A Lily Among Thorns

Chapter 1

June 7, 1815

“There’s a man to see you,” Sophy said, sticking her head through Serena’s office door. “He says he needs your help locating a missing object. What should I tell him?”

Serena, up to her eyeballs in ledgers, opened her mouth to say no. Right now it was hard enough looking after her own people. She didn’t need to take on a stranger’s problem.

On the other hand, he would probably pay her for her help. God knew she could use the money; the Ravenshaw Arms’ profits were down by four percent from this time last year. Because of the damned war, no doubt. Everyone had flitted off to Belgium to gawk at the young men about to be brutally slaughtered by Napoleon. As always, one person’s tragedy was someone else’s entertainment.

Four percent wasn’t too bad, but she couldn’t help worrying. She’d already put off buying new bed-hangings for some of the rooms for months, out of a reluctance to deplete her small reserve. She didn’t like to risk compromising the inn’s wealthy, fashionable image, but it was better than letting some of the staff go.

Serena couldn’t face that. She remembered what it was like to be penniless and on the street. “Show him in,” she told Sophy.

Serena had found that it was a good idea to make visitors wait for her attention; it established that she was in charge, and gave them time to get nervous. So when the door opened again and the stranger came in, she finished her sum and double-checked it before looking up.

It was him.

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t believe she had almost sent him away. She’d been looking for him for years. The Hundred and Twenty-Five Pounds, she called him, and she remembered him as if it had been yesterday. Hair like ripe wheat, freckles in a pale face, dreamy hazel eyes, a flexible mouth, and that unexpectedly stubborn chin. He’d looked like an angel.

Either she’d embellished, or he’d grown up, or both. He didn’t look like an angel now. He looked like a man, solid and broad and taller than she’d thought.

He looked tired, too, and worn. His hazel eyes were watchful now. It was idiotic how much it hurt her, that he hadn’t stayed young and unbruised forever. But he’s still beautiful, she thought. As if it made any difference what she thought.

It didn’t, because on top of everything else he looked rich. Rich and stylish, in a well-cut coat and breeches, tasseled Hessians, an exquisitely tied cravat, and a fanciful crimson waistcoat, its enormous pocket flaps embroidered in orange and pale green. Everything brand-new and expensive, and cheerful in a way that jarred with his expression.

She’d known he was a gentleman, coming into Mme Deveraux’s with his noble friends, but it still made her feel a little queasy. People like him didn’t associate with whores like her.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “I’m Solomon Hathaway.” She hadn’t remembered his voice at all beyond his educated accent; he’d barely spoken. Husky and a little rough around the edges, it wasn’t what she’d expected. “And you must be Lady Serena.”

She nodded, carefully keeping all expression from her face.

“I—” He took a deep breath. “I’ve been told you could help me. There’s been a theft—a family heirloom—” He flushed a startling shade of red.

He couldn’t even get the words out. No doubt he thought a man like him asking a woman like her for a favor went against the natural order of things. “Ashamed to ask for my help?”

He frowned. “Of course I’m ashamed,” he said impatiently. “If Susannah weren’t so superstitious, she’d just get married without the damned things. Sorry. The dashed things.” He squinted at her. “Do I know you?”

He didn’t recognize her. He was branded into her mind and he didn’t recognize her?

He was getting married?

Who cared? She wasn’t some daydreaming schoolgirl. She’d known the odds were slim that she’d ever see him again. She hadn’t expected anything to come of it even if she did.

Yes, this was perfect. He didn’t know who she was. She’d find his missing object and they would be even. She’d repay her debt, send him on his way, and be free of him.

Perfect.

“No, we’ve never met.” She gave him a smooth smile. “Now tell me, why do you think I can help you?”

“My uncle Dewington says you know every rogue in London by his Christian name.” There was a beat, and then he sighed, as if he’d just realized that was a strange thing to say but was resigned to it.

He’d heard part of her reputation, anyway. “His or her Christian name, yes,” she said dryly. His uneasiness intrigued her. It seemed to be about a quarter self-consciousness and three-quarters not focusing on the conversation. What was he really thinking about?

