A Lily Among Thorns

Chapter 24


Serena had a sudden vivid memory of pointing her pistol at the face of some drunk young tulip who’d broken into her room on a dare, back in the early days of the Arms. René had heard and come in. As in all battles, he’d said, the heart makes a better target than the head. Even if you are a little off, you are likely to hit some vital organ or other. She’d said she was never a little off, and he had smiled approvingly and shrugged and said, Have it your own way then, but he’d escorted the tulip off the premises himself and the next day the bar had appeared across her door—

Serena snapped herself back into the present.

“You can’t shoot him either,” she said calmly, still hoping against hope that she could somehow brazen this out. “He’s Elijah’s brother, or have you forgotten?”

“Back away from the table,” René repeated.

The look on his face made her ill. “Oh, but you would, wouldn’t you? And you would think you were doing a fine thing, a noble act, sacrificing your chance at happiness for—God, for what, René? Why the devil did you come back?”

“Back away from the table,” René said through gritted teeth, and he cocked the pistol.

Her back was against the wall and she couldn’t remember moving. The sound of that pistol cocking was the loudest thing she had ever heard. There was still a roaring in her ears like a hundred people cheering.

“Let him go,” she said, her voice sounding distant in her own ears. “Let him go, and I’ll give you whatever you want.”

“I don’t think so,” said René.

“I’ll sign over the Arms to you.”

René looked pitying. “I don’t want the Arms, sirène.”

Of course he didn’t want the Arms anymore. She couldn’t think. She had simply offered him the biggest thing she could think of, like poor Jenny Pursleigh trying to bribe her with sex and her carefully hoarded cash. René had ruined Jenny, too.

“It’s all right, Serena,” Solomon said. “Sacreval isn’t going to shoot me if you just do as he says.” He sounded calmer than she was. Her strength was just an act, had always been an act.

But it was an act she could still do. She drew in a deep breath and pulled herself up and away from the wall. “Very well, René. What is it you do want?”

René nodded at her approvingly, just as he had when she’d threatened the tulip, and she felt sick. “You are holding the Hathaway earrings, are you not?”

She unclenched her fist and held out her hand, palm up, so he could see the rubies in their box.

“Very good, sirène. I want you to examine them very carefully for any kind of catch or spring.”

It was hard to see, even in the light from Solomon’s newfangled clockwork lamp, but after an endless half minute or so she saw the tiny catch. She pressed it back, hard, and the central ruby and its gold backing popped out and lay in her hand.

René smiled in relief. “Excellent. Now, is there a piece of the backing that isn’t attached?”

She looked, and sure enough, a thin strip of gold flipped out and extended from the back center of the gem. It looked almost like a key—she gasped.

“Good,” he said, seeing that she understood. “Now do the same for the other and go and put them in their places.”

“They’ll go back together, won’t they?” Solomon asked worriedly. “Susannah needs them.”

“Hush, Solomon.” Serena walked over to the mantelpiece. The left ruby fitted perfectly into the empty socket at the bottom of Diana’s carved hair—she had always wondered why there was a tiny slit at the back. The other ruby fit equally perfectly into the empty socket in the sun’s biggest right-hand ray. She looked at René, waiting for his signal.

He nodded. “Turn them, I think. It will need both of you. I couldn’t reach, and between that and the guard you set on the room, I’ve had a devil of a time.”

“So sorry to have inconvenienced you.” Why had she posted the guard? If she hadn’t, he would be gone now. He’d only come back for this. If he hurt Solomon—

“Don’t try anything,” René said as Solomon moved closer to her. She tried to calculate how much of Solomon’s body she could shield with her own and decided that it was not enough to take the risk. Together they twisted the rubies, and the entire left-hand side of the mantel sprung forward slightly with an audible click. Serena felt oddly betrayed, as if the Arms had been conspiring with René against her.

“That royal bastard!” Solomon gave the portrait of Charles I a glare, as if that king were somehow to blame for his son’s perfidy to the Hathaways. “He might have told us!”

Serena ignored him, looking at René.

“I want you to open it and take out all the papers that you see in there and burn them. I would like to blindfold you, but I do not have time, so let me warn you now: if you try to keep any back or leave any in there, I will see, and he will die. It is as simple as that.”

