A Lily Among Thorns

Chapter 25


Solomon leaned on his worktable for support as the world spun around him. He watched them lay Serena on the bed. There didn’t seem to be any blood. Could he see her breathing, or was that just his light-headedness? No, she was definitely breathing, and Solomon could move his eyes again.

He seized one of the agents by his shirt and had him up against the wall before he knew what he was about. “What have you done to her? If you’ve hurt her, you bastard—”

Serena’s voice came weakly from the bed. “Solomon?”

He turned. She was watching him, an amused light in her eyes. He didn’t move. “I’m right here,” he said. “What did they do to you?”

Her lips curved. “I imagine they carried me upstairs after René knocked me out.”

“Oh.” He let out a breath and let go of the agent’s shirtfront. “Er, sorry. And did they catch him?”

Elijah raced into the room in time to hear this last question. He stood stock-still in the doorway and stared at his fellow agents. Serena swung herself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed.

“No,” said the man Solomon had assaulted, brushing himself off with a dirty look in his direction. “Forced her ladyship to take him out a secret tunnel, and then he knocked her cold and took off just ahead of us, like. Went over the wall.” The two agents were the only people in the room who were not secretly relieved, Solomon thought.

Elijah closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. “It doesn’t matter. We can still send men after him to recover him before he ships for France.”

“I must say I am not overly impressed with Foreign Office initiative,” Serena commented dryly. A livid bruise was forming on her jaw and her lower lip was swelling. “You set up an elaborate operation to capture a man who lives in an inn with which he is intimately familiar, and you don’t trouble to discover that there’s a tunnel to the laundry? One of my employees might have been injured.”

“Fortunate that no one was injured but the two of you, then,” Elijah said blandly.

Serena smiled at him. “Very.”

“Well,” Solomon said, ignoring Elijah’s gimlet eye, “all that terror has left me with a bit of an appetite. Do you think we might go down for a late supper?”

“Yes,” Serena said. “If you have no further use for us, I should like to get dressed and verify that your men have not unduly terrified my guests.”

“Don’t think much could dampen the mood tonight,” one of the agents said, grinning.

Solomon waited with bated breath. Had he and Serena won their gamble?

For the first time, Elijah smiled. “Bonaparte’s been decisively defeated. Rothschild was right.”

The cheering turned into a buzz of speculation when they walked into the taproom and everyone saw Serena’s bruised jaw. She climbed onto a bench.

“Silence, everyone,” she said in a carrying voice. “I am pleased to announce that my erstwhile business partner, the marquis du Sacreval, is no longer on the premises. No one but Mr. Hathaway and myself have been injured in his daring escape. It is to be hoped that the proper authorities can be relied upon to halt him in his headlong flight to the Continent. In celebration of the decisive victory of His Majesty’s forces, champagne is on the house!”

Solomon and Serena were slumped on their stools, devouring a loaf of bread, when Lord Smollett walked in. “My, my,” he roared. “It’s a regular gin shop in here.”

Serena tried to draw herself up coolly and smile. Solomon could see her face trying to fall into its accustomed sardonic lines for several moments before she gave up and laughed exhaustedly.

Smollett looked rather puzzled, but he quickly recovered himself and gave Solomon a conspiratorial wink. “Women, you know. Apt to be hysterical.”

“Oh, go to hell,” Solomon said.

Serena stood up. “Lord Smollett. Lovely to see you.” She shook her head. “Christ. I can’t believe I wasted so many years giving a damn what you thought of me. Do you want to know something? I don’t regret having been your mistress. Know why?”

Lord Smollett patted his hair. “Don’t think any of my lights-o’-love have had much to complain of.”

“It was a small price to pay to be utterly ineligible ever to be your wife,” she told him. “Now that would have been a fate worse than death.”

Solomon thought he would treasure the look of stunned outrage on Smollett’s face for the rest of his life. His lordship harrumphed, turned round, and marched straight to the bar. “A large ale, please, and make it snappy.”

Serena sat down. “‘Forsake the foolish and live,’ right? What I don’t understand is why I could never do it before.”

