A Lily Among Thorns

Chapter 27


The folly of hoping for a smooth meal was evident before supper even began. The young people were waiting in the parlor while Mrs. Hathaway put the finishing touches on the roast and Mr. Hathaway set the table. Jonas, Susannah’s betrothed, was struggling through his first conversation with Elijah, who didn’t sound particularly keen on talking about the religious habits of the French but was trying.

Susannah flopped down next to Serena on the settee. “Is it true you were Lord Byron’s mistress?”

Serena stared at Susannah in dismay. How could she talk to Solomon’s innocent little sister about her past? But the girl’s brown eyes were shining with admiration and pleasantly scandalized curiosity. It reminded her a little of Solomon, asking about the Prince Regent’s corset.

“Susannah, Lady Serena doesn’t have to answer any of your questions unless she wants to,” Solomon said firmly. But he had paused just long enough that, although no trace of it showed in his voice, Serena knew he was curious. She glanced at Elijah. He was leaning forward in his chair with a dare in his smile. Well, what was the harm? Serena nodded.

Susannah sighed dreamily. “Did he ever write you any poems?”

Serena couldn’t help it. She smiled. “Yes.”

Susannah gasped. “Do you still have them?”

Serena did, but they were utterly unfit for the girl’s perusal. “I’m afraid not.” Her smile widened at Susannah’s melancholy sigh—and she caught Jonas’s shocked, angry gaze. She froze. That was the harm. How had she been so stupid?

“And is it true that you beat him in a shooting match wearing nothing but—”

“Susannah, that is enough!” Jonas burst out, rather red in the face. “You shouldn’t know of such things!”

“Lady Serena knows of such things,” Susannah pointed out.

“Lady Serena is—” Jonas began hotly, but he broke off as both Solomon and Elijah half-rose from their chairs. “Whatever Lady Serena’s conduct may or may not have been, I do not wish my future wife to know of such matters, and if she knows of them, she can jolly well refrain from discussing them in company.”

Susannah’s mouth set in a hard line. “I apologize for Jonas, Lady Serena. And certainly I did not mean to pry.”

“It’s quite all right,” Serena said hastily. “I suppose it is not a fit story for your ears.”

Susannah looked daggers at her beloved. “Jonas is not my father.”

“I think you know what your father would say about your behavior,” Jonas snapped, and Susannah turned bright red.

Serena tried to remember why she had agreed to come here.

“Jonas, I am very warm,” Susannah said in freezing accents. “Will you take a turn with me in the garden?”

“Certainly, my dear,” Jonas said, equally coldly. He offered her his arm with a stiff bow.

Soon everyone in the room could hear the shouts (Jonas’s) and low angry murmurs (Susannah’s) coming from outside. Elijah got up and shut the window, but Serena still heard, at intervals, “most notorious courtesan in England,” “your hoydenish behavior,” “bringing his mistress home,” “Lord Byron is a profligate rake and a scoundrel,” “dashed insipid verse,” and “can damn well marry him then!”

“He’s a little prig, isn’t he?” said Elijah. Solomon nodded resignedly.

It had already begun, just as she had known it would, as she had warned Solomon that it would. Her presence, like the apple of discord, was blighting Susannah’s future and tainting Solomon’s happy home. Why had he insisted she come?

Abruptly, Solomon stood and went to the small harpsichord by the hearth. He began banging out some old folk tune, unnecessarily loudly, and singing the words in a light baritone.

The shouts from the garden became indistinct and almost inaudible. Serena glanced at Elijah, who had picked up a book and was studiously reading. She went to the piano to turn Solomon’s pages.

His stained fingers—fading violet and green, today—rattled expertly over the keys. He looked up at her again as she turned his page, his eyes bright, and she couldn’t help but smile and lean toward him. This was why she had come.

“Come on, sing,” he urged her.

“I don’t know the words,” she lied. But he raised his eyebrows at her and she was almost considering coming in on the chorus when Susannah and Jonas reappeared, both flushed and with glittering eyes. Serena looked from one to the other, trying to determine if all was over.

“Lady Serena,” Susannah said awkwardly, “I owe you an apology.”

Serena stared.

“I never considered that my questions might make you uncomfortable,” the girl forged on. “I let my curiosity get the better of me. I ought to have thought before I spoke.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Serena said uncomfortably. “I didn’t really mind.”

Susannah shot a rather triumphant look at Jonas, but said only, “I hope you won’t think too ill of me. We all want you to be happy here, so that you’ll come back.”

Serena, speechless, glanced at Solomon. He was smiling at his sister, and Susannah, seeing it, smiled back.

“I hope we may become very good friends, almost like—like sisters,” the girl said daringly, and Serena felt herself flush. She didn’t dare look at Jonas. Susannah, though, turned expectant eyes on her betrothed.

“May I have a word with you, Lady Serena?” Jonas asked stiffly. “I would be delighted to show you the garden.”