She swung open the front of the carving. The back of the carving was covered in clockwork, and a shelf divided the interior into two compartments. The bottom compartment was empty. The top one held a mass of papers. She took them out, careful not to let any fall. “Why the devil would I try to keep any back—”

And then she saw the map. Even in the semi-dark she recognized that bit of Cornish coastline. Ravenscroft. “My father? My father was helping you?” She gaped. “I suppose that explains his sudden interest in me—”

There was a knock on the door. “Sol?” Elijah’s voice asked. René turned white, but his hand did not shake. He raised his eyebrows meaningfully. Solomon didn’t answer. In the listening silence Serena became aware that what she had thought was a roaring in her ears really was people cheering in the room below. She felt dimly that she ought to wonder why.

“Sol, I heard Lady Serena’s voice, I know you’re in there.”

Solomon looked at René, who nodded, very slowly.

“That you, Elijah?”

Serena was amazed at how natural his voice sounded.

“Can I come in?” Elijah asked.

“The devil you can, Li. Serena and I are a trifle occupied at present and we wish you at Jericho.”

When had he learned to lie so well?

Elijah laughed. “To Jericho I go, then.” His footsteps retreated.

René let out his breath. “Now burn them, and I wouldn’t recommend trying to throw acid at me or anything of that nature,” he said softly. Serena was already moving to obey him when Solomon spoke.

“No, wait,” he said.

Serena and René both stared at him.

“You might need those. If your father threatens to lock you up again. Sacreval said he couldn’t shoot you.”

Her heart almost stopped when she realized his meaning. He was offering his life in exchange for her freedom from her father’s threats.

He gave her a crooked, shaky smile. He could make an offer like that, but he couldn’t not look scared when he did it. Her heart swelled. “Don’t be stupid,” she said thickly, and opened his tinderbox.

As the last few papers crumbled into ash in Solomon’s big crucible, there was a hush from downstairs and they heard, very clearly, a man yell, “—all the doors. Nobody do anything foolish. He won’t escape.” Booted feet strode down the corridor below them. Solomon breathed a sigh of relief. Elijah had come back with reinforcements, and sooner than Solomon had dared hope. If only he had come before Serena had burned that evidence!

He had wanted to help her against Sacreval. That was a joke. When had he done anything for Serena but be a convenient life to threaten when someone wanted to browbeat her into submission?

The marquis sagged like a puppet whose strings had been cut and let the gun fall to his side. “At least I saved one of my men.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a few sheets of paper. “Sirène, these are for you.” He spoke quickly, racing against the booted feet that were starting up the stairs. “It’s a marriage contract settling the Sacreval diamonds on you. Fraud is grounds for annulment in England. There is no such title as marquis du Sacreval and certainly no diamonds. There is also an affidavit swearing that the register is a forgery.”

Serena’s numb, blank look did not change.

“Oh, ma petite sirène, I would only have shot him in the leg.”

Serena made a heaving sound, her shoulders relaxing with a shudder. She shut her eyes, and when she opened them her lashes were wet. “Oh, René.”

“Sirène, it would be better if I were not taken,” he said gently.

She stilled.

“I won’t if you don’t want me to. But it will be easier this way.”

“Easier?” She sniffled, and that little sound broke Solomon’s heart.

“A trial would be painful for all of us. You would have to testify, your name would be in all the papers. And without a conviction you may not even need those documents to keep the Arms.” His mouth twisted into something like a smile. “I’ll try not to stain the wallpaper.”

“You know I don’t care about any of that,” Serena said quietly. “Not even the wallpaper. Don’t you?”

“I know.”

“Then do it if you want to. I don’t want to see you strung up and sliced open either.”

“Don’t look,” Sacreval said, but Serena never turned her eyes away as he raised the gun to his own temple. Halfway there, he looked at Solomon.

“Elijah works for the Foreign Office, doesn’t he?”

Solomon nodded.

“Tell him—” Sacreval stopped, and gave a glittering knifelike smile. “Tell him I knew all along. Tell him I was a heartless schemer who never loved him.”

Solomon’s eyes narrowed. “Give me that gun.” René obeyed, frowning, but both he and Serena leaped forward when Solomon pointed it at his own arm.

“What the hell are you doing?” Serena hissed.

“How much are you willing to wager that Rothschild was right and Napoleon’s been beaten?”

Her eyes widened, some life coming back into her face. “A great deal.”

“Then England doesn’t need Sacreval,” Solomon said. “Enough people have died. You know damn well they aren’t guarding all the doors. If I’m wounded, it’ll distract Elijah long enough for you to get him out the laundry tunnel.”