It annoyed her that she wanted to know, and, annoyed, she gave in to the temptation of a little rudeness. Just to see if she could make him blush again. “Solomon Hathaway. And the Earl of Dewington’s your uncle. Then—hmm. Your mother married beneath her, didn’t she?”

He focused on the conversation then, his hazel eyes going green and piercing. “No one with Lord Dewington in her family could possibly marry beneath her,” he snapped. Well, she agreed with him there.

Usually she liked to keep her desk between herself and visitors, but on impulse she came around and leaned back against the front edge. From up close, he looked even more tired, and thinner than she remembered. What had happened? Did it have anything to do with the help he wanted from her? “So, what is this heirloom you’re looking to recover?”

He gazed out the window behind her. “It’s the Stuart earrings. My grandfather’s great-grandfather, John Hathaway, let Charles the Second spend a couple of nights in his printing house when the king was fleeing one of Cromwell’s victories. Charles gave him the earrings as a reward. If you ask me, it’s a blot on the family escutcheon—not that we have one. I’d prefer a ‘death to tyrants!’ sort of forebear. But last week the earrings were being sent up to Shropshire by special courier for the wedding, and a highwayman robbed the coach. Susannah won’t get married without them.”

Ah yes, Susannah. If he was engaged, why was he running on as if he’d barely spoken to anyone in who knew how long? The amount of words convinced her that she was right and he wasn’t shy, only distracted or unhappy. Clearly Susannah wasn’t taking proper care of him.

Not taking proper care of him? she mocked herself. Who are you and what have you done with Serena? Next you’ll be making him calf’s-foot jelly. “The earrings are valuable, I take it?”

He shrugged. “The workmanship is excellent. Two goodsized rubies set in gold filigree with four tiny diamonds—very grand for a Hathaway, but nothing out of the common way for a Ravenshaw.”

Serena didn’t wear jewelry. Possibly he was realizing that, because he glanced up at her hands and neckline and then launched back into speech without ever meeting her eyes.

“But that isn’t it. It’s the family superstition. The king told John that they would bring him good fortune. There’s even a verse saying to give them to one’s wife for luck. And sure enough, the woman John loved was widowed in a tragic oven accident and they were able to marry. Since then all the Hathaway brides have worn the earrings. By now, that means that if one doesn’t wear them—”

“Bad luck, yes. But surely you, Solomon, are not so—unwise—as to be swayed by such things.”

He looked at her then. “A pun on my name, how original.” But he was smiling a little, which threw her off. “Susannah lacks the scientific temperament.”

She couldn’t help it: she leaned forward. “And yet you’re marrying her.”

He blinked. “What? Oh—Lord, no. Susannah’s my sister. It’s not my wedding.”

Relief flooded her throat; she swallowed it and took refuge in sarcasm. “My apologies. Susannah is lucky to have such a scientific gentleman for a brother.”

He stiffened. At first she thought he was taking exception to her tone, but then he said, sounding affronted, “I’m not a gentleman. I work for my living. My lady.”

She raised her eyebrows, startled. “I apologize if I’ve accidentally dampened your pretensions to being a member of the lower orders.” Of course, she worked for a living, and she had an aristocratic accent and dressed to the nines. But she was a special case. Wasn’t she?

He looked down at his clothes, and went faintly pink. “Oh. I—I borrowed these clothes from the shop. My uncle Dewington hates it when I visit him looking like a tradesman.” He gave her the edge of a crooked smile, as if waiting to see if she’d smile back. “You can’t see it, but there’s a hole in my stockings. Here.” He circled a spot on his breeches just above the knee. His kid-gloved index finger rubbed against the buckskin, only inches above the row of buttons stretching the leather tight around his calves, and Serena felt her temperature rising. She didn’t smile back. “And I gilded the watch-chain myself.”

“You did?” The chain looked brand-new and perfect. Why would he know how to do that?

