A Lily Among Thorns

Chapter 16


When they reached the Arms, it was eleven o’clock, hours before anyone would expect them back. Though he was usually in bed by now, tonight Solomon was wide awake.

Serena had gone to her office to do the day’s books, and Elijah wasn’t in his room, so Solomon headed to the taproom to wait for his brother. Nursing a mug of ale in the corner and trying to arrange what he would say, he became slightly less enthused about telling Elijah what had happened at the ball.

The whole thing was a little embarrassing, after all. A passionate kiss to cover up illicit spying followed by a fistfight ought to sound dashing and heroic, but Solomon thought it would probably sound a little pathetic instead. If it had been a story about Elijah, it would have sounded dashing and heroic; it would have been dashing and heroic, because Elijah would have done it all differently.

“Hullo,” someone said. “Mind if I join you?”

He looked up. It was Sophy, her spectacles glinting in the yellow light from the taproom lamps and a cloak draped over her arm. He was a little surprised, but he said, “Please do. Would you like a pint?”

She smiled. “You paying?”

He nodded.

She waved at Charlotte, then slid into the booth across from him. She was wearing the orange dress Serena had worn to St. Andrew of the Cross. It disconcerted him how different it looked on her; even the color looked different against her dark skin. And she wasn’t wearing any linen ruffles in the neckline. “How did it go?”

He glanced involuntarily to where Sacreval sat at the bar, surrounded, as he had been since his return, by patrons eager to hear details of life in Bonaparte’s Paris.

“Don’t look,” Sophy said quietly. “He can’t hear us from there, but he’ll see if you look.”

Solomon propped his cheek on his fist and watched her for a moment. “Why don’t you ask Serena?”

“Because I want a straight answer,” Sophy said promptly.

He snorted. “She’s not very good at giving those, is she?”

She sucked her lower lip into her mouth. “No one is. But she’s worse than most.”

He spread his hands. “I don’t understand it! I don’t understand what is so dashed hard about admitting that you enjoyed a kiss, for heaven’s sake. Everybody likes kissing, don’t they?”

“I don’t.” Charlotte banged a small glass of dark liquor down in front of Sophy. Solomon blinked at her. “Well, I don’t. Thanks for helping me clean up that cucumber soup last week, by the way.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Thanks, Charlotte,” Sophy said, picking up her glass. “It’s on his tab.” The waitress nodded and headed back to the bar, and Sophy tipped back her head and downed the liquor. “You sure you wouldn’t like something stronger?”

“I’m not going to tell you what happened, so there’s no need to ply me with liquor,” he told her. “I know you’re worried about Serena, but—”

Sophy’s brows drew together. “I am worried about her,” she agreed. “I’m also worried about my job and about everyone here. If Serena loses to Sacreval, the two of us are out in the cold sure as breathing. Who knows who else with us? Who knows what he’ll do with the place?”

Solomon hadn’t thought that far ahead. He hadn’t thought about anything but Serena.

She sighed. “For your other question, the one about kissing, I stabbed a man once.”

He eyed his tankard doubtfully. He should still be able to follow conversations after half a pint, shouldn’t he? “Um. What?”

“It was years ago. He was drunk. I knew him”—she waved her hands vaguely before settling on—“before. He broke into my room here at the Arms. I had a knife. Serena had given it to me because of this man, because he’d been bothering me. I told him to leave. He didn’t. He didn’t believe a woman would really hurt him. He kept coming at me. He laughed. He saw the knife and he just didn’t believe I would use it—”

“But you did.”

She nodded. “I did. I stabbed him in the arm.”

“That was generous of you.”

Sophy snorted. “A black woman can’t kill a gentleman and not pay for it. I knew that. But after Serena got up the stairs, he didn’t half wish I had killed him. That’s what I mean. He took one look at her, and he never doubted she’d gut him like a fish. She needs that. She couldn’t run this place without it. And even so she has a bar across her door. You don’t.”

Serena couldn’t have been much older than twenty when this happened. She’d already been responsible for all these people’s safety.

“It’s not something she can just open and shut like the tap in a beer keg. And it don’t exactly go with melting into some man’s arms and begging him to kiss you.”

“Oi, Sophy, you coming?” someone called from the doorway. A group clustered there, talking and laughing and putting on greatcoats and pelisses. Solomon recognized some of them: two of the undercooks, the head laundress, a tapster, a young man who sometimes sat at the reception desk.

Sophy stood up. “If I can be of help, please tell me.”

He nodded.

“Thanks for the whisky.” She walked off, wrapping her cloak around her and pulling the hood up over her curly dark hair, and she and the others disappeared out the door. Where were they going? The theater? Another taproom? He didn’t even know any of their names except for Sophy’s.

He’d been so wrapped up in Serena that he’d forgotten to think about the inn beyond her. If she lost the Arms, all these people would lose. He had forgotten that—but Serena hadn’t, had she? In her nightmare, she’d seen her staff being turned out into the chilly street. She knew exactly what was at stake. And she’d been carrying that burden alone since she was barely out of the schoolroom. So she’d snapped at him. So what?