Serena stared at him, then picked up the knife from his worktable. “Is it clean?” She was so pale that he was reminded of their first meeting, how her skin had looked bluish-white, like arsenic. Only the lamplight gave her any color. But her hand was perfectly steady.

“Of course.”

“Kneel down.”

There was no time to ask why. He did it.

“Whatever you do, hold still.”

He felt her slice lightly along the top of his head. Almost instantly blood began pouring down his forehead. He stood, and she hooked a finger of her left hand into his cravat, pulled him forward, and kissed him, hard. Absolutely without expression, she licked a drop of blood off her lip and handed him the knife. “Thank you,” she said.

The booted feet were almost to the door. She picked up the gun and fired it straight into the wall. Solomon wiped the blood out of his eyes with his sleeve and by the time he looked up, the door to Serena’s room was swinging shut. They’d have to wait in her room until Elijah and his men were out of the hallway, then get out without being heard and go down the back stairs to the kitchen.

Elijah’s footsteps rang in the corridor. “We’re coming in!”

“Wait!” Solomon called weakly. “I’m coming.” Serena wouldn’t be pleased if he let Elijah shoot her lock off.

“Solomon! Are you shot?”

“I’m fine,” he mumbled. “I just—” Lying to Elijah was tricky, but it could be done. He concentrated very hard on his fear that the marquis would be caught and Serena accused of aiding him.

He knocked the bottle of Madeira onto the floor on his way to the door. Glass shattered across the floor—that might slow them down if they tried to go for the connecting door. “Sorry,” he called. “Just a little woozy—” He did feel a little light-headed, actually. He turned the key in the lock and then, as Elijah pushed the door open, he collapsed onto the floor with an impressive thud. His elbow jarred painfully.

“Solomon!” Elijah cried wildly, rushing into the room followed by two of his fellow agents. They immediately made for the connecting door. One of them trod on Solomon’s hand in his haste, and he gave a completely sincere groan of pain.

“Have a care, will you?” Elijah said sharply, heaving Solomon up.

“Wait, not that way,” Solomon said weakly, and to his relief they stopped. He tried to sit up as noisily as possible, listening for Serena’s door opening from the next room. Was that it? Elijah started to frantically feel Solomon’s scalp. Solomon knocked his hand away under pretext of trying to wipe the blood away from his eyes with a supposedly shaky arm. “Which way did he go, Sol?” Elijah demanded. “He won’t make it to the gallows, I swear. I’ll kill him myself for this.”

“‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.’” Solomon gave Elijah a small smile. “I’ll be all right. It’s Serena I’m worried about. He took her with him while you were—” He jerked his head in the direction of the door to the hallway. It really did hurt, and he winced. Elijah bit his lip, and with his brother thus distracted by murderous thoughts, Solomon said, “He said—there are a lot of people in the dining room who could get hurt.” The best lie is a half-truth.

Elijah’s lips thinned. “If he thinks he can take her out the public rooms and get away with it, he’ll find his mistake. Be careful, gentlemen. If you let the lady get hurt, we’ll all have to answer to his lordship her father. Tread carefully and don’t hesitate to shoot if you see an opportunity.” The agents nodded and disappeared out the door and, hopefully, down the main stairs.

Solomon closed his eyes in silent prayer.

“Steady on, Sol,” Elijah said softly. “Scalp wounds always look worse than they are. Let me get you to the bed.”

“Shouldn’t you be chasing after Sacreval? He’s got Serena.”

“He’s unlikely to get far. We’re watching all the doors. I’ll go as soon as I’ve seen to you. Now let me get you to the bed.”

Solomon got to his feet, shaking his head. “I’ll stain the sheets. Just get me some water. I’d say Madeira, but it’s soaking into the floorboards as we speak.” He hoped Serena wouldn’t mind too much.

“Let’s start with the water, shall we?”

“There are some clean rags on my worktable.”

“Perfect. Sit on the bench by the lamp.”

Elijah brought the pitcher over to the table, wet a rag, and gently dabbed at Solomon’s cut. It stung, and Solomon drew in a hissing breath and jerked his head away.

“Solomon, you have to let me look at it.”

“It’s nothing.” But he could only resist for so long, and finally he sat still and let Elijah lift the lamp to examine his head. Elijah froze. Solomon braced himself.

“This isn’t a bullet wound,” Elijah said in a hard voice.

They couldn’t ask the kitchen to bear the burden of treason with them, so when they went through the kitchen door, Serena was in front of René like a shield. This was the part with the most likelihood of going wrong. His arm was around her throat and he had the cool butt of the pistol pressed against her temple. “Open the tunnel,” René said.

