A Lily Among Thorns

Chapter 22


The beginning of the Brendans’ party, René reflected, was hideously different from the beginning of the Pursleighs’. Not that he had been precisely at ease on that occasion, either, but now poor Elijah could not even look at him. The boy didn’t look at his brother either, and Solomon was keeping his eyes studiously on the middle distance. René, seeing the circles under Elijah’s eyes, would have liked to wring Solomon’s puritanical little neck. The pair were both fidgeting like mad, and René didn’t dare speak to either, even to give a simple order, for fear of provoking a confrontation.

It seemed like years, but was probably only twenty minutes, before he judged he might safely leave the kitchen to its own devices and supervise the arrangement of the tables in the courtyard. He escaped outside with a sense of profound relief.

So it was with a doubly sinking feeling that he realized they might have left the Italian pastries at the Arms. There is no point going to see. Even if you find that you have, Hampstead is too far from London to retrieve them in time, he told himself hopefully. But there was no help for it. He turned back to the house.

Of course, Lady Brendan chose that moment to become very concerned about the arrangement of the ice buckets for champagne and actually followed him to the kitchen demanding he return to give his opinion. He had forgotten how difficult les aristos could be about any service one provided them. At least the customers in his family’s bakery were not quite so used to getting their own way every moment.

“Madame, I assure you there will be no trouble with the buckets,” he said as patiently as he could, trying to meet her eyes deferentially without breaking his neck on the narrow back stairs. “We will arrange them together l’instant même that I assure myself we have not left your exquisite pastries behind at the Arms.” On this last word René reached the kitchen.

Lord Brendan stood in the middle of the room, being gaped at by Arms staff and the Hathaway twins. His wrists were manacled behind his back, and extremely official-looking men stood on each side of him. One of them, René saw with a chill, held a deck of cards in one hand. France had so needed that information about the state of communications between the English and the Prussians.

Lady Brendan, several steps behind him, continued over the absolute silence in the kitchen, “I assure you, monsieur, it makes no odds. The crème brûlée will be quite—” She reached the door and stopped abruptly. “Ah, merde.”

It would have greatly relieved René’s feelings to say the same, and a deal more besides. It took all his will to merely glance at Lady Brendan in mild perplexity. “Why is your husband in irons in the middle of your kitchen, madame?”

“I—I—” she floundered.

Oh, merde. First Elbourn, then Sir Nigel, and now this? Brendan figured it out a second after René did. “You knew about this?” he asked his wife in helpless disbelief.

“N—no—”

“Amélie?” The man looked suddenly defeated. Defeated and old.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was my duty, but it was not easy.”

Brendan’s lips twisted unpleasantly. “And you always do your duty, don’t you, Amélie?”

“Please, my lord,” she whispered, trembling.

“Your duty is to me.”

“My duty is to my king.” Her voice was barely a thread. René thought she would be in hysterics before too long. She had always struck him as nervy as a thoroughbred—an aristo to the core. “And—how could you risk James, my lord?” she added, louder.

Brendan turned red as a lobster. “James! It’s always James with you! You think I don’t see? You married me for my money, you little slut, and now you want to get rid of me so you can be free to play the whore with my own son?”

Lady Brendan’s eyes widened. “How dare you suggest such a thing?” she demanded, her voice high. “James is like a son to me, you filthy old lecher! Of course I married you for your money—why else would a sixteen-year-old girl marry an old man like you? But I was a wife to you for twelve years and I was fond of you. I cried when I knew you would be executed!” A couple of the kitchen boys gawked openly at her splendidly heaving bosom. If he stayed at the Arms long enough, he would have to talk to them about that later.

“I only turned to this to buy you the things you wanted. Where did you think the money was coming from to pay for all your damned hats?”

Since René happened to know that most of the money went to pay Brendan’s gaming debts, this struck him as rather unfair.

“I hope you drown in your crocodile tears!” Brendan concluded with a flourish.

“Even if I did, I would outlive you!” She looked shocked by her own effrontery, but continued headlong, “You talk about doing my duty! You are only angry that I did not meekly take the blame as you’ve been setting me up to do for years! I was so blind—I didn’t even see it until she told me how you’d been using me, always had been, just like he used her—” She stopped suddenly in horror, her hand flying to her mouth and her eyes flying to René.

He felt all the blood slowly drain from his face. Serena. His sirène had been talking to Lady Brendan, and now Lady Brendan had helped the Foreign Office arrest her husband. Serena was working against him. He had wondered, when she went to that party at the Elbourns’, but he had dismissed the idea as impossible. He’d thought she was trying to please Elijah’s idiot of a respectable brother.

Serena was closer to him than anyone. He knew she must have guessed who nearly all his people were, and he had let this happen. Mon Dieu, it was his fault, all of it, nearly all his people bound for the gallows because he was a fool.

His only excuse was that he hadn’t understood until that moment just how Serena must have felt. How the years of friendship and intimacy and shared laughter must have been transformed in an instant into a humiliating mockery. He had felt guilty—of course he had—but it had never occurred to him to compare himself to Lord Brendan.