“C—certainly,” Serena said, surprised.

Solomon frowned. “Susannah, I don’t know what you’re planning—” he began warningly.

Serena did not think she could bear another quarrel. “I’m going.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Mr. Hathaway, please.”

He looked at her and sighed. “All right, but if he says anything offensive, don’t hesitate to darken his daylights.”

It was lovely in the vicarage garden, moonlit and sweetsmelling and warm. Nevertheless, Serena wished she had a shawl. It would give her something to do with her hands. When had she last been at such a loss?

“I owe you an apology as well, Lady Serena.”

She blinked.

“I have failed in my love toward my neighbor—have been, in a word, uncharitable. Whatever your past may be, that does not excuse my behavior.”

She had at least four acerbic remarks on the tip of her tongue, but she found she had no desire to say any of them. He was so young and stilted and determined. And he was Solomon’s sister’s betrothed. And he was apologizing to her. “It’s quite all right,” she said awkwardly. “You mustn’t blame Susannah—anyone can see how innocent she is—”

Jonas laughed incredulously. “Innocent? You clearly haven’t known her long. That girl is the most hoydenish, knowing, impossible—”

Serena’s heart sank. “I told Solomon he ought not to bring me here. I told him he couldn’t bring a woman with my reputation into a house with his sister. He wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Hathaways never do when they’ve got a notion in their heads,” Jonas said ruefully. He paused. “I—I hope you couldn’t hear our argument.”

She coughed. “Very little of it.”

“I owe you a double apology then. The Hathaways might be unconventional, but even Solomon wouldn’t really bring his mistress home to meet his family. I should be aiding you in putting your past behind you, not judging you on the strength of it.”

Serena gulped. What would he do if he knew it was true? “Don’t be angry with Susannah. If you’d rather I left, I—”

He looked at her incredulously. “If I’d rather? I assure you, Susannah would never forgive me.”

“Of course she would. I meant to say—she’s your betrothed—there might be gossip—”

Jonas drew himself up. “A true Christian does not act in deference to vulgar tongues.”

“Then there are very few true Christians in England.”

“Alas, that is true,” Jonas said, with almost a smile. “But fortunately, you are among them now.”

“The last thing I ever wanted was to cause trouble between you and Susannah.”

Jonas snorted. “We don’t need you to do that. Tonight was nothing. At any rate, I have no desire for a wife who would allow me to persist in folly without making me aware of it. Woman is man’s helpmeet, not his slave,” he concluded a trifle pompously.

Tonight was—nothing? She hadn’t ruined Susannah’s marriage? “A very enlightened view.”

His face softened. “Honestly, I couldn’t live without her, even if she can be absolutely daft. So I owe you not only an apology, but my eternal gratitude for finding those cursed earrings, because without them I would have been a bachelor until Kingdom come.”

“It was nothing,” Serena said, embarrassed.

“I wish she would agree to become a Methodist, though.”

Serena blinked.

“You wouldn’t be interested in Methodism, would you?” he asked eagerly. “We have among our number sisters from your former profession. You could serve our Lord like Mary Magdalene.”

“Er, no, thank you. I don’t think I have much in common with Mary Magdalene, my former profession notwithstanding.”

He sighed. “I suppose not. Thank you. You’ve been very gracious about my atrocious behavior. Surely everything they say about you cannot be true.”

“Well,” Serena conceded for very likely the first time in her life, “perhaps not.”

Mrs. Hathaway poked her head into the parlor almost the moment they were back inside. “Supper! I hope you like roast beef. I’m afraid I couldn’t get a fatted calf on such short notice.”

Dessert was almond-pear tartlets. “These are lovely, Mrs. Hathaway,” Serena told her. “And I’m not the only one who thinks so. The Prince Regent ate six when Solomon made them.”

Mrs. Hathaway waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, the Prince Regent.”

“He said he’d been trying to buy the recipe from Mrs. Jones for years,” Serena said. Happening to glance at Solomon, she surprised an expression of sudden enlightenment on his face. What had she said?

“Well, I hope you didn’t sell it to him,” Mrs. Hathaway said with a sniff.

“I did not.” When she looked back, the expression was gone from Solomon’s face, and she was left wondering if she had imagined it.

“You know who else liked your tartlets, Mama?” Solomon asked.

“Who, dear?”

“Sir Percy Blakeney.”

The effect was electric. Susannah groaned, Elijah laughed, Mr. Hathaway threw his napkin on the table in disgust, and Mrs. Hathaway sat straighter in her seat and said, “Really? You aren’t bamming me, are you, Sol?”

“Would I lie about something like that?”

“The Scarlet Pimpernel,” Susannah explained to Jonas. “You know, he saved all those French aristocrats. Mama used to have the most enormous tendre for him.”

“Oh, I did not. I was a married woman with more important things to think about, like keeping track of a naughty set of twins.”

“I seem to remember you following his exploits pretty closely in the papers,” Elijah said teasingly.