Someone rapped the edge of his table with the silver head of a polished ebony cane. Solomon looked up at a dark-haired young man in a rakishly tilted beaver hat and a daring apricot waistcoat that Solomon recognized as his own work.

“Well, hello,” the man said with a confidential smile. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

Solomon flushed. “Our shop’s matching the upholstery. I’m sorry—it’s wretched of me, but I can’t remember your name. I commend your taste, though.” He nodded at the waistcoat and smiled his best customer-pleasing smile.

The man tilted his head and half-smiled back. “That is wretched of you. Besides, don’t you think you’re being a trifle smug?”

Solomon’s eyes widened in mortification. “I—”

“Good evening, Sir Nigel,” Elijah said from Solomon’s elbow. His voice sounded rather peculiar.

Oh, the spy. Solomon looked for telltale signs of the moral bankruptcy that would allow a man to betray his country and his friends. He saw nothing but startled embarrassment. “Oh—oh!” Sir Nigel said. “I’m dreadfully sorry, I—”

“Allow me to introduce my brother, Mr. Solomon Hathaway.”

“Charmed, I’m sure.” Sir Nigel held out his gloved hand, attempting to compensate for his earlier familiarity with an exceedingly businesslike air. Then enlightenment struck. “Hathaway! Oh! The waistcoat. Oh Christ. Thank you, I’m—I’m very satisfied with it.”

Solomon shook his hand and smiled, trying to be nonchalant and not suggest in any way that he knew Sir Nigel was a spy. Or that he was near to beaming at his first misidentification since Elijah’s return.

Elijah’s smile hit nonchalant dead in the center. “I’m glad you ran into Solomon. I’ve been wondering when I’d finally get a look at that perfectly balanced Spanish blade you were raving on about.”

“Tonight, I hope. You’re welcome to come by South Audley Street and try a few passes with it directly after I’ve dined with mine host.”

“Lady Serena?” Elijah asked in surprise.

Sir Nigel laughed. “The Siren? Not likely. No, I mean Sacreval. I daresay he’s got all kinds of stories about what’s going on in Paris right now. Besides, once he’s downed half a bottle of the cellar’s finest, I can usually get a few pounds out of him at piquet.”

Elijah snickered. “Poor Frog’ll never know what hit him.” Sir Nigel made his way over to Sacreval. He rapped the legs of the marquis’s stool with his cane, and the marquis waved everyone off with a regal gesture and allowed Sir Nigel to invite him to a private table.

Solomon turned back to Elijah. “Well, he was rather odd. It’s too bad we’re to lose him as a customer, though. He looks very dashing in that waistcoat.”

Elijah started and glanced over at Sir Nigel. “Do you think so?” He frowned. “I suppose he does. Shove over.” Solomon did, and Elijah slid into the booth beside him. He said in a voice pitched low enough that no one else could hear him, “His closest boyhood friend died last year, raiding an enemy camp in Spain. We think he arranged it with Sacreval, leaked information about the raid, because his friend knew too many of his secrets.”

“Oh.” Sir Nigel did not look capable of it. Daring waistcoat or no, he looked ordinary and harmless. But he wasn’t, and Elijah was going off with him. Alone. “How on earth will you manage to search his house without him catching you?”

Elijah gnawed at his lower lip. “I have my ways.” He didn’t look at Solomon. It was plain he did not mean to talk about it.

Solomon supposed liquor would be involved. “I think he’s ordered a coat from us too. I hope it was paid in advance.”

“Mmm,” Elijah murmured, his eyes still fixed broodingly on Sir Nigel.

“Li, it’s very conscientious of you, but Sir Nigel is hardly going to wander off.”

Elijah started. “You’re right,” he said firmly. “Tell me about the Elbourn ball.”

Solomon tried to ignore his mounting worry. “Here?”

“It’s better than upstairs—less potential for eavesdroppers where I can’t see them and more background noise to cover our voices. No one will think the two of us having a private conversation is the least suspicious.”

But they hadn’t had very many private conversations since Elijah had been back, had they? Oh, they’d talked about the family and Elijah’s mission and probably every book they’d read in the last year and a half, but they’d left out everything important. “We got evidence,” he said simply.

Elijah really looked at him for the first time, relief all over his face. “Oh, thank God. That buys us another few days at least. If I can pull this off tonight, I wager we’ll get the whole week. Where’s Lady Serena? Why aren’t we celebrating?”

“She’s doing the books.”

He thought it a perfectly good reason, but Elijah frowned. “We’ll celebrate just the two of us, then,” he said. “Hey, Charlotte! A pigeon pie and two pints of cider, if you please!”

But Elijah didn’t touch the pie when it came. He just drank the cider and watched Sir Nigel and the marquis. He didn’t ask for any more details of the evening either, until Solomon reached for the knife to cut the pie. “What happened to your hand?”

“I punched someone,” Solomon said.

Elijah frowned. “You punched someone? Did you get caught snooping? I thought you said—”

“It had nothing to do with that. Braithwaite called Serena a whore, so I punched him.”

Elijah blinked. “Braithwaite? That little snob you were always hanging around with at Cambridge?”

He nodded uncomfortably.

