustice and mismanagement. Peace with Bonaparte. A revolution.
They hadn’t started a revolution; they never did. They had managed to incite a riot, though. It was a patchwork in Harry’s memory, vivid images stitched together with panic. Red-coated soldiers and blue-coated policemen firing muskets into the air, roaring for order but drowned out by the howling crowd. Mud and blood and screaming. The arrest warrants had been issued that day for all three of them.
“You’ve got to leave the country,” Silas had said the next morning, as they and a few others huddled in Theobald’s Bookshop, filthy and exhausted. Silas was a big, powerful man with a resentful cast to his jaw, a few years younger than Father, who had worked with his parents since they started stirring up trouble in London. He was the angriest radical Harry knew, even angrier than Mother, and the harder the government came down on them, the angrier Silas became. But now there was a wild look to his eye that made Harry think, for the first time, that Silas was afraid. “The boy’s old enough to be charged as a man and they’ll gaol him along with you. You know it, Alex. Take the fight elsewhere.”
“They want you too,” Mother had told Silas.
“The shop’s here, my livelihood.” Silas shrugged. “Where would I go?”
In truth, Harry couldn’t imagine Silas outside London, let alone England. He was the spirit of the city: coarse, unruly, belligerent. When Mother told him about folk heroes like Wat Tyler and Jack Cade, Harry pictured Silas, clenching his fists and squaring up to authority without a care for the inevitable, bloody end.
Mother had played at Wat Tyler as a girl, dreaming of defiance. Harry told her he did too, to please her, though it wasn’t true. He’d preferred to dream of Robin Hood during the endless evenings of political talk, with Silas cast as the hulking Little John. Harry played the part of nimble, amusing Will Scarlet, inventing ingenious plans that saved the day. Robin had been a shadowy figure in his mind with a smooth, cultivated voice and graceful manners, and Will Scarlet would kneel and take his hand and pledge his passionate loyalty forever…
Then Harry had realized that he was imagining a nobleman as their leader, and he’d stopped the game, ashamed, even though nobody else would ever know.
It was all gone now. The soldiers had come for them yesterday evening, and they’d fled. That was Harry’s last clear memory of London: Silas bellowing at them to run, his muscles corded as he held the door against the blows of the redcoats on the other side, while Father dragged Harry and Mother away. Silas making his own capture inevitable to give the family a chance of escape.
Sea spume splashed over Harry’s fingers, clenched on the rough wood of the gunwale. He wiped dampness from his eyes. “What will happen to Silas, Mother? What will they do to him? Will he be gaoled?”
Mother’s jaw jutted. “Flogged first, I expect.”
Father’s head drooped farther. “My love…”
“No. He should know. This is
why
we do it, Harry.” She put a hand to his face, turning it so that he had to look at her. “Because those who speak out for reform are gaoled, and those who fight for it are flogged or hanged. Because we live under tyranny and corruption while the people starve. Because this country must be freed. This is a battle, and every fight has casualties.”
“We’re not casualties, though, are we?” Harry fumbled for his handkerchief. “We’ve escaped.”
We left the others behind. We ran.
A thought came to him, sudden and overwhelming in its guilty relief: Was it over now? Would there be an end to the secret meetings and public protests? Might they live without fear of a heavy tread at the door?
He could go to school. His parents would speak of other things. His life could be comfortable.
Someone else would have to take up the fight, of course. But surely Silas’s sacrifice would be in vain if they went on, risking exposure. Surely his parents could see that.
He licked his lips, tried to control his voice. “What—what will we do now?”
Father raised his head and clapped a hand to Harry’s shoulder. “Don’t fear, my boy. There’s more we can do, much more. We’ll never give up.”
“Never,” said Mother softly.