That it had occurred to Serena—that she thought he had used her like this vieux traître méprisable had used his pretty young French wife—how blind he had been, to think that the risk to the Arms would be enough to stay her hand! It was a miracle she hadn’t already shot him.

He had never intended to use the marriage lines. They had been a sensible precaution, that was all. But she had forced his hand when she gave his room to that puling preacher’s son.

He shot Solomon a venomous glance—and his gaze fell on his Thierry, who looked as if he were trying not to be sick. Thierry. Thierry knew. Thierry’s name was Elijah and he was a loyal Englishman and René was un sot, un con, un imbécile. He had betrayed Serena and lost his lover and still not saved his men.

“Well,” said one of the agents into the resulting silence. “We’ll just be taking his lordship away now.” And they did.

“Will you be going ahead with the entertainment?” René asked Lady Brendan. Merely as a courtesy; of course she would not.

Two spots of high color burned in her cheeks. “Yes. I rather feel like celebrating.”

Everyone stared at her in horror as she swept from the room. “You heard her,” René said mechanically. “And that punch is about to boil over. Ravi, bring up the striped Sicilian cake and the nougats once you’re done carving that chicken.”

He went up the stairs and slipped out the front door.

“Fortunately, Lady Brendan burst into tears about half an hour later and fled the gardens, so we were able to gather everything up and escape back to the Arms,” Elijah said. “Unfortunately, coaches full of caterers are not famous for their speed, but I told the agents who arrested Brendan that Sacreval likely knows he’s been discovered.” He glanced nervously at Solomon when he said René’s name. Solomon was sitting on his workbench watching Serena, and didn’t see.

Why were they in his room? Why had that become their usual meeting place and not some neutral spot like her office? She kept her eyes studiously off the bed, but she could sense its presence. She could sense Solomon sensing it. “‘Regular Trojan’ my arse,” she said. “Lady Brendan as good as told René that I’m working against him.”

“I know,” Solomon said quietly.

“How did he take it?” She managed to keep her voice even, but Solomon’s face softened anyway. How did he always know when she was struggling?

“He looked as if someone had kicked him in the stomach,” he said.

Serena was torn between feeling triumphant, guilty, or pleased that René cared.

“There are agents stationed here in case he returns,” Elijah said in a tight voice. “But very likely he won’t.”

Serena hoped he wouldn’t. The Arms was worthless to him now. He could run, and live, and perhaps no one need ever know that those marriage lines existed. Maybe she could even suppress her newest discovery, delivered by messenger while the Hathaways were away. What right did the Foreign Office have to know? Who would it hurt? Hadn’t she done enough for England? Restlessly she paced to the window. Sunlight fell on her face, making her blink.

There was a small, serviceable edition of Shakespeare lying on the window seat. Of course: Shakespeare’s sonnets. René had told Solomon he hadn’t read them carefully enough, so Solomon was reading them again, like a dutiful pupil. Serena’s heart smote her. Poor Solomon. He tried so hard. He had only ever wanted the truth: from his brother, and from her.

“One of my contacts came by this morning while you were gone,” she said quietly. “Jenny Pursleigh has an account at Rothschild’s bank, and her deposits match René’s payment schedule perfectly.”

Elijah’s head came up. Then he cursed. “It doesn’t matter. I could send men to her house, but Sacreval’s sure to have warned her by now. She’s long gone.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Solomon said, his face alight with suppressed excitement. “There’s paperwork, when you close out an account at a bank. If we go to Rothschild’s right away, I wager we can catch her.”

Elijah shook his head. “If she’s clever, and she is, she’s abandoned the money. It’s risking her neck to stay in London.”

“I’ll forgive you for saying that,” Solomon said, “because you’ve never lived on your own earnings. But listen carefully. Serena, would you ever abandon a large sum of money you had accumulated over years of hard work?”

Serena shook her head. “I couldn’t.”

“No one alive could.”

“In case, you’d better go to the Pursleigh townhouse,” Serena said. “We’ll go to Rothschild’s.”

Elijah nodded. “Why do you think she picked Rothschild’s?” he asked abruptly. “Do you think he’s disloyal?”

“No, I think he’s expended a good deal of time and energy backing England and received precious little thanks. But Rothschild’s clerks are less likely than, say, Lloyd’s to be starchedup old men who don’t hold with young women having bank accounts.”

“Nathan Rothschild came to us yesterday,” Elijah said slowly. “Claimed he knew Wellington had won.”

“Did the government believe him?” Serena asked.

Elijah bit his lip. “They want to. I want to. This war has gone on long enough.”

She shrugged. “All I know is that he has always given me an excellent rate of interest on the Arms accounts.”

Elijah rolled his eyes. “Bring her to Newgate if you get her. Then send me word care of Lord Varney. I’ll have to go report to him on all this. When we get back here, we can go through Sacreval’s things, see if—” His eyes went wide. “Oh Lord, I forgot! He’s got our earrings, Sol!”