A Lily Among Thorns

Chapter 11


Her mouth opened readily beneath his. She didn’t taste like liquor—she tasted, in fact, like strawberries. His last fractured thought, before everything was swallowed up by rising desire, was of the baskets of strawberries he had seen delivered to the kitchen that afternoon.

He ran his hands down her back, the softness of her flesh separated from him by nothing but a thin layer of cotton. Sliding one hand up between them to cover her breast, he squeezed lightly. Her nipple hardened against his palm and her breath shuddered against his mouth. She was close and he wanted her closer. Cupping the curve of her buttock, he pulled her to him, pressing the core of her against his erection.

He still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, that this wasn’t real, that she would melt away under his hands like fairy gold. But he couldn’t think when she rolled her hips like that. His hands tightened on her, and she gasped and kissed him harder.

Finally she pulled away. “‘The mouth of strange women is a deep pit; he that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein,’” she said. Solomon was still trying to make sense of that when she dropped to her knees and reached for the flap of his breeches.

Never mind the shocking heat that flooded him. Never mind how much he wanted her to. He leaped backward so fast he hit his head on the bedpost. “What the devil do you mean?”

She stayed on her knees. At first Solomon thought she looked as dazed and heated as he did, but when she looked up, her gray eyes were mocking. “Too squeamish for that, too?”

“I’m not interested in strange women.”

Her head snapped back as if he’d punched her. “Oh no?” she said venomously, dropping her eyes to the unmistakable evidence of his interest. “What’s that, then?”

“That’s for you,” he said fiercely. “I don’t want you to be a strange woman, Serena.”

She rocked back on her heels. “There’s not much you can do about that at this late date.”

“I mean that I don’t want you to be a strange woman to me. Is that all I am to you? A—a customer?”

She rose to her feet, leaving her robe in a silken puddle around her ankles. She did it gracefully, but he still thought of an animal with its leg mangled in a trap. She looked as if she’d claw and spit at him if he came close.

“I don’t care if you’ve slept with half the men in London,” he said, too loudly. “That has nothing to do with how I feel. I said I liked you. And when I said that I meant I wasn’t trying to get anything. Can’t you understand that? Don’t you like me too?”

She frowned.

He tried to ignore his hurt at her lack of an answer. He knew she liked him, damn it; but he wanted her to be able to say it. “Serena, all I want from you is you. If you don’t want to give me that, fine, but get out of my room.”

She looked at the ground. “I can’t imagine why you would want that.”

“Right now, I can’t either.” He strode to his lab table and pulled the bottle of Madeira out from behind a crucible in which he’d been trying to match the color of Serena’s eyes. Bluish-gray liquid sloshed about in it, looking like dishwater. He took a shaky swig; wine burned away the taste of strawberries. “Listen, Serena. I find it equally difficult to imagine why you would want any part of me, so I can’t be too critical. But don’t do this again.”

She pressed her eyes shut for a moment and ran a hand through her hair. When she opened her eyes, the act was gone; she just looked like herself. It was funny how much less graceful she was when she wasn’t thinking about it. “Christ,” she said. “Solomon, I—Christ, I’m such a harpy.”

He held out the Madeira.

She took it and knocked it back expertly. “I really wasn’t drinking before, you know.” She rubbed the back of her hand across her mouth.

“I know.”

“Would you like some strawberries?” she offered, uncertainly and intently.

He swallowed, almost choking on the desire that swamped him at the words. Would he ever be able to taste strawberries again and not think of Serena pressed against him? “Have you got some?”

“In the kitchen. Come on, we’ll get some. If—if you want to.” She didn’t seem to have ever learned how to apologize, and yet she always tried, in her own way. She fought herself, too, when she had to. He nodded.

She smiled, transparently relieved. Solomon felt almost all right. “Just let me braid my hair.”

He watched as she deftly wove her black hair into two plaits. Then she picked up her robe from the floor and wrapped it around her, fastening it securely. She picked up the candle from his bedside table and lit it at his lamp, the light briefly illuminating her face. When she walked past him to open the door, he saw that without a comb, her back part zigzagged crazily.

She opened the door and then, with her hand on the knob, she turned and said over her shoulder, “Oh, and Solomon—I never threaten to kill my father for people I don’t like at least a little.”

The kitchen felt strange without the blazing heat and light and the clamor of upraised voices and turning spits and, from outside, London. Moonlight streamed in through the now-closed sash windows along the high ceiling, silvering the long rows of copper pots.

To his surprise, Serena went, not toward the door to the ice room, but to the opposite corner of the kitchen. She bent and began tugging at something on the floor.

“What—” Then he saw. She pulled on a great hoop fixed into the floor, and a section of floor about four feet square swung up with a smooth gliding of gears and hinges. Serena pulled it back and fastened it open with the hook on the end of a chain that Solomon had wondered about when he first saw the kitchen.

“If you ever read in a history book that no one knows how young James escaped his pursuers when he went to ground here, then you know that that eminent historian has never spoken to anyone that actually works here,” she said.

“A priest’s hole?”

“Better. A secret passageway. I’ve no doubt he made his escape quite easily while they were guarding the doors.”

