A Lily Among Thorns

Chapter 19


When someone—say, Lord Smollett—was taking a full glass of champagne off a tray, Solomon discovered that it only took a very small jostle to make him spill it all down his front.

“I say, Smollett, I’m dashed sorry—haven’t quite got the knack of these trays.” Solomon dabbed at the spreading stain with the napkin he carried over one arm.

“Give me that!” Smollett snatched the napkin and tried to contain the champagne that now graced his waistcoat and breeches. He squinted at Solomon. “Why, if it isn’t the Hatherdasher! No job too menial, eh? But I suppose when the Siren commands—”

Solomon winked conspiratorially. “Don’t let’s talk about Lady Serena just now,” he said in a low voice perfectly calculated to reach Serena’s ears. “Who is this diamond?”

She stiffened.

“Haven’t the foggiest. An angel, isn’t she?” Smollett said, and guffawed at his own wit. To Serena he said, “Sorry, m’dear, you’ll have to excuse me for a moment. Have this fellow fetch you something, if you like.” He squelched off toward the gentlemen’s withdrawing room.

“Would you like a glass of champagne, madam?” Solomon asked.

“I would,” she said in sultry tones. The effect was spoiled a little since her words were muffled by her mask, but Solomon’s pulse sped up anyway. “But not on the front of my gown.”

He smiled lazily at her. “I only spill champagne on gentlemen speaking to ladies I particularly wish to meet.”

She brought her feathered fan up in front of her face. “Naughty boy,” she scolded huskily.

“Oh, I’m not a boy.”

“I’m immortal, you all look like boys to me.”

He stepped closer. “You’re not an angel either.”

“Don’t you find my costume convincing?”

“Perhaps I would find it more convincing”—he took another step—“at closer quarters.”

She rapped his knuckles with her fan—but very lightly, no doubt out of concern for the tray of champagne. “I ought to report you to your mistress.”

Solomon couldn’t keep a straight face anymore. “Please don’t. She’s a regular harpy.”

Serena gave a little satisfied sigh and gestured to the champagne tray. Solomon held out a glass. She made no move to take it. “Thank you,” she murmured, and he was about to nod, but she continued meaningfully, “for—” and tilted her head slightly to point toward the balcony. She trailed her feathered fan up his wrist. He shivered violently, sloshing the champagne, but thankfully it did not spill. “You were splendid.”

Now she reached to take the glass, but he didn’t quite release it, brushing their fingers together and stepping closer to whisper in her ear, “I’m sure you’re dying to give me a frank critique of my methods.”

She hummed low in her throat and tilted her head so that his lips almost brushed the magnolia line of her throat. “Cynical child! You were perfect.”

He was bored suddenly. Bored and dying with impatience to hear Serena’s real opinion, expressed in her ordinary voice. He wanted to see her face, see her birthmark creep upward and her lips curve sarcastically. He wanted to hear her laugh, her real laughter and not this husky kittenish purr. He could not quite credit that any man would prefer this. How could you be comfortable with a woman who told you only what you wanted to hear?

Well, she would tell him what she really thought later. He kissed her neck lightly—because who could resist?—let go of the glass, and stepped back. “I should get back to my duties. As for that—I assume you do know what kind of viper you’re nursing in your bosom?”

“I always do.”

He felt her quicksilver eyes on his back as he walked toward the buffet table, passing the marquis and Jenny Pursleigh on his way.

From the gestures Sacreval was making, he appeared to have just finished describing the latest Parisian sleeve as Solomon drew within hearing range. “—would look lovely in Paris styles. In France, you know, the women wear only one petticoat.”

“Really?” She smiled mischievously. “I think Pursleigh would like that. It would be so much cheaper, and he is always complaining about how much I cost. His tenants are not at all industrious.”

The marquis looked rather sardonic. If this was all a cover, it really was a good one. Solomon’s money was still on the viscount.

Lady Pursleigh looked at her cards. “I think it is my trick again, René!”

The marquis sighed and passed over a sovereign. “At this rate you will have enough for a dozen petticoats, my dear. And that would be a shame.”

She giggled. There was silence, and then Lady Pursleigh reached out and put a hand on Sacreval’s arm. “You—you do think it’s all a sham about Boney putting our troops to flight? You do think Wellington will thrash him, don’t you?”

Sacreval covered her hand with his own, and she looked thrilled. “Of course, my dear. You must be brave.”