“I’m a chemist,” he said proudly. “Well, I do some design and pitch in with the tailoring when Uncle Hathaway needs the help, but mostly I make all our dyes. We match any shade, and we’re famed for the brilliancy of our colors.”

And then the whole story came back to her. Hathaway’s Fine Tailoring, the men’s shop on Bond Street that was all the rage these days. It had been opened almost thirty years ago, before Serena was born, by a pair of brothers fresh up from the country. But one of the brothers, having more of a taste for religion than business, had soon left the shop to be ordained. During his studies, he’d supported himself as a Latin tutor—in the Earl of Dewington’s household, among others. Lady Lydia had run off with him, and not been acknowledged by the family again until her father’s death. Her brother, the present earl, had been generous enough to send her son to Cambridge, only to be neverendingly mortified when the boy chose to work at Hathaway’s Fine Tailoring after all. And that was Solomon, apparently.

There was something else, though, something Dewington had told her about his nephew. What was it?

“So will you help me?” he asked.

It was such a tiny favor, tracking down a stolen piece of jewelry. Would it really even the scales? She didn’t want to be in his debt anymore. Maybe you just want to keep him around, she suggested scornfully, and then told herself to shut up. “Certainly. I’d also like to order some cloth from you. Some of our beds need new hangings, and the wallpaper would have to be matched.” She tilted her head. “Are you sure you can do it?”

He straightened. Ha! She’d thought that would get him. “Yes,” he said curtly. “I could match the color of your eyes better than your current modiste, too.”

She glanced down at her gray bombazine in surprise. “Could you?” Didn’t it match? And—he’d noticed her eyes?

For the first time since he’d got there, he looked into her eyes for longer than a few seconds. Stared into them, and she couldn’t look away. Couldn’t help breathing faster.

He frowned, a tiny line between his brows. They arched so perfectly. She was drawn to him, and she didn’t want to be. “Solomon?” she said coolly, or meant to. Her voice was rough and hot.

He might not have noticed. That deep, deep flush swept over him again, and she smiled involuntarily. “Now I understand why you dyed your waistcoat that enchanting shade of red.”

“Wh—?” He cleared his throat. “What?” he asked, his husky voice dropping even further.

“It matches the tips of your ears to perfection.”

He rolled his eyes, but he smiled sheepishly back.

Christ, she was flirting with him. She had to get him out of here before she completely lost her dignity. “As charming as this interview has been, I’m sure you have business to attend to. Have supper with me tonight, and we’ll discuss the details of your little robbery.”

“Then you’ll help me?”

She nodded.

He looked relieved. “We can pay you, of course—”

There. Now she didn’t feel like flirting. “No,” she interrupted. You will never pay me for anything, ever again. She swallowed the feeling of claustrophobia. Maybe if she paid back this one great debt, she would feel free for once in her life. “Let Sophy show you to your room. You’ll be staying here. Gratis.”

His jaw dropped. “I couldn’t dream of it! This is much too elegant an establishment for me—I have rooms—”

“I daresay you do—in Cheapside,” she said, naming a neighborhood in the City filled with warehouses, butchers’ shops, and tradesmen’s lodgings.

He glared at her. “I’m not ashamed of my address.”

He was so prickly. She tried not to smile again. “As worthy and respectable as Cheapside no doubt is, it’s some little distance from me, and I want you on hand to consult with.”

“I don’t see why that’s necessary.”

It wasn’t necessary. In fact, it was probably a terrible idea. Too late. “You want my help, don’t you? Susannah and her betrothed are waiting . . .”

“You won’t help me unless I stay here?” He sounded as if he didn’t know whether to be annoyed, or just puzzled.

“Believe me, you won’t be arguing with me once you’ve had supper. My chef is the best in the business.” You just think he hasn’t been eating enough. You’re acting like somebody’s mother. She crossed her arms. “That’s my offer. Take it or leave it.”

He spread his hands in a frustrated, resigned gesture. “If I’m going to stay here, I’ll have to bring all my equipment from my rooms,” he warned her.