Harry looked between his parents as they gazed at each other, Father with his chin tilted up, Mother with her lips pressed together, and the brief exultant flame guttered to ash. Of course they hadn’t given up. They were going to start again, in France or Spain or wherever their principles might take them. Rousing the people, risking arrest at every turn. Men like Silas would stand with them, and fall as Silas had. And Harry would be there too, because he had nowhere else to go.
He stared down into the dark waters, glaring at their useless, endless agitation through eyes blurred with moisture.
I don’t care about the rights of man,
he thought fiercely at his parents.
I don’t, I don’t. And I wish you didn’t either.
L
ONDON,
M
AY 1819
Harry was stacking revolutionary polemics into piles when the knock came on the shop door above them.
He jolted, clutching the papers. George, crouching on the floor by the press, cursed under his breath. “Who’s that?”
“Is the door bolted?” Silas demanded.
“I—yes, I’m sure it is.” Harry could feel the sweat spring, despite the damp chill of the cellar beneath Theobald’s Bookshop. Silas cocked his head, listening. After a few seconds of silence, there was another knock.
“What if it’s the police?” George hissed. “What if it’s the soldiery?”
“Quiet,” Silas snapped. “Just a customer, like as not. They’ll go.”
Of course it was a customer, Harry told himself. It
wasn’t
the police or the soldiery. They’d have broken the door down.
He glanced down at the piles of handbills. They proclaimed, in great black still-damp letters,
An End to the Tyranny of the Hanoverians, Bloated Leeches on the Body of England, that Draw Blood yet Leave their Patient Unheal’d.
Silas had a turn of phrase that had seen him gaoled for seditionary libel once already, and this pamphlet was stark treason. If they were caught with these, all three of them would be going to some dark, stinking gaol, likely after a good flogging. And there was no way out, no way to disguise the press, nowhere to hide the evidence….
Harry stared at his fingers, stained an incriminating black. Every nerve he possessed was stretched in anticipation. Even so, he jumped when the knock came a third time.
Silas put his spanner down and strode to the little wooden flight of stairs, brushing paper dust off his ink-stained hands. Harry heard him swear under his breath. The bolt rattled, and then the heavy door was pulled open with a forceful thump.
“You again.” Silas didn’t sound welcoming.
“Indeed, Mr. Mason.”
Harry clapped his hands to his mouth. George shot him an accusing glare. They both recognized the dry, educated voice.
Your bloody latitat!
George mouthed silently and furiously, jabbing a finger at Harry.
His lawyer. Or, rather, the lawyer who had come here in search of Harry twice already. Silas had packed him off with barefaced denials on both occasions: nothing good came of lawyers. But now he was back again, looking for Harry, who lurked in the ink-stinking cellar running out treasonous polemics on a hand press.
Now inside the shop, the lawyer was speaking with unpleasant authority. “Your denials will not serve, Mr. Mason. I seek Mr. Harry Vane, passing under the surname of Gordon. I know he is here. I will speak to him and you will not gainsay me.”
Silas growled. There was no other word for it: he sounded like a mastiff. Harry could imagine him leaning forward, broad shoulders set and muscles thickening. “Unless you’ve a warrant, take yourself off before I help you out of here.”
There was a slight scuff of retreating feet, but the lawyer’s next words sounded testy, rather than alarmed. “Sir, I have no intention of
arresting
Mr. Vane. I have information to his advantage.”
George rolled his eyes. They all knew that one.
“Aye, well, if any such fellow wants advantage from you, he’ll come and find you. Out.”
“You do your friend a disservice, sir.” The lawyer’s voice was rather faint, as though he’d stepped outside. “Tell him to contact me—”
The door slammed shut. Harry let out a long breath, sagging back against the grimy wall. “God.
God.
”
“Aye.” George stuck his grubby hands in his pockets to hide their shake. “What’s this about?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Why didn’t you go up, eh? Ask the old pettifogger what he wants with you? Easier to hide behind Silas, eh?” George sounded a great deal braver now that the man had gone. Typical George Charkin, all piss and wind, ever ready to seize on Harry’s fears and forget his own. He hadn’t been arrested yet.