“No popish treasure, then?”

“I’m afraid not. It isn’t very secret either. It’s a tunnel to the laundry, so we can bring the sheets and things back and forth in the rain without crossing the courtyard. It stays cool, so we have a little icebox here for our most delicate things. I’ll be right back.”

And she and the candle disappeared into the dark mouth of the tunnel. A minute passed, then another, and Solomon grew a little worried. He walked over and looked down the stairs. He couldn’t see her. “Serena?”

“I’m fine, just a moment.” Her cold tone was at such odds with her friendliness of a few minutes ago that Solomon knew at once something was wrong again. He went gingerly down the wooden steps, careful not to hit his head on the edge of the hole in the kitchen floor. The tunnel, its walls covered in neat blue-and-white tile, looked like the other servants’ hallways in the inn. But it was wider and the floor was stone instead of wood, worn smooth by centuries of laundresses’ feet.

There was a gap of about three feet between the staircase and the wall, and Solomon followed the glow of the candle under the stairs to a little icebox and Serena. She was leaning against the wall, her arms crossed tightly, huddled in on herself. When he neared, she turned her face away. “I’ll be fine in a minute,” she said indistinctly.

His first impulse was to go to her, but he tamped it down. He had learned she was a little like a wild bear—you had to tempt her to you with honey, or she would savage you.

Actually, now he thought about it, probably it wasn’t a very good idea to tempt a wild bear to you with honey. What would they do when the honey was gone? Or what if you accidentally got some on your hands? But the principle was sound. “What’s wrong, Serena?”

“I’ll be fine in a minute,” she repeated, and this time it sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than him. “Leave me alone.”

“You know I’m not going to do that.”

She nodded, huddling deeper into herself. “Sometimes I wish you would.”

Only sometimes. Well, that was a victory of sorts. “You’re not having a very good day, are you?”

She gestured at the icebox with one hand while the other stayed tightly clutching her upper arm. Her knuckles were white. “This is one more thing I’ll never get to do again.” She turned her face toward his at last, and the nakedness of her expression wrung something inside him. “How can I leave?” Her voice broke.

Thank you, Solomon said silently. Thank you for letting me see this. He did go to her then, gathering her into his arms. “You won’t have to leave. We have another week. We’ll figure something out. I promise.”

She clung to him for long moments, as if she were still Miss Jeeves. He buried his face in her hair, breathing in the scent of almonds. She pressed into his embrace, reminding him all too clearly of what it had been like earlier, in his room.

Afraid that in her tangle of emotions she would try to stage an encore of the earlier scene—and that this time he wouldn’t be able to resist—he moved away, holding her not quite at arm’s length to examine her face. A little to his surprise, it wasn’t tearstained, but it was lost and heartbroken and a number of other adjectives that Solomon didn’t like at all.

“You know what you need?”

She shook her head, her eyes large and dark in the candlelight. “Do you?”

“Cartwheels.”

She scoffed weakly, but didn’t protest when he put an arm around her waist and drew her back into the main part of the tunnel.

“Come on, this is perfect! Here, I’ll hold your robe for you—I don’t want you to trip.”

“But I’ll be cold,” she protested.

“You’ll warm up fast.” He held out his hand.

Obediently—and if anything could have told him how deeply miserable she was, it was that word, obediently, used in connection with Serena—she removed the robe and handed it to him. She stood there in her shift, shivering a little.

“Have you ever done one before?”

That spurred her into action. She spun away, took a few quick steps forward, and turned a long line of perfect cartwheels down the center of the tunnel.

He sat down on the steps and watched her spin back, bare feet and arms and long white legs flashing out of the darkness into the candlelight. She stopped a few yards from the stairs. Flushed with exertion, she pulled her shift quickly to rights—but not before he saw one dusky aureole. Oh God.

“Do—” He cleared his throat. “Do you feel better?”

She smiled at him, still panting. “I do, actually. I feel lighter.”

“Good, I’ll fetch the strawberries. Here’s your robe.” He shoved it quickly into her hands and fled back under the stairs.

They ate the strawberries sitting on the stairs. He was uncomfortably aware of her nearness, and tried not to watch her put the strawberries in her mouth, or to think about what else she would have put in her mouth if he hadn’t had scruples.

When the strawberries were all gone Serena said with a sigh, “I suppose we should be getting back to bed.”

“Just a little longer? I don’t feel like sleeping just yet.”

“It’s late.”

“I know.” He looked down and rubbed at a strawberry stain on his finger. At least it didn’t clash with the splotches of black. “Last night, I had one of those dreams about Elijah again. I—just stay a little longer.”

He could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “Would you like me to stay all night?”

He looked askance at her.

“In an entirely platonic way, of course.”

“You promise?”

“I promise. I’m not too keen on my own bed right now either.”

He hesitated, as if there were any chance of his saying no. Serena in his bed. Waking up in the night and hearing her breathing, feeling her warmth. It would be torture, but he wanted it. Apparently, so did she. “Would you?”

“I never back out on a deal.”

Serena was not amused when she woke early the next morning to find herself lying next to an angelically slumbering Solomon, her nose pressed into his side and her arm flung across his chest. She sat up. In the morning light, his freckles were sprinkled across his face like gold dust.