“Then do so at once.” She rang the bell on the wall behind her desk. When she was done with him, he’d be so far in her debt he’d never get out. She just had to do it before he realized who she was and headed for the hills.

How had he agreed to this? Lady Serena was strange and confusing and quite possibly mad, even if she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. But Uncle Dewington had said she could help find the earrings, and his mother was at her wit’s end. It was his duty to obtain Lady Serena’s help by any means necessary, and if that meant free lodgings and fine dining, well—

Put that way, why had he ever demurred? He really had turned into a hermit this last year and a half.

When the young black woman in spectacles who’d shown him in reappeared, Lady Serena instructed her, without looking at him and without any more sarcasm than seemed present in everything she said, to show him to the Stuart bedroom.

“The Stuart bedroom?” he asked, following the girl down a narrow, low hallway back to the public part of the inn.

“King Charles stayed here a lot, the one who was beheaded,” Sophy said. “Legend has it the future James the Second hid himself here for a spot, too, when he fled London before his father’s execution. That was long before her ladyship and monseigneur du Sacreval had anything to do with the place, obviously. It had a different name then.”

“Monseigneur du Sacreval?”

“Yes, sir. He came over during the Terror—his parents were slaughtered by their tenants.” She shrugged. “Likely deserved it. He went back to France to try to reclaim the title after Boney went to Elba, and we haven’t heard from him since, so the inn is Lady Serena’s now. It’s only fair. Most of the money was monseigneur’s, but all the head for trade was hers.”

“Why didn’t they call it the Sacreval Arms?”

“Why, sir, who cares about Frog noblemen? Half the people who come here have French chefs higher born than monseigneur. But anybody would like to be served by a marquess’s daughter, and that’s a fact. Cits and nobles alike.” She frowned. “They don’t see what it does to her. She didn’t always look like that.”

Solomon thought he knew what she meant. Lady Serena looked—well, she looked perfect. Her face was a perfect oval, her nose razor-straight and patrician. Her mouth looked as if it had come out of a Greek anatomy textbook, and so did her figure. Solomon had almost been tempted to get out his tape measure and start looking for instances of the Golden Mean. Her coloring only added to the impression—pale skin, pale gray eyes and black lashes, and hair as black and heavy as Ethiops mineral. The only impurity was a small birthmark over her left brow, like a circle of brown velvet.

But there had been something about the look on her face—something about the way she smiled without her eyes that said she wanted him to notice it; something that was polite and challenging, blank and vital all at once. She reminded him of a bead of mercury: bright and shining and gray, spellbinding and utterly impenetrable to the eye. No one got that way without a lot of practice.

So yes, he thought he knew what Sophy meant by she didn’t always look like that, but he’d frequently found that playing dumb got better information. “What did she look like before? She could hardly have been more beautiful.”

Sophy caught her breath. “Men are all alike! But even you would—you didn’t see her before. She used to have the most expressive eyes.”

Solomon would have liked to see that. You didn’t see her before—before what? He was surprised by how much he wanted to know. But maybe if he knew, he’d understand how she could be so damn striking and yet he couldn’t remember where he’d seen her.

Perhaps feeling she had said too much, Sophy pressed her lips together. “Here we are, sir. The Stuart bedroom.”

A huge oak bed with far too many claret-colored hangings made the room look smaller than it was. A large portrait of King Charles I, “the one who was beheaded,” hung over the mantel.

The sun blazed in through a wide leaded-glass window to the right of the bed; it illuminated gleaming oak paneling, claret-colored paper, a thick claret-colored carpet (probably Aubusson, Solomon thought glumly), and a carved oak fireplace. Diana took aim across the hearth at Orion, and between them a clock, set in Apollo’s sun chariot, showed the time and the phases of the moon. Midsized rubies twinkled at him from half a dozen places in the carving, though one or two had fallen out over the years—or maybe been prised out by enterprising tenants.

On the wall to his right, a sturdy oak door was set in an ornate door frame. “Is that a dressing room?”

“No, sir, that leads to Lady Serena’s room,” she answered without expression.

