A Lily Among Thorns

Prologue

September 29, 1809

Solomon Hathaway was drunk. He was drunk, and he didn’t want to go to a brothel. On the other hand, Mme Deveraux’s front steps were cold and windy. “‘The mouth of strange women is a deep pit: he that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein,’” he said, and clung to the wrought-iron railing.

Ashton and Braithwaite shared a disbelieving look. “Is the parson’s son quoting Scripture again?” said Ashton.

“Don’t—don’t call me that.”

“D’you prefer ‘tailor’s nephew’?” Braithwaite asked. Drink always made him cruel.

Ashton snickered. “Leave off. It’s normal for a virgin to be nervous.”

Solomon straightened. The motion made his head whirl. “I’m going back to the hotel.”

Ashton grabbed his sleeve. “Oh, don’t take it like that, Hathaway. Come along, this is the best house in London! This is why we came up to town on quarter day, isn’t it? To spend our blunt on things we can’t get in Cambridge?”

“Yes . . .” Solomon was already regretting it. He should have gone home and let Elijah lecture him on obscure French poetry instead. “I was going to buy a cal—calor—calorimeter.”

“A what?”

“It measures heat. Lavoisier disproved the existence of phlogiston with it. No, wait—I’m getting my experiments confused—”

Braithwaite pushed open the door of the brothel. “He’s just making up words now. I’m going in. If Hathaway wants to turn twenty-one without ever knowing the touch of a woman, let him.” Heat gusted out in his wake, and after a moment his two friends followed him.

Inside, Solomon took a deep breath into his cold lungs—and choked on an attar-of-roses fog. Scalding tears sprang to his eyes, refracting the room into red and gilt and skin. A great deal of skin, multiplied by dozens of elegant mirrors. He averted his eyes, but not before a flash of petticoat revealed raised red welts on a smooth thigh.

A girl touched his arm, startling him. She was pale and dark and hit him like a fever, hot and cold at once. But even that chill grounded him, blocking out the heat of the salon. Were the fires kept too high, or had the brandy affected his senses? It would be an interesting experiment, the exact effects of alcohol on the blood—

“Come upstairs,” she said.

Solomon blinked, focused his eyes on her again. She was looking at him, but her eyes were empty. Nothing there. No human connection at all. He swallowed, trying to keep the bile down. “I think I should go.”

“You’ll like it.”

He followed her up a red-carpeted stair; she never once looked back, even when he stumbled. She wore a thin lavender percale, inexpertly embroidered with seed pearls. Its single muslin petticoat revealed every angle of her legs—or would have if he could have taken his eyes off the stairs long enough to see much above her ankles. They were neat ankles.

The gown was stylish and becoming, but second-rate, he decided as they went down a dimly lit corridor. The muslin was not quite of the best quality. It wasn’t well-fitted either, but maybe she’d lost weight. She was very thin. His mother would want to feed her, give her bread with extra cheese and bowls of clotted cream the way she’d done to Solomon and Elijah when they were younger, “to put meat on their bones”—oh Lord, why was he thinking about his mother now?

She went through an open door into an unoccupied room. The fire lit an enormous bed with hangings the color of red lead. He pressed his hand against the door frame, trying to stop his head from spinning. “It’s very warm downstairs.” It was warmer here. Only the girl’s cold face and the cool of the corridor against his back steadied him. There was a tiny round birthmark above her left eyebrow. He wanted to touch it.

“It’s nearly October. Gentlemen don’t like gooseflesh. Just take off your coat.”

He nodded. “Of course.” She met his eyes then. Hers were gray, gray and still empty. He was fairly sure she hated him. “We really needn’t—”

There was a flash of scorn in her face. “Come in.” She wrapped her pale fingers around his arm and pulled him into the room. Her breasts pressed against the front of his coat as she reached behind him to pull the door shut.

A tremor ran through him, a tremor that was all heat. This wasn’t how he’d imagined his first time with a woman, but maybe—

She went backward, and he followed—but the bed took up most of the room, and he didn’t notice when she stopped moving. Suddenly he was pressed up hard against her, the busk of her stays jabbing into his stomach and her legs trapped between his own and the bed. They both grabbed at the bedpost for balance; his fingers meshed accidentally with hers and she kissed him. Her lips were warm and soft. She smelled like almonds and cheap perfume.

She leaned back. Dazed, he tried to follow, but she’d brought her arm up between them to pop the buttons at her shoulders. Her bodice fell away entirely, revealing bare shoulders and arms and the tops of her breasts swelling above her stays. There was a little round birthmark there, too.

The curtains were imperfectly drawn; a beam of moonlight fell starkly across her skin. That strip of moonlit flesh stood out like the mark of a whip. It shone with the faint bluish-white sheen of arsenic.

Everything came to a head—the brandy and the sickening stench of roses, her distaste and his nerves, and most of all his uneasy guilt at trafficking in human flesh. He was in hell, and she was a damned soul sent to tempt him. Solomon stumbled back, his gorge rising. Hardly knowing what he did, he tugged his purse out of his greatcoat pocket. His entire quarterly allowance was in it, one hundred and twenty-five pounds lovingly counted out that morning at his uncle’s solicitor’s, and he held it out like a beggar with his alms cup.

“Take it. Please, I’m sorry, take it.” He’d regret it in the morning, he knew that, but at the moment there didn’t seem to be much choice. Maybe if she took it, she’d forgive him. Forgive him for coming here, for whatever sins Ashton and Braithwaite were even now visiting upon some poor girl—and most of all, for wanting to push her back onto the bed and stare into her gray eyes and f*ck her.

He groped behind him for the doorknob. It was difficult, because his hands were shaking.

She didn’t take the money, only watched him with her unreadable eyes. He dropped it on the floor and fled the room, covering his mouth with one hand.