“He’s a good man to hide behind,” Harry said, as the subject of their discussion clomped down the stairs, nail-studded soles clacking on the wood. “Silas…”
“That lawyer again.” Silas’s face was grimmer than usual. “You can’t think what he wants with you?”
“I’ve no idea. Unless— You don’t think it’s the warrant, do you, Silas? From when I was a boy?” That had been preying on his mind since the lawyer had first come.
Evidently it had occurred to Silas too because he was shaking his head as Harry spoke. “They’d send bluecoats or red for you then. No, that’s not it. Maybe someone thinks you know something useful.” He considered Harry for a moment then made a face, dismissing the possibility in a rather unflattering manner. “You must have some idea.”
Harry threw his hands up helplessly. “None in the world. For all I know there
is
something to my advantage out there. Maybe I’ve come into a fortune.”
George cackled. “Aye, that’s it. You’re the Regent’s true son, hidden away by the Brunswick sow to spite her Husband-Hog.” That came straight from their last pamphlet on the royal family. Nobody could accuse Silas of an excess of monarchical enthusiasm. “We’ll all be riding in a golden carriage and sleeping on feather beds by week’s end.”
“All?” Harry struck a dandyish pose and fluttered an imaginary fan. “My dear louse-ridden fellow,
you
shall not sully my feather bed with your common flesh.”
Silas snorted. “You’ve the manner of it. They’ll make you regent when Fat George eats himself to apoplexy.” He slapped a dusty, reassuring hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Look, if the fellow isn’t bringing redcoats with him, it’s because he has no grounds.”
“But he knows my name. Both my names. How does he know my name?”
Silas made a face. “Alexander Vane married Euphemia Gordon. You were born a Vane, you lived as a Gordon, not hard to make the link. It doesn’t make a difference, lad. They’ve nothing, or they’d have arrested you by now. Keep a closed mouth and no harm will befall, understand?”
“Right.” Harry felt a sinking sensation in his gut. “Yes. Right. Uh, Silas…”
There was a short pause.
“Hell’s tits.” Silas took his hand off Harry’s shoulder. “What did you do, you bloody fool?”
“Nothing!” Harry protested. “Really, it wasn’t much.” He swallowed, aware this would not sound impressive. “I was in the Spotted Cat—”
“Were you tupping the barmaid?” George asked eagerly.
“No.” Harry had, a few times, and he’d hoped to do so again last night, but he’d found himself rejected for a man with a catskin waistcoat and a pocketful of silver. “I went for a jug of ale and a man bumped into me. Spilled my drink. Bought me another.”
“For Christ’s sake.” Silas growled in his throat. “How many drinks?”
A lot. Much of it gin. Harry had had the devil’s own head all day, but that was nothing compared to the lurking fear that he’d said something he shouldn’t. “Uh, a few. We talked, idly.” Silas gave him a look of combined exasperation and resignation that made Harry flush. “I didn’t say anything of importance! Nothing about here. Just, uh, about my travels on the Continent.”
“Did you tell him who your parents were?”
“No.” Harry swallowed. “But I did say that they were…political.”
“Blast you, Harry.” Silas put his hands through his cropped, grizzled hair. “Who was this fellow?”
“I don’t know. He had red hair, like a Scotsman, but an English voice. Slim. Brown eyes. He said his name was…something odd, what was it…Cyprian? Do you know him?”
Silas shook his head. “If he’s an informer, he’s a new one. No less dangerous for it. You’re a damned fool.”
“I’m sorry. I just wanted a drink.”
Harry sounded plaintive. He
felt
plaintive. Since the cholera had taken his parents and left him orphaned in Paris, aged seventeen and a known democratic agitator, life had been hand to mouth. He’d returned to London, hoping things might be easier there, but men and women were out of work across all of England thanks to the new machines, the endless taxes, and the war. There had been no work for a friendless youth. He’d had only the old radical crowd to turn to, and that was no great comfort, with the law ever harsher against them.