He glanced at her in surprise.

She shrugged. “This used to be monseigneur’s own room. It locks from her side, so don’t try to take advantage.” Solomon tried to look innocent. Since he’d instantly begun to speculate as to whether monseigneur had taken advantage, he probably wasn’t succeeding.

All in all, the room was far grander than anything he’d ever not wanted to touch in case he got fingerprints on it. Charles’s headless body must be turning over in its grave at the idea of a Hathaway sleeping in its bed, and all because Lady Serena thought it was funny that he wasn’t a Jacobite.

But he didn’t appear to have a choice, so after muttering, “At least no one will be able to tell if I spill claret on anything,” he resigned himself to the inevitable. If he got started right away, he could borrow Uncle Dewington’s coach and driver and have his laboratory transported here before dinner, maybe start work on a new dye. A gray, quicksilver sort of dye.

Solomon stopped short in the doorway to the dining room. Surely that wasn’t—but yes, it was. Of course it was. Lord Smollett. The bane of his Cambridge career.

“Welcome to the Ravenshaw Arms, my lord,” Lady Serena said graciously. “Your usual table is waiting for you.”

“Thank you, m’dear,” said the all-too-familiar drawl. “You are an excellent hostess. Although I much preferred your other career.” Smollett guffawed. Solomon, gritting his teeth, considered going back to his room and locking the door.

Lady Serena smiled blandly, but a tenseness in her jaw suggested her teeth were gritted, too. “As flattering as that is, I can’t say the same for myself.”

“Now that’s not very flattering to me!” said Smollett. What did he mean by that? What had Lady Serena’s other career been? She didn’t so much as lift an eyebrow, but Solomon could almost hear her say, Exactly. He tried surreptitiously to attract her attention.

But Smollett spotted him before she did. “Well, if it isn’t the Hatherdasher!” He strode purposefully toward his new prey. “Matching the upholstery, are you?”

Solomon sighed. Some things never changed. “Why yes, I am, as a matter of fact. May I congratulate you on the cut of your coat, my lord? Weston’s, isn’t it? We have a new piqué jonquil waistcoat in the window that would go perfectly.”

“Dash it all, Hathaway, you talk like a damn tradesman!” He paused to consider this. “Course, you are one. I might have known you wouldn’t be anyplace so dashing on your own account. A fellow like you hardly has hopes of slipping into the Siren’s bed.” He laughed again.

Solomon leaned hopelessly against the door frame and gazed over the top of Smollett’s head. Hadn’t he had enough of this at school? Now he couldn’t even write to Elijah about it later and laugh.

Luckily, Lady Serena apparently had had enough. “Oh, Solomon!” she called carelessly. “What the devil were you about, keeping me waiting all this time? I’d nearly given up on you. I saved that little table in the corner for us. Oh, pardon me, my lord.” She brushed past Lord Smollett and, taking Solomon’s arm in a proprietary grip, tugged him in the direction she’d indicated.

Solomon tried not to smile smugly at the expression on Smollett’s face. “Thank you,” he said when they were out of range. “Lord Smollett has a somewhat paralyzing effect on me.”

“I believe he has that effect generally,” Lady Serena said, surprising him. She let go of his arm, rather to his regret, and sat down in the chair that faced the room without waiting for him to pull it out for her.

“Yes, well, he gave me my Cambridge nickname. The—” He stopped.

Her eyes crinkled. “The Hatherdasher, yes, I heard.”

“You and everyone else in the room.”

“Smollett came up with that? He must be cleverer than I gave him credit for.”

“I mean, it’s a bit rich, coming from someone whose name originally meant ‘small head’!”

Something very like a snort escaped Lady Serena. She’d seemed so intimidating at their first meeting, but maybe he’d just been nervous. Maybe she was an ordinary woman after all. “It did?” she asked.

“Yes, I came across it once in an etymological text. I told him, but he and his friends just looked at each other and laughed. It was an utter rout.”

“You can’t fight the Smolletts of this world on their own terms. But I find utter indifference works wonders.”