“I think it’s one of those things that works better with two people.”

Solomon was trying to examine his cut in the mirror when a voice came from behind him. “Mr. Hathaway?”

Damn. He must have left the door open. He turned around to see a small, middle-aged man with a nasty expression on his aquiline features.

“Yes?”

The man sneered. “Should have known I’d find you in front of a mirror. Man-milliner.”

“I beg your pardon!”

“Oh, don’t play the shocked parson’s son with me, Hathaway. We don’t pay you to have delicate sensibilities.”

The penny dropped. Keeping a firm rein on his temper, Solomon began, “Perhaps you are seeking my—”

“I am seeking to know how you came to let Sacreval escape. You sodomites do stick together, don’t you?”

Solomon, stunned into speechlessness, saw his brother standing in the doorway.

“Don’t speak to my brother like that, Varney,” Elijah said coldly.

“Don’t you think that’s my line, Li?” Solomon asked. His heart was racing with fury, but he managed to smile politely at his brother’s Foreign Office superior. “Don’t speak to my brother like that, Varney.”

Varney looked from one to the other of them in fascination. “Oh yes, the twin brother. Does he take after you in that respect, too?”

“None of your damn business!” Solomon said hotly.

“Sol, stop,” Elijah said harshly.

Solomon turned to him in surprise and almost missed Varney’s gleaming, sharp-toothed smile.

“Public morality must be the concern of every citizen,” Varney said. “I imagine that is why the pillory is such a popular spectacle.”

Solomon had a sudden pleasing vision of his hands round Varney’s neck while the man choked and turned purple.

“I am so glad to hear you say so,” Serena said from the doorway, breaking through Solomon’s anger. “Perhaps, as a concerned citizen, you can offer me some advice on a rather delicate matter.”

Varney’s sharklike grin widened. “At your service, Siren.”

Solomon thought murderous thoughts, but he waited, because Serena could hold her own against this toad.

She smiled back and came to stand beside Solomon. “I’ve been thinking of publishing my memoirs.”

Varney’s grin disappeared.

“But you know,” she continued blithely, “there are a few passages I hesitate to include, for fear they will corrupt the impressionable reader. You have sons. Tell me, do you think they would be overly influenced by the frank description of the perversions of certain men of rank?”

Varney flushed and turned away with an impotent snarl. “Tell me about Sacreval, Hathaway.”

“Certainly, my lord,” Elijah said politely. “He escaped through a secret tunnel that runs from the kitchen to the laundry. The intelligence I was given had not included mention of this tunnel, so I was unable to have it properly guarded. None of the livery stables in the area would admit to having provided Sacreval with a horse. I have posted scouts on all the major roads leading out of the city and sent men ahead to watch the Cornish coast. He did not get more than a quarter-hour’s start of us. I still have hope of bringing him in before he sets sail.”

Varney swore. “You know there’s no hope of catching him. We can’t blockade all of Cornwall. I take it you’ve had no luck discovering where his couriers land?”

Solomon tried not to look at Serena and not to catch Elijah’s eye.

“None, I’m afraid,” Elijah confirmed.

Varney gnawed on the inside of his cheek. “This was bungled badly.”

Elijah drew himself up. “I assure you that all of us did our best, my lord. The fault was with our information. I had planned to speak to you as soon as possible about the matter. The slip could well have cost Lady Serena, who was Sacreval’s unfortunate hostage, her life. We are all of us very lucky that she escaped with merely a bruise.”

“Very lucky,” Varney said with savage irony.

Serena’s lips twitched.

“Well, keep me informed. I suppose with Boney finally whipped, the Frog can’t do much harm at any rate.” With another seething glance round the room, Varney saw himself out.

Solomon sighed in relief.

“I’m very sorry you had to be subjected to that,” Elijah said stiffly.

Solomon stared at him. “You’re apologizing to me?”

Elijah’s lips tightened. “I know how unpleasant you must find such insinuations.”

Solomon colored a little. “I only wish that our being twins could also convince people I was dashing and enigmatic.”