Harry hadn’t wanted to be a radical again. He didn’t want the fight, the fear, any of it. But his heart had lightened with that old boyhood feeling—or, rather, illusion—of safety when he’d come back to Theobald’s Bookshop for the first time in more than a decade. When he’d walked in and seen Silas there, grizzled and lined now as befitted his forty years, but still thick-muscled and indomitable, still setting his face against the world, it had felt like coming home.
Not an easy home. Silas’s rough, powerful embrace, once he recognized the hungry young man in Frenchy rags, had been all the welcome Harry could have hoped for, and he’d given Harry work and what wages he could without question, but he would never be a comfortable man to live with. It didn’t surprise Harry that nobody dared try.
Silas was glaring at him now as though it were a crime for a man to seek a jug of ale and a warm body to hold. Harry hadn’t even had the latter, since the barmaid had preferred coin to compliments.
It had crossed his mind last night that his drinking companion, the fellow Cyprian, might be amenable. Harry wasn’t at all averse to a man in his bed when he couldn’t have a woman, and Cyprian was quite appealing in a foxy sort of way, except for that dreadful hair. Thank God that, even in his befuddled state, Harry had decided not to make an approach. Sedition was bad enough; sodomy could see a man hanged.
“Nothing happened. I’m sure I didn’t say anything important,” Harry told himself as much as Silas. “It was probably innocent. Just a man wanting company.”
Silas grunted. “Well, we’ll face trouble when it comes. Enough of this nonsense, back to work. Watch your back. And don’t sup with strangers again.”
They came for him just after the chime of three.
He and Silas had closed up the cellar an hour before, hiding the press, and opened the shop to trade, so the men simply walked in. Harry was engaged in the respectable and legal task of shelving a box of slightly musty-smelling books. He looked round at the sound of feet, and his mouth dropped open.
Silas was by the counter, rigid with hostility. George stood a little behind him, wide-eyed, his dark curls damp with sweat, like Harry’s own. All three of them were grimy with dust and dirt, as in front of them stood magnificence. A tall gentleman, dressed with superb sobriety in well-fitted pantaloons, a dark blue broadcloth coat, a cravat folded with geometric precision, and an elegant, narrow-brimmed hat. He looked very rich and very serious.
Next to him was a man in dark green livery, much slimmer and several inches shorter than his imposing master. His hair was heavily powdered in the style of an upper servant, the white making his intensely brown eyes all the more striking. They were fixed on Harry.
It took a few seconds before Harry recognized his red-headed drinking companion under the hair powder, and even as he did so, Cyprian looked to the big gentleman and nodded slightly, as if to say,
That’s him.
Harry turned, panic rising, ready to run, but the gentleman spoke. “Harry Vane?”
His voice was deep, authoritative. Familiar.
That couldn’t be right. Harry had never seen the man in his life. But there was something in his voice, something about the slight curl of his dark brown hair and his prominent Roman nose that reminded him of…what?
The man was looking at him with an expression he couldn’t read. “Harry Vane,” he repeated. “Alexander Vane’s son.” This time it wasn’t a question.
Alarm dried Harry’s throat. Was he to be arrested for his father’s sins?
“What’s going on?” Silas demanded. “What do you want with him?”
“Harry.” The tall man strode forward, stretching out his hand, and Harry flinched before he realized that, inexplicably, the gesture was a greeting rather than a threat. “I am Lord Richard Vane. Alexander was my cousin. His father, your grandfather, has been looking for you.”
Harry blinked. The words made no sense. His father had been cousin to this man of wealth and title? And—a grandfather? Looking for him?
Information to your advantage,
he remembered, and a rush of bewildering, improbable, impossible hope threatened his balance.
Lord Richard reached down and took Harry’s unresisting hand. “You are a Vane. You belong to my family. I have come to bring you home.”