Lord, what a stupid thing to think. She rubbed at her eyes.

Last night had gone all wrong. She had merely planned to seduce him, to get him to beg her to stay the night. True, she hadn’t expected the experience to be unpleasant—quite the opposite. But she had planned to remain firmly in control.

Instead, the instant he gave in and kissed her, she’d forgotten all her skill and plans, lost in a wave of sensation, unable to do anything but pant and moan and—God, had she really?—rub herself against him like a cat in heat.

Her attempt to take back control had been disastrous. When he had recoiled, she’d thought she would die. When he’d said, I’m not interested in strange women, that awful ruined feeling from when she was eighteen had risen up and drowned her. Whore, she’d thought. He’s too good for you, and he knows it. For a second she’d hated him with the same sullen contempt she’d felt the first time she’d seen him. And Solomon—bizarre, wonderful Solomon—had yet again only wanted something more honest from her.

He’d pulled back, stopped her from wrapping her mouth around him and showing him all the advantages of bedding the most notorious ex-whore in London, and somehow they’d ended up sleeping side by side like a couple of innocent babes. She’d clung to him. She had let him see her almost in tears. And his ridiculous cartwheels had actually made her feel better.

What was next? Frolicking through a field of daisies? Sweet, tender lovemaking? That idea does not make me feel all warm and tingly, she told herself firmly. Her mind ignored her, dwelling on the last few moments before Solomon had put a stop to things.

She’d pleasured plenty of men with her mouth and received more than her share of compliments on her technique. But last night it had been different—she’d really wanted to, wanted to feel Solomon trembling and hear him gasp with pleasure and know that it was her doing. She had wanted him to look at her the way he looked at his experiments, or at the organ in St. Andrew’s—with utter concentration and joy. She had wanted to give him something wonderful.

She rolled over and looked at Solomon, stretched out in his bed with the morning sun caressing his limbs, and she felt it again. Her hands ached with the need to reach out and touch him. She could do it. He was right there. She could feel the heat from his body warming her legs.

It was seven o’clock. On an ordinary day she would have been up for two hours. She had all of yesterday’s work to do, and Sophy’s teasing to face. Sophy always came to her room in the mornings to help with her stays and buttons. Sophy would know she hadn’t been there. Antoine probably already knew, just as he knew she hadn’t looked at next week’s menus yet. What was the point, when she was going to lose the Arms? She could stay here and touch Solomon, and not face it.

That was when Serena panicked. Solomon had to go. He was clouding her mind, keeping her from figuring out a solution to her problems. Keeping her from caring as much as she should. She was letting him make her feel safe, but the only person who could keep her safe was herself. She had to find his earrings so that he could go.

She would go to Decker’s. She’d go right now. She slid out of bed as slowly as she could and tiptoed to the connecting door, which stood wide open. She shut the door quietly behind her and leaned against it, thinking. Decker required male attire.

Ten minutes later, Serena was tugging on a pair of gleaming Hessians that had stood hidden in her wardrobe behind a green wool evening gown. She shoved her hair inside an old beaver hat and inspected the result in the mirror. I really must invest in a wig, she thought distractedly, and left.

Fritz Decker’s was one of the less reputable molly houses in London—that is to say, one of the less reputable establishments catering to men who preferred the company of other men, at least for certain very personal activities—but that didn’t mean Decker was careless. Serena had to give her name, a sign, and a counter-countersign to the burly, businesslike fellow at the door. At the conclusion of this formality, he ceremoniously showed her in to where the host was sitting in a corner of his taproom.

Decker was a red-nosed man, not many years past his prime. His green-and-gold-striped waistcoat had once been very fine, but was now several years further past its prime than its owner, and covered in grease and beer stains. “Morning, Thorn, it’s good to see you again. What brings you to my humble establishment?”

“Good to see you too, Fritz. I daresay you got my message.”

Decker shifted uneasily. “I warn you I can make no guarantees I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

She gave him a silky smile. “I’ll just have to hope, won’t I?”

Decker sighed lugubriously. “Come in the back and we’ll discuss it.”

Serena glanced about the taproom while he was heaving himself out of his chair. At half-past seven in the morning, there was almost no one about. A group of bleary-eyed men in one corner were glaring at two disgustingly cheery fellows in the opposite corner, who seemed to have just awoken from a good night’s sleep, probably in each other’s company. A few skinny, rouged boys sprawled across stools at the bar.

Serena didn’t recognize more than a handful of the house’s denizens, but she did note that Lord Hartleigh’s coloring was better suited to his wife’s peach sarsenet than Lady Hartleigh’s, and that young Ravi Bhattacharya was thinner than ever and sporting a black eye. They could use a new kitchen boy at the Arms; she’d speak to him about it on her way out. Of course, Sophy had reminded her just last week when she’d hired Charlotte that the Arms wasn’t a Home for Ruined Young Persons, but didn’t she and Sophy give that the lie already?

And then Lord Hartleigh moved a little to the left and Serena’s heart thudded and sank. Sitting just behind him, in close and very amiable conversation with Sir Nigel Anchridge, was Solomon.