There was absolute silence. This late, the only people working were Antoine, marinating meat for tomorrow’s dinner, and two kitchen boys readying food for breakfast. Frozen in horror, they stared at the pair.

“Open the tunnel or she dies,” René said. Antoine reached for his knife.

“Please, Antoine,” Serena said. “Just let him go.” It worked. Antoine hurried across the floor to the trapdoor and tugged on the iron ring. René pushed her gently across the kitchen.

“You son of a bitch,” Antoine said viciously, all traces of his French accent gone. “You’ll never get out of here alive.”

“Then neither will she,” René said, his voice strung taut. Serena shuddered. It was probably true, if not for the reasons Antoine thought.

The chef spat on the ground at their feet, but he stepped aside and left the way to the tunnel open. Hatred twisted his face. Serena, remembering the hours he and René had spent together, wanted to explain to him that it was all right, that it wasn’t real. But that was impossible. She let René drag her down the stairs.

“If I hear anyone else come through this door, I will shoot her on the spot,” René told them. “If you can hold them off long enough, though, I’ll let her go safe and sound. Now close it and go about your business.”

And the door closed over them, sealing the tunnel in darkness. René let her go, and they raced down the tunnel. When they got to the other end that came out at the laundry, they crouched down and listened.

Serena’s heart sank. The laundry should have been empty at this hour, but the distinct sounds of sex came from above them: a faint rhythmic thumping and the occasional moan. Someone was using the laundry for illicit dalliance. She cursed.

“We’ll give them two minutes to finish and go away,” René said quietly. “Then we try to brazen it out, like we did back there. Once we get out, I can scale the fence behind the laundry.” He sounded unnaturally calm.

Serena wondered how many times in the course of his career he had waited in darkness for the sounds of someone coming to arrest him. “Where will you go from there? What if they’re watching the street?”

“I don’t think I should tell you,” René said. “It will be easier for you to lie that way. I don’t think they’ll be watching the street. They may be watching the courtyard. I shall have to take my chances. They are better than they were a few minutes ago, sirène. Thank you.”

They settled down next to each other in the dark, counting the seconds and trying to ignore the sounds from above. Serena tried to think of what she would do if she were escaping over the back wall. She thought that if he could be quiet, René’s chances of getting out of the courtyard unseen were good—the back door to the laundry came out in a narrow strip of yard enclosed on two sides by fence and shielded from view of most of the rest of the yard. There couldn’t be many of the Foreign Office agents, and if they didn’t know about the tunnel, there was no reason to put someone anywhere he might see René. In his place, once out, she would probably cross the alley, cut through some back gardens, come out in another street, and look for a hackney working late.

She shivered, wondering how many of the agents would know René by sight. If there weren’t any watching the street—if they were watching the doors from the inside—it would probably be all right. But the thought of René walking across even that narrow strip of courtyard with nothing to hide or shield him was terrifying.

These were the last two minutes she might ever spend with him. She wanted suddenly to have one last ordinary, friendly conversation. “How did you know the earrings opened the fireplace?”

He chuckled. “The fireplace opens in two different ways. It was made by Charles the First’s own clockmaker. You saw when we opened it—there’s a clockwork timing mechanism of some sort with an unknown delay. You can open it once just by twisting Diana’s hand halfway round, as I discovered. At that moment I happened to be in a hurry to hide those papers where you wouldn’t find them. I was hasty. But once I’d hidden those papers in there and closed it, it refused to open that way again. I had given them up for lost when I saw some Stuart letters on display in an old bibliothèque in Paris. In one, Charles the Second wrote to his brother from Scotland, mysteriously assuring him that he had got the ruby earrings from their mother and would recapture his hidden treasure from the Rose and Thistle as soon as he reached London. In the other he said he’d given the earrings away to a fellow named Hathaway, in Shropshire.”

“Was there a hidden treasure?” Serena asked.

“Not when I opened it. It had been two hundred years. Anyone could have found it in the meantime.” He paused. “I am so sorry, sirène,” he said, speaking fast. “I never wanted to use the marriage lines. But when I saw you had given my room to a Hathaway from Shropshire, I panicked. For all I knew, he had the earrings and the full secret of their use. If you had found those papers and turned your father in, my entire web of informants would have been useless. Everything went through Ravenscroft.”