“‘Forsake the foolish, and live.’ Yes, I know.” He ducked his head at her quizzical expression. “Proverbs Nine: Six. Sorry, I—the Proverbs were written by Solomon, you know, so I liked them when I was a boy.”

“And you were the sort of boy who memorized things.”

There was a smile in her dry voice, so he laughed instead of taking offense. “How did you guess? But forsaking the foolish—it’s easier said than done. You seemed rather nettled yourself when I came in.”

She stiffened. “It takes a deal more than Lord Smollett to nettle me.”

Solomon was skeptical, but he turned the subject. “Where did you get the nickname of Siren?”

“It sounds like my name,” she said shortly, and so coldly that he flushed. She signaled to a waiter, and in a very few minutes of awkward silence, their places were laid with gleaming silver and spotless china. Wine and water were poured, a basket of fresh hot rolls was placed with a flourish in the center of the table, and two attractive bowls of cucumber soup were set before them. Solomon’s mouth watered. He’d been living on bread and cheese and mince pies from the corner shop for a long time.

He’d often thanked Heaven for sending him to Cambridge (much oftener than he’d thanked Uncle Dewington for the same favor), but it was generally for the excellent education in chemistry he’d received there. Now he was grateful that Cambridge had taught him a more arcane science, one his republican mother had scorned and his father had never known: which spoon to use and the correct manner of unfolding his napkin.

When Lady Serena had tasted her wine, selected a roll, and picked up her spoon, he finally dared to try the soup. Ohhh. It was all worth it—Lady Serena’s mockery and Charles I’s portrait and Lord Smollett—just for this. “It’s ambrosial!”

Her face lit with a startlingly genuine smile—Solomon felt a tug, somewhere in his chest—and then she looked away, as if she didn’t want him to see it. “Good. Have a roll, they’re baked fresh.”

He hesitated. But he couldn’t say no, so he stripped his gloves off and laid them on the table. She could see his hands, now, the stains and blotches and calluses. The tiny round acid scars that dotted his skin. He’d got used to this over the years. The prick of anxiety and self-consciousness had grown dull and distant, especially since Elijah died. He’d outgrown it, he’d thought; he’d realized how trivial it was. And yet here he was, afraid to look at Lady Serena’s expression. He took a roll, instead, and broke it apart. Steam rose from the center. It smelled delicious.

He glanced up at Lady Serena. She was staring at his hands. He put the roll down on his plate and pushed it away.

She blinked and raised her luminous gray eyes to his face. “No, I was only—” She sighed. “These earrings of yours, you said there was a verse about them?”

He cringed. “Do you really want to hear it? It doesn’t even scan.”

“You never know what may prove important.”

Solomon gave in to the inevitable.

“‘Wouldst thou have the rose of fortune fair?

Place these jewels among Phoebe’s sweet hair.

By the thistle of ill fate wouldst be undone?

Then let the jewels languish, nor shine in the sun.’

“You must imagine, of course, that ‘sun’ is spelled s-o-n-n-e,” he concluded.

“Hmm. It certainly lacks artistic merit.”

He laughed. “Maybe, but it incorporates the Royalist mania for the English rose and Scottish thistle, which is in its favor.”

She nodded. “They certainly seem to have left enough inns with that name. ‘The Rose and Thistle’ was even the name of the Arms when René and I bought it.”

“Oh yes, the Stuart bedroom. Why did Charles have need of an inn in his own capital?”

“He’d taken a fancy to his clockmaker’s daughter. That mantel clock is one of the man’s creations. Charles brought her here so he could derive a delicious satisfaction from ruining the girl under her father’s nose, so to speak.” The depth of bitterness in her voice surprised him.

“I told you the Stuarts were a bad lot,” he said, trying to make light of it.

She gave him that icy, heated look of hers. “You’re not as wise as you seem if you think most men are any different.”

There was silence. They regarded each other across the table, and Solomon could see this was a fight he couldn’t win. He didn’t even know why they were fighting. He hunched his shoulders and picked up his roll. “Maybe not.”