Elijah looked away, and Solomon wondered what he had said wrong now. “I say, Lady Serena—if I ask you, will you tell me your dirt on Varney?”

Serena glanced sideways at Solomon. “I think your brother might be too squeamish to know.”

He sighed. “I know you’re fine and I’m being foolish, but when I think about you all alone finding out things about Varney that are too lurid to be published—”

“But I wasn’t alone,” Serena said innocently.

Solomon gave up. “Well, I do love watching you put the fear of God into someone.”

“I never put the fear of God into anyone. I put the fear of me into them.”

“Mmm,” he agreed, lowering his voice. “And you do such a good job.”

Elijah looked away. Solomon felt guilty, suddenly, flirting with Serena when Elijah’s lover could already be captured or dead, for all they knew. “Sacreval will be all right,” he said.

Elijah gave him a glance that could have sliced him in half. “None of us has the right to hope for that.”

“That isn’t stopping me.”

“So I see. Interestingly neat pistol graze you’ve got there. Looks almost like it was made by a knife.”

He couldn’t lie to Elijah. “He was about to splatter his brains all over the wall”—Elijah sucked in his breath—“and he asked me to tell you not to feel guilty when he was dead. What was I supposed to do?”

Elijah’s face contorted unpleasantly. “He was manipulating you, you idiot.”

“He wasn’t manipulating me. He said—”

“I don’t want to hear what he said. I thought you didn’t approve of our—connection.”

Solomon flushed. “It’s not that I don’t approve, exactly—only I hate to see you exposing yourself to the insults of men like Varney.” Serena drew in a sharp breath, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Elijah. “When he said that about the pillory, Li—and that’s not the worst of it. You could be—”

“Hanged,” Elijah finished coldly.

Solomon shuddered.

“So I should arrange my life to please Varney now?” Elijah demanded. “I prefer to leave that sort of toadying to you. You’ve always been the dull, conventional one.”

The blood drained from Solomon’s face. “Elijah—”

“You just don’t approve.”

“How can you say that when I saved your lover’s life?”

Elijah’s eyes narrowed. “You want me to thank you for making me responsible for the escape of one of Napoleon’s best agents?”

“The war is over, Elijah.”

“You didn’t know that. Sol, you let me think he shot you!”

“It was the only way I could think of to distract you.”

“So much for all your wondering whether I really care about you. You damned hypocrite. I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone as much as I hated René in that moment.”

Solomon stared at him.

“You abused my trust to make me betray my office,” Elijah said coldly. “And before you chime in with ‘you let me think you were dead for a year and a half’—I know. But I did it for my country—I did it so that you, so that our family would be safe from Napoleon. And you did this—why? To save Bonaparte’s lackey because you thought I loved him?”

“Don’t you?”

“You’ve made a mockery of both our sacrifices,” Elijah told him. “What was it Varney said? That ‘we sodomites stick together’? Do you expect me to thank you for proving him right?” He turned on his heel and stalked out.

Solomon ran out after him, but Elijah’s door was already locked and he didn’t answer when Solomon pounded on it.

Serena folded her arms and rested her cheek on the cool page of her account book, giving herself up to anxious thoughts. It was past two in the morning. She couldn’t sleep, and she couldn’t concentrate long enough to add a single set of figures.

She would have killed René for the Arms, but she had offered to trade it for Solomon. The crisis was over now: Solomon was safe, the Arms was hers, René would not be executed. But she could not feel relieved.

She would have traded anything to save Solomon—air and sunlight and freedom. She would have traded her life. Next time he told her he wouldn’t touch her unless she begged, she would do it. And every time she thought that might be all right, something happened to remind her of who she was and who he was. There would always be something. What had he said? I hate to see you exposing yourself to the insults of men like Varney. She had exposed herself to so many insults.

Serena thought back to six years ago in her father’s study, begging him on her knees not to fire Harry. She had been so afraid and so guilty. Harry’s four-year-old sister might not have enough to eat without his wages. Her father had looked at her with contempt and reminded her what she owed her position. He had reminded her that she would have to marry soon and that no one wanted soiled goods, not even bought titles like the Braithwaites, so she had better stop whining and forget this ever happened.