“It’s all right.” It wasn’t, really. He had hurt her so much. He hadn’t wanted to, but he had been willing to. And she would have been willing to kill him for the Arms. She didn’t want to think about it.

She did have one question, though, that she had to know the answer to. “My father didn’t—didn’t send you to me, did he? When you came to me and asked me to be your partner?” She didn’t know what she wanted to hear—yes, her father had wanted to save her and she owed him everything? Or no, the Arms was still hers and her father had never cared for a moment?

“Non, ma petite sirène,” he said gently. “I found you all on my own. Your father never had a say in anything I did. He took the money he needed and we used his coastline and that was all.”

Serena nodded. It was as good an answer as any, she decided. And it meant that her father’s threat of Bedlam would disappear now the war was over. It meant she would probably never see him again. It was cold in the tunnel. She leaned her head on René’s shoulder.

He went still for a moment, surprised, but then he put his arm around her shoulders. “You know how I finally figured out how the earrings worked?” he asked her, a teasing note in his voice.

She shook her head.

“When you recited that charming bit of verse to me, my first night back,” he told her. “As soon as I heard ‘place these jewels among Phoebe’s sweet hair’ and ‘shine in the sun,’ I remembered the missing rubies in the carving.”

Serena could have kicked herself.

“If I don’t get out of here, will you send some money to my mother? Elijah knows where.”

“Of course,” she promised. “But you’ll get out. Do you want me to give Elijah a message?”

“No. If he wants me, he knows where to find me.”

The thumping from above stopped abruptly. They both froze, listening. Serena thought about a minute and a half had passed. The couple had thirty seconds for pillow talk. Luckily, they didn’t bother with it at all. Someone laughed, footsteps shifted, and a few seconds later the door banged shut. There was silence.

“It is time, sirène,” René said. They stood. “How do you want to play your end of things?”

Serena had been thinking about this. “They can’t suspect I was involved. You’ll have to knock me out.”

René cursed. “Take your stockings off. I’ll bind and gag you. I should have been thinking of it all this time, instead of talking.”

“I’m glad we talked, and there’s no time.” As she said it, they both heard yelling from the kitchen.

“Take off your stockings,” René repeated.

Serena grabbed the lever that controlled the trapdoor from that end and pulled on it. Slowly, with a grinding of gears, the door swung open. Dim light and the scent of lye filled the tunnel.

Then she saw, as if in answer, a widening ray of light at the other end of the tunnel. The yelling was suddenly much louder.

“Don’t go down there,” Antoine shouted frantically. “Please! He’ll kill her!”

Sophy appeared in the doorway of Solomon’s room. “Is Serena all right—ohhh!” A hand flew up to cover her mouth when she saw the blood caked on Solomon’s forehead. “What happened?”

“I’m fine, Sophy,” he said reassuringly. “Here, why don’t you come help me get cleaned up so my brother can go chasing after Sacreval?” He smiled at Elijah, ignoring the fury in his brother’s eyes.

Elijah could hardly accuse him of treason in front of Sophy. His look promised a reckoning, however. “Yes, that would be very helpful, Sophy.”

Sophy shut the door behind Elijah and hastened to Solomon’s side. “Did Sacreval do that?” she asked bitterly, pointing to his wound.

“No,” he whispered, gesturing her to come closer. “Listen, Sophy—Sacreval gave Serena papers that will give her the Arms back. She’s taking him out the laundry tunnel right now. You’ve got to keep them from finding him.”

Her eyes widened. She pushed her glasses up her nose decisively and was halfway to the door when a thought struck him.

“Sophy!”

She came back.

“My brother suspects what’s going on. He may realize what I’ve told you and be waiting outside to follow you. If he is, you must lead him on a wild goose chase.”

She nodded grimly. “Just leave it to me.” She went and opened the door partway, poking her head out into the corridor and glancing about. Then she slipped out the door and shut it softly behind her.

After that, there wasn’t really anything useful to do but wait. Solomon took up the rag and began washing the blood out of his hair. The ticking of the clock filled the room. They were still cheering downstairs. It must be for Wellington’s victory; it must.

He should have let Sacreval blow his own brains out. He should never have let Serena out of his sight.

Solomon had never felt so helpless in his life. But there was nothing more he could do without risking making things much, much worse. He picked the broken pieces of his bottle of Madeira off the floor, piling them into a bowl.

Someone kicked the door open. Solomon sprang to his feet. The Foreign Office agents were entering the room, and one of them bore a lifeless Serena in his arms.