Lady Serena gave him a surprised frown. For a moment he thought she was going to say something, but there was a sound of breaking china and raucous laughter behind him. She rose from her chair to see what had happened and went pale with anger. Paler, anyway.

Solomon turned; a chubby serving girl was loading broken china onto a tray, to the great amusement of a party of young bloods at a nearby table. Cucumber soup spattered her apron and spread across the floor. He had a very clear memory of one of those men “accidentally” bumping into him as he carried an expensive set of glass pipes across the quad.

Solomon got down on the parquet—carefully, so as not to stain his breeches. “Give me your apron,” he said quietly. “I’ll mop up the soup.”

The girl fumbled at her apron strings, tugging it off and pressing it into his hands. “I’ll get my things as soon as I’m cleared up here, my lady.”

Lady Serena’s eyebrows rose. “Don’t be a fool, Charlotte. There’s a reason I don’t put carpets in the dining room. I’m very pleased with your work so far.” She turned to the group of young men, who tried unsuccessfully to hide their grins. Solomon felt the old knot of useless anger in his throat, watching them. “These—gentlemen—didn’t have anything to do with your little mishap, did they?”

The girl went very still. “No, my lady.”

“Are you sure? I dislike being lied to. And if you imagine I’d allow any of them to exact any sort of retribution from you, you’re an even greater fool than I took you for.”

Charlotte’s lips tightened. “One of them pinched me.”

Lady Serena’s mouth set dangerously. “Did he now? I find that interesting. I thought I’d made it very clear to everyone that I would not tolerate anything of that sort in my establishment.” One of the young men began an insincere apology, but she cut him off. “You gentlemen will kindly take your leave.”

Amusement turned to shocked indignation; Lady Serena’s voice sliced through the angry babble. “Get out. Next time I will bar you from the premises permanently.”

Solomon mentally shifted her from ordinary woman back to intimidating. Very, very intimidating. She was like an ice storm, a whirlwind of glittering frozen shards. And, like the first breath of icy air after sitting dully in a warm house, she made his blood run faster. He wanted to breathe her in.

Maybe you ought to stick to chemistry and leave the overwrought poetry to Elijah, he told himself, concentrating on wiping the last of the soup from the wooden floor’s shining wax coat. But he wasn’t surprised when, grumbling but evidently mortified, the young men hastened to depart.

Lady Serena sat back down, and Solomon put the sodden apron on Charlotte’s tray. “Thank you,” the girl said quietly. He smiled at her and returned to his chair. The hushed silence in the room quickly gave way to pleasantly scandalized murmurings. Only Lady Serena was silent, her eyes fixed on the empty table behind Solomon.

Once, she picked up her spoon, but it rattled slightly against the lip of her bowl. Her eyes flew apprehensively to his, and then she looked away and set the spoon down again with an angry click. It took him a moment to believe the evidence of his own eyes. Her hands were shaking.

He felt a sudden rush of sympathy, remembering more vividly than he had in a long time how badly he’d wanted to seem cool and collected in front of those boys at Cambridge, how he’d tried for a bored drawl and could never, ever manage it. How much he’d hated them for that.

Don’t take it so hard, he wanted to tell her. You were amazing. But he didn’t need to be an empirical scientist to guess that she would hate that. She hadn’t even wanted to admit to being nettled by Lord Smollett. So he waited until the soup plates were removed and two lovely fillets of sole à la Lyonnaise were brought out to venture a “Lady Serena?”

She started like a sleepwalker. “Yes, what is it?” She picked up her first fork and began to push the sole around her plate.

“Are you—?” Her eyebrows drew together, and he gave up. “We were speaking of my robbery.”

“Yes, of course. Your robbery,” she said mechanically. “Tell me about it.”

Solomon didn’t want to discuss it either. He wanted to talk about something else, something that had nothing to do with business or family. He wanted to see if he could make her laugh. He wanted to tell her, even though he knew she would sneer (no, because he knew she would sneer; he liked her sneer) how much he’d like to be able to silence a party of young bucks with just a lifted brow and an icy tone of command. He’d always been able to manage chemical reactions, but people frequently eluded him.