Eventually she had got off her knees. Their voices had risen, Serena’s getting more and more hysterical until she was nearly shrieking through her sobs. Her father had backed her against the wall, his pointing finger only an inch or two from her face. She had started to be really afraid when a maid had knocked on the door. Serena had been glad for the interruption, even though the maid had borne a message from Lady Blackthorne that all the shouting was making her ill.

Perhaps it had been foolish to leave. If she had known it would cost Harry his life, she certainly wouldn’t have done it. But even after she had realized that there would be no virtuously poor married life with Harry, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to go back.

She had never been sorry she’d chosen to become a whore instead. Because no matter how bad it got, she had known it could have been worse. She could have been at home. She could have been married to one of the men who bedded her.

She had never been sorry until now, when she wanted a parson’s son more than anything in the world.

Perhaps at the moment he was truly willing to overlook her past for the sake of his lust—and, she would admit, genuine affection. Perhaps he thought—and there was nothing so naive Solomon mightn’t think it—that people would forget, in time. But Serena knew better.

He would tire of her. Hell, she was tired of herself half the time. He would wake up and find he wanted a sunny-tempered girl who had never threatened to have anyone killed. He would tire of hearing her name bandied about; he would wish her respectable; he would stop trying to talk her into wearing scarlet.

Serena had not worn a low-necked gown since she bought the Arms. But now, with trembling hands, she ripped the linen chemisette out of her dress before it smothered her. She stared down at the tops of her breasts, at the second birthmark no one had seen in years—no one but Solomon. He’d seen everything, it seemed, and yet he stubbornly refused to see how impossible it all was.

She heard his footsteps in the hall before he knocked. It had a kind of inevitability to it. “Come in, Solomon.”

The door opened slowly. She remembered the first time he had come through that door, only two weeks ago, and how her heart had jumped in her chest at the sight of him. Now it pounded, rhythmically, like a headache.

“Serena, are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said wearily. “What do you want?” He’ll tire of you if you keep treating him like this, he’ll tire of you, he’ll tire of you, he’ll tire of you—

“What’s wrong?” He very carefully did not look at her torn neckline.

She clutched the arms of her chair so she wouldn’t go to him. She wanted to press her ear against his naked chest and hear that his heart was still beating. “Nothing. I was just tired of all the carousing. I was just—tired.”

His eyes searched her face, but after all, it was a plausible enough lie. He didn’t push her. Instead, he came over and smoothed back her hair. She leaned into his touch like a dog. “It was a crazy night, wasn’t it?” he said. “But thank God the war’s over.”

He sounded so happy about that. Serena supposed she was glad. She wished she were gladder, though. War was a brutish thing, but it had always seemed so far away, something that concerned other people. Perhaps if she hadn’t been so selfish, so wrapped up in herself and her own safety, she would have turned in René years ago and Solomon wouldn’t have almost been shot tonight.

“We’re leaving Wednesday morning to take the earrings back to Shropshire,” he said. “Will you come and meet my family?”

Serena’s jaw dropped. “You do realize that’s the worst idea you’ve ever had, don’t you?”

He pursed his lips and crossed his arms, the picture of stubbornness. “I’ve had much worse.”

“Solomon, you can’t bring your mistress into your mother’s house. You can’t let her sit down to dinner with your sister.”

“You’re not my mistress.”

“So soon they forget.”

Solomon took a step closer and tilted her chin up so that she could not keep her eyes averted without seeming afraid. He knew her too damn well. His fingers were warm on her chin. She met his gaze defiantly. “You’re not my mistress,” he said with finality. “And my mother will like you. So will Susannah.”

He didn’t say anything about his father, she noticed. She wanted to beg him to change his mind, to spare her this final humiliation. But she couldn’t. At this point she doubted she could refuse him anything.

So she would do this last thing for him. She would go to meet his family, and when he saw how they despised her, when he saw how he had tainted his pure, sweet sister and his respectable mother, when he realized at last how impossible it was for her to ever be anything but his mistress—then she would not refuse him his freedom.