After that, the evening dragged. Solomon and Elijah flanked the buffet table, too far apart to carry on a conversation. Elijah watched Sacreval and Lady Pursleigh like a hawk, as if he suspected that at any moment Sacreval might bolt, or perhaps begin communicating with one or the other of the Pursleighs using secret hand gestures, Solomon wasn’t sure.

Serena seemed to be having a good time, or else she feigned it beautifully. She didn’t dance much. Solomon wondered if she had ever learned any of the newer dances. But she flirted madly with one enchanted gentleman after another, fluttering her fan and dipping her blond head and, if Solomon could judge from across the room, laughing that soft, husky little laugh. She sent them to fetch her things from the buffet table every so often—lobster patties and strawberries, mostly. It made him jealous as hell, but—it was nice, too. As herself, she would have been the subject of leers and snubs and speculations. As an anonymous angel, she could have fun—so long as she refrained from being herself. He wondered how she felt about that. Was she grateful for the reprieve, or did she feel stifled by it?

“Can you keep your eyes off her for five seconds?” Elijah hissed, under cover of restacking some rolls that had fallen out of their basket. “If Sacreval notices, he’ll know it’s her and we’ll be rumbled.”

“Well, maybe you should stop staring at Sacreval, then!” Solomon hissed back, stung. “He’s bound to notice, and what reason can he possibly imagine?”

Elijah flushed a deep red and went back to his side of the table, leaving Solomon pleased that he had had the last word for once. Really, he hoped Elijah’s surveillance was usually subtler than this, or his career as a spy would not be long.

It was nearly eleven before Pursleigh and Sacreval sat down to play. This deck, too, was brought by a servant.

“Damn,” Elijah said. “Does he have a servant in his pay, too?”

Solomon looked at him. “They’re his servants, Li. They’re already in his pay.”

Elijah was opening his mouth to retort when they saw it. They saw Pursleigh pull two sheets of paper from his pocket and rip them both in four pieces. They saw him have a pen brought to the table. They saw him write something on the first piece and pass it over to the marquis, who looked at it carefully under the candle and smiled. “Where did he get that paper?” Elijah hissed furiously.

Solomon couldn’t believe it either. “He must have got it when Ravi was out on the balcony.”

“This is a nightmare. Anything could be written on those papers in invisible ink. He could be writing anything on them right now and no one would think it was anything more than an IOU.”

“Well, Sacreval is putting it in his pocket. We’ll just have to steal it from him somehow, along with the little pink note.”

Elijah blew his hair out of his eyes with a defeated sound. “We will, won’t we?”

Elijah took off his coat and cravat. He left his waistcoat on, though, and tousled his hair just so. They had to have Lord Pursleigh’s vowels and Lady Pursleigh’s billet-doux. They had to get them now, before René destroyed them.

He had known that sooner or later it would come to this. Sooner or later he would have to walk into René’s room and use what they had shared to move René one step closer to the gallows, simply because it was the worst thing that could happen and so it would. Now that it had, he couldn’t tell whether the knot in the pit of his stomach was nausea or excitement.

He walked down the hall and knocked on René’s door. René looked distinctly surprised to see him, but he opened the door wide.

The first thing Elijah saw when he stepped inside was the precious evidence, burning merrily on a silver salver.

“What’s that?” he asked, even though he already knew. Lady Pursleigh’s stationery burned with a sickly sweet rose scent. The room smelled like dying summer.

René smiled maliciously. “Love letters.”

Elijah’s entire reason for being there was already gone, but he realized too late that it must not have been his entire reason after all. Instead of leaving, he said, “Your mistress isn’t very subtle. People in France probably saw her pass you that note.”

“She does have more hair than wit,” René acknowledged. “But it is such delightful hair I am inclined to overlook the fault. One of those soft golden ringlets would make such a lovely keepsake, do you not think?”

Elijah said nothing.

René curled a lock of Elijah’s own yellow hair around his finger. Elijah flinched away, and René sighed. “You cannot have it both ways, chéri. Why will you not admit that you love me? That we are meant to be together?”

“I don’t love you!” Elijah strove to modulate his voice. “And we certainly aren’t meant to be together. After all, you’re a married man now, aren’t you?”

René was the reason Lady Serena had been going around looking like death. Because of René, Elijah’s brother might never be able to marry the woman he so obviously loved. Lady Serena was René’s best friend, and he had done this to her.

Elijah wished he could hate René for it, but he understood. Elijah had betrayed people he loved in the service of his country, too. He could have driven his brother to suicide. He still meant to drive René to his death.

René’s eyes darkened. For a long moment he was silent. “I am sorry that I am not the man you thought I was.” He sounded genuinely regretful, but then he would have had training for that. “I would have liked to be such a man. But you are not the man I thought you were either.”