But his mother was at her wits’ end. Besides, just because he liked her and they both hated Lord Smollett, it didn’t mean anything. It certainly didn’t mean they had a connection or that she wanted to talk to him. He only felt as if it did because he missed his brother so much he would have talked to a rock if it stayed still long enough. Only you wouldn’t, would you? he thought. You haven’t wanted to talk to anyone in a year and a half. “It happened Monday last,” he said. “On the road not far from London, just before High Wycombe. I assumed the earrings would be sold immediately, but I’ve had no luck tracking them down. I’ve circulated their description to as many jewelers as I could find, but I’m sure I missed dozens. The earrings aren’t in any catalog and they aren’t valuable enough to be recognized on sight.”

Lady Serena shook her head impatiently. “Jewelers won’t help you. You need to seek out receivers.”

“I don’t know any receivers.”

Bullying him seemed to restore her good humor. She gave him a small, superior smile. “Naturally you don’t, Solomon. Why would a fine, upstanding citizen like you be acquainted with anyone who traffics in stolen goods? That is why you have engaged someone who knows every rogue in London by their Christian name to act for you in the matter.”

So calling him by his Christian name hadn’t just been for Smollett’s benefit. She was teasing him about Uncle Dewington’s comment. Well, two could play that game. He smiled back. “Then what’s our first step, Serena?”

She ignored the “our” and the “Serena” equally. “I’ll put out some initial inquiries, but anything more will have to wait. The greater part of the Carlton House set is coming here for dinner on Saturday and I won’t have time for anything else until after that.”

Solomon felt ashamed of his awe, but he couldn’t help it. “The Carlton House set? You mean, the Prince Regent?”

On anyone else, it would have been a grin. On her, it was an amused smile. “Surely you aren’t impressed? A good republican like you?”

Solomon spent most of the next day collecting wallpaper samples for Lady Serena’s bed-hangings and attempting to match the saffron color of one of the most dilapidated rooms. At first it felt strange working in an unfamiliar room, but before long he’d forgotten everything but the three feet of table in front of him, clear and clean and brilliantly lit by his clockwork Carcel oil lamp, scrimped for and ordered from Paris. He loved working; it made everything else go away. Since Elijah’s death, it was the only thing that could.

When someone knocked on his door, he started as if awakening from a drug-induced stupor. When had it gone dark out? He looked at the mantel clock and saw that it was nine o’clock. Hours ago, then. “Come.”

Lady Serena swung the door open. Her eyebrows rose at the disarray of the room, lifting that little birthmark of hers with them. The elegant rug was rolled up to where it met the bed; a jumble of glass, brass, and iron occupied the remaining space, some of it loaded onto a large table Solomon had talked Sophy into having brought up.

He wasn’t spared a sweeping look, either, and he realized he was wearing his oldest shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of awful mud-colored breeches someone had returned to his uncle’s shop. He’d lay odds there was a grimy smudge all across his forehead, too, where he’d wiped away the sweat. She was as alluring and perfect as ever, and he looked like a chimney sweep.

Lady Serena wrinkled her nose and crossed to the window. “I make it a practice to keep all my rooms well-aired,” she said just as the wick in his lamp began to smoke.

He flushed and took the glass chimney off to trim the wick. “You don’t smell it after a while. I can’t have varying temperatures and wind while I’m working.” Sure enough, the moment she opened the window, a damp gust of wind extinguished the lamp. Solomon felt at once vindicated and even more embarrassed. Fumbling for his tinder among the jars and crucibles, he glanced up at Lady Serena. In the moonlight her skin seemed to glint bluish-white, that distinctive birthmark thrown into sharp relief—

“Serena!” came Sophy’s worried voice from the corridor just as Solomon’s fingers closed on the tinderbox. “Lord Blackthorne’s here!”

Lady Serena froze. “What did you say?” Her voice sounded strangled.

“Your father. He’s here!”