Elijah smiled. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Solomon smothered his quick flash of resentment. “Neither did I,” he said truthfully. “It felt magnificent, though.”

“Well, good for you. Women like that sort of thing.”

Solomon remembered Serena’s hot stare as he helped her on with her cloak. “I think she did, actually.”

But Elijah was looking at the card players again. Sir Nigel caught his eye and winked. Elijah gave an awkward nod. His earlier nonchalance appeared to have deserted him. He finished the last of his cider and started on Solomon’s.

“Have you eaten?” Solomon asked. Damn. He sounded like their mother.

Elijah shrugged.

“If you’re so nervous, maybe you oughtn’t to go. Maybe—maybe it isn’t safe.”

“I’m not nervous! Of course it isn’t safe, or—or pleasant, but”—Elijah drew a deep breath—“but it’s my duty and I mean to do it. I managed myself for a year and a half without your advice and I think I can still do so now.”

There was silence at the table for the next quarter of an hour. Elijah called defiantly for another pint.

“Li—” Solomon was beginning to remonstrate again, when Serena appeared at his elbow.

“I think I can arrange for some cake if the two of you—oh Lord, what are you fighting about now?”

She’d changed into one of her ordinary gray dresses and her hair was pulled back again. Solomon had a sudden, irrational sense of relief at the sight of her, as if she would be able to fix this, when there was no reason to think so. “Elijah is going to Sir Nigel’s, and he’s already on his third cider.”

“I see,” Serena said in a changed voice. She sat down at their table. “Drinking doesn’t make things easier, you know. It just makes you less able to pretend.”

“What do you know about it?” Elijah snapped.

Serena’s eyebrows rose. “I’m the Siren, remember? I imagine I know a damn sight more about it than you.” She leaned across the table and covered Elijah’s restlessly fidgeting hand with her own. He raised his eyes to hers, and she gave him a rueful smile.

Solomon stared at their linked hands. Serena’s words seemed to have some kind of hidden significance. How much experience did she have interrogating people and searching their houses, anyway? Was that even what she meant? Elijah certainly seemed to understand her.

Solomon looked at his brother. He hadn’t changed for evening, so he was still wearing tight-fitting corduroy trousers, wrinkled boots, and that old bottle-green coat. They emphasized his more athletic figure and made him look appealingly careless. Solomon suddenly felt prim and overdressed in his evening clothes, and as if he should have tried harder to keep up with rowing after Cambridge.

He had forgotten what it was like to be Elijah’s twin; these pangs of jealousy had once been familiar. Elijah was him, only cleverer, more charming, with a better hairstyle. Solomon, when Elijah was there, was always just last year’s fashion plate.

Across the room, Sir Nigel and the marquis stood up from their card game, and Serena pulled her hand back. Sir Nigel came back to their table, dangling a couple of notes triumphantly from between his fingers. Five pounds and a tenner. “Can’t hold their wine, the French.” He turned to Elijah, who was holding his liquor quite well. “Care to take a look at that rapier?”

Elijah smiled. “Delighted.” He stood and pulled his worn bottle-green jacket tighter around him. “I’ll see you later, Sol, Thorn,” he said, and followed Sir Nigel out.

Solomon looked at Serena. She was watching the door Elijah had just walked through. He thought she looked anxious.

“Oh, don’t worry about him.” Solomon knew he was being petty, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. “He’s managed for a year and a half without advice, he’ll be fine.”

The anxious expression vanished, and Serena was instantly offended on his behalf. “Did he say that to you?”

Solomon felt better. “He was nervous, that’s all.”

Serena looked back at the door, anxious again, and Solomon couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew something she wasn’t saying.

Solomon tried to wait up for his brother. But at four o’clock he still hadn’t heard the familiar step on the stair, and reluctantly went to sleep. When he awoke the next morning, Elijah was back. When Solomon asked what had happened in South Audley Street, Elijah just said, “Do I ask you what you put in your dyes?”

At this rate, a week to catch the spies might have been an overestimate.

Early that afternoon, while Serena was in her office with Solomon looking at fabric samples for the new hangings, Sophy announced Lady Brendan. The third traitor.

Serena had seen her many times over the years, of course, but she’d never really paid attention. Now she examined her carefully. The baroness was a stout, pretty woman, probably still two or three years on the right side of thirty, with a coil of dark brown hair and a splendid bust. Her eyes were of a pure, clear gray—very large, and very fine. She spoke with a faintly foreign intonation. And she looked near to fainting from nerves. “Lady Serena? I would like to speak to you alone, if I may.”

Solomon rose hastily, but Serena grabbed his wrist and smiled politely. “Please have a seat, Lady Brendan. You’re here for a catering order, aren’t you?”

Lady Brendan sat down, her eyes shifting away and back. “I suppose so.”

“This is Mr. Solomon Hathaway. He has offered our catering department his services as a baker, and I think you’ll be glad of his advice in creating a menu.”

“Are you the brother of a Mr. Elijah Hathaway?” she asked.

Solomon nodded, surprised. “Do you know my brother?”

“No—that is, I know of him—that is—I was sent here by his colleague Lord Varney at the Foreign Office. To help you—to help you arrest my husband.”