Dominic allowed the banter to wash over him without joining in. His gaze wandered across the grand hall as more lords filtered in. He should have felt pride being here—a man with a voice, with a vote, with the power to shape the future. But instead, all he felt was the heavy press of inadequacy.
When he had worked as a Bow Street Runner, his world had been made of shadows and suffering. He had walked the alleyways no lord would ever dare enter, seen families starving in corners of crumbling buildings, and watched children claw through rubbish for scraps. Some had become criminals, shaped by desperation. But others had simply endured, surviving one day at a time with no hope it would get better.
He hadn’t forgotten their faces.
Bedford’s voice broke through his thoughts. “Warwicke, are you still with us?”
“No,” Dominic said simply.
Bedford grinned. “He speaks! For a moment, I feared we’d lost you to your melancholy.”
Dominic looked to Wilton, his tone suddenly serious. “I want to make a difference.”
“In what way?” Wilton replied.
Dominic lowered his voice slightly. “We should draft a bill to raise the minimum age for children working in the workhouses. What they’re expected to do—the hours, the danger—it’s unconscionable.”
Wilton’s good humor faded. “That will never pass. And if we take the children out, what do we do with them? Leave them starving in the streets?”
“They could be taken in by the Foundling Hospital,” Dominic said. “There must be a better way than condemning a six-year-old to a life of soot and sickness.”
Wilton shook his head. “The hospitals aren’t equipped to handle the overflow. They were never designed for that kind of volume. It’s a nice sentiment but hopelessly naïve.”
Frustration twisted in Dominic’s chest. “Then what is the point of any of this?” he asked, voice low but intense. “What good is it to hold power in this chamber if we are powerless to do anything that actually matters?”
“I know it’s unfair,” Wilton said. “But we must play the game. Wait our turn. Build power slowly until we’re in a position to wield it.”
Dominic turned sharply towards him, the muscle in his jaw twitching. “And how long must we wait? How many speeches must we give? How many hands must we shake before we’re finally allowed to matter?”
Wilton exhaled, the sound almost a sigh. “It could take years.”
Dominic’s hands curled into fists on his knees. “I don’t have years to waste.”
“You were thrust into this world when the king gave you your title,” Wilton pointed out. “You didn’t climb through the ranks like the rest of us. That has some advantages, but also disadvantages. You haven’t yet earned the kind of influence that lets you shake the foundations.”
“Then I’ll shake them anyway,” Dominic stated.
Wilton huffed. “If you try to do too much too soon, you’ll alienate the very people whose support you’ll one day need. The Whigs will turn their backs on you. The Tories will never let you in. You’ll be isolated. Powerless. And all your good intentions will burn to ash.”
Dominic opened his mouth to argue, but Bedford cut in. “Wilton’s right. Change comes, but only to those who know how to bide their time. You must strike when the moment is ripe.”
Dominic turned to look between the two of them. “And how many children must die waiting for the right moment?”
That silenced them all.
The worst part was that it wasn’t a rhetorical question. Faces of soot-covered children, malnourished and hollow-eyed, flickered behind Dominic’s eyes. He had walked among them. Held them as they coughed up blood.
Alcott reached out and placed a hand on Dominic’s shoulder, his grip steady. “I haven’t seen what you’ve seen. I haven’t walked in your shoes. But I do understand politics. And politics, unfortunately, is not a war you win with swords. It’s chess. One wrong move… and the game ends before it ever truly begins.”
Dominic didn’t shake off the hand, but he didn’t look at Alcott either. He stared straight ahead at the chamber’s great doors. His friends weren’t wrong. Dominic knew that. He hated that. He was still the newcomer here—the soldier turned peer, elevated by royal favor but without the web of alliances, favors, and connections others had spent decades weaving. Every step he took was under scrutiny. One misstep, and they’d have a reason to cast him aside.
But that didn’t mean he would sit idle.
He might not be able to change the game overnight.
But he could, at the very least, make the players nervous.
7