It echoed Elijah’s thoughts so closely that for a moment, he panicked. Does he know?

But René simply smiled and murmured, “Elijah.” It was the first time he had used his real name. Elijah liked the way it sounded on his lips. “My little anglais. I would have sworn you were from the quartier Saint-Michel.”

“I am not your anything.”

“That is not what you told me when you first arrived. You told me you could not sleep without me, do you not remember?”

Elijah’s fingers curled into a fist. “You must have misunderstood my English.”

“So now it is my accent?” René said sharply. “I am sorry I am not such a linguist as you. Mon Dieu, I had forgotten how childish you could be.”

“I suppose I might seem so to a man who’ll never see forty again.”

“I do not remember you telling me I was old when you were begging me to make love to you for the fourth time in one night.”

Elijah’s mouth curved ruefully. “Actually, I did. That was what convinced you.” Their gazes caught, and suddenly Elijah could barely breathe. Very, very slowly, René reached out and pulled Elijah to him.

Serena crept up the servants’ stair, her cloak wrapped around her to hide her wig and dress, and the wings and mask bundled under her left arm. René mustn’t see her. She peered out into the hallway. The coast was clear. She moved softly to her door, unlocked it, and slipped inside. Dumping the mask, wings, and cloak on the bed, she knocked on Solomon’s door to find out what had gone wrong with the plan. When were they supposed to get another opportunity this good to catch Pursleigh? Who knew when he would meet with René again?

“Come,” Solomon called. She pushed the door open. He was in stocking feet and shirtsleeves, bent over something at his worktable. The lamp burned beside him. The Y of his braces defined his broad back and shoulders. His Arms livery had been made for someone slightly smaller, so the black breeches clung to his backside in an extremely impressive manner.

“What went wrong at the masquerade?”

He stood up and turned toward her. Serena sighed. “We don’t know,” he said. “Elijah thinks maybe we were wrong again, and Lady Pursleigh is the traitor. She passed Sacreval a note.”

Serena blinked. Henwitted Jenny Warrington, a spy? “I’ll check her banking records, too,” she said. “But I can’t imagine we’ll find anything. More likely she has a tendre for René.”

“Well, in that case Pursleigh decided to use IOUs, or maybe the paper they were written on, to communicate with Sacreval instead of cards. Either Spratt missed him hiding the paper in his costume, or he went and got them sometime in the five minutes we weren’t watching him.” He shook his head. “As if trying to blackmail poor Ravi weren’t bad enough, that blackguard Apollo may be responsible for the escape of a traitor.”

Serena’s heart swelled when she remembered Solomon facing down Lord Teasdale with perfect politeness. She’d seen him hesitate just inside the French doors and thought she’d have to intervene herself; it might have proven difficult to do so unobtrusively. But she should have known Solomon wouldn’t stand by and allow someone else to be bullied. “Do you really think I cut off their ears?” she asked.

Solomon smiled wickedly. “Don’t you?”

She looked down her nose, as well as she could at someone half a head taller than her. “Of course not. I prefer not to leave a mark.”

“So do you have any pointers for me?”

Serena frowned, thinking. “It wasn’t my style at all, but very effective in its own right. I felt as if I were being scolded by my governess.”

Solomon rolled his eyes. “Thanks.”

“I lived in fear of my governess!” she protested. “I assure you, her memory invokes an almost primeval terror.”

“My grandfather was a schoolmaster,” Solomon admitted. “And then, of course, my father was a tutor for a while.”

“Well, I’m grateful none of your family has ever shown any interest in a life of crime. The juxtaposition of your calm, almost professorial air with the brutal subject matter and the unspoken physical menace was really quite chilling.”

“Take off the wig,” he commanded suddenly.

She blinked. “I’m going to take it all off in a minute, but—”

“Please,” he said a little desperately, “just take it off.”

She did so, conscious that her hair must be flattened and disheveled underneath. He watched her with the quiet, perfect focus he could slip into so easily, as if he were content to observe indefinitely. She’d seen him give it to crucibles and organs and dress seams, but rarely to people. He gave it to her, though, sometimes. What did he see? She combed her hair ineffectually with her fingers. “I needed a costume no one would expect me to wear.”

“You really did look like an angel.”

“But if you had to choose a winged creature to represent me, it would be a harpy: yes, I know.”

His eyes darkened. “Sometimes around you I have trouble remembering the difference.”

She frowned in surprise, and then he was kissing her fiercely, his tongue in her mouth and his hands tangled in her hair.