“I never saw what all the fuss was about,” Mr. Hathaway grumbled. “A show of aristocratic solidarity, that’s all. Afraid for their own necks if the peasants in England showed a bit of sense.”

“But you must admit it was dreadfully romantic! Remember when he dressed as an old hag to smuggle out the ci-devant comtesse de Tourney and her children?”

“Yes,” the entire family chorused.

“That’s one of his favorites, too,” Serena said. “He tells it at least once every time I see him. And he doesn’t tip.”

“So my brother-in-law tells me,” Mrs. Hathaway said sadly, and Mr. Hathaway looked at Serena with something almost like approval.

Solomon and Elijah had barely spoken to each other since the night of Sacreval’s escape. Solomon couldn’t bear to go back to their room and face Elijah’s stony silence, and if he lingered in one of the downstairs rooms, his mother was bound to hear him and want to know why. The only logical alternative was knocking on Serena’s door.

It was good to have a logical reason to do what he wanted to do anyway, even if the reason was that his brother wasn’t speaking to him. He knocked softly.

She opened the door in her shift and wrap. It occurred to him that he’d seen her in those maybe more than he’d seen her clothed. The bruise on her jaw had mostly faded already, the skin just faintly yellowed. He reached out to run his finger along it, and she flinched back. “Solomon!” she hissed. “We’re in your parents’ house, for God’s sake!”

“Nothing will happen,” he said softly, although he wanted it to. He wondered if she would let him. He thought they could be quiet.

She saw it in his face, he could tell; her lips parted and her eyes darkened, and then she said, “Go away!” and started to shut the door.

“I’ll sit on the floor,” he said quickly. “Please.”

“No,” she said, and held the door open for him. He sat on the floor under the window, and she sat on the edge of the bed. The candlelight made her look rich and rounded, darkness between her breasts and caressing her legs where the fringe of her wrap shivered and shook when she moved.

She cleared her throat. “So, the prodigal son returns,” she said, in a husky voice that told him she was looking at him, too.

He half-laughed and tried to keep his eyes on her face. “You noticed Mother made a fatted calf joke before we’d been here half a day.” Of course, if Elijah was the prodigal son, then he was the dutiful, bitter one. There was a truth to that that disturbed him. “Do you mean that I envy him?”

She shook her head. Probably she hadn’t, but he found he wanted to talk to her about it anyway. Even here, in the bosom of his family, it was her he turned to. “I’m ashamed of it,” he said. “Nothing’s ever made me happier than knowing he’s back. But mixed with the joy—I’m right back to envying him for dressing better than me, for heaven’s sake. I want to have outgrown that.”

“Do you want to know a secret? I think the way he does his hair looks rather silly.”

He gave her a quick, pleased smile, then looked away. “Mother will be so upset when she finds he’s going back to France.”

“René can never come back to England now, can he?” She sounded sad.

Solomon couldn’t help feeling that Sacreval didn’t deserve all this devotion. “No, and Elijah won’t come back either. He’ll run off to France, and I’ll never see him again.” He was going to be alone all over again. And this time, he would know that it was because Elijah chose it.

Serena made a restless, abrupt gesture. “You can’t blame him for being angry with you.” She sounded angry, too. She thought he was whining, probably. And he was.

“I know he’s right,” he said steadily. “I am the dull, conventional one. But I’m trying to—I’m doing my best. I don’t know what more I can do.”

Serena wrapped the end of one of her braids around her finger, her mouth twisting. “Solomon, you aren’t the dull, conventional one.”

“Aren’t I?”

“No. I agree it might look that way—”

He snorted.

“—to people who aren’t very bright,” she finished. “You’ve got to stop thinking he’s just the calf-bound, gilt-edged edition of you. It isn’t fair to either of you. You’re two different people.”

“Then why—Serena, he said it. And that’s why you don’t believe I love you, isn’t it? Because you think I’m just a narrow-minded parson’s son who can’t possibly really want you. No matter how many times I tell you I don’t care—”

“It’s easy for you not to care!” she snapped. “It’s easy for you not to consider it—for the moment, anyway, because no one’s making you. Solomon, this isn’t about you!”

He blinked. “What’s it about, then?”

She closed her eyes for a moment. “Solomon, do you remember what I said to you after we kissed in the hallway, that first time?”

His lips tightened. “You said it was boring.”

“But was it boring?”

He swallowed, remembering the way she’d trembled, the way the wool of her gown and the curve of her hips had felt under his hands. How shy and sweet her lips had been under his. “No.”

“I was afraid,” she said, a weight and a quiver in her voice that told him she meant, I am afraid. “I was afraid and I said what I knew would hurt you. Elijah—when he said that to you, he wasn’t angry with you. He was just angry, because he was sick of being afraid. Because now you knew his deepest, dirtiest secret, and you could do whatever you liked with it. And why shouldn’t he be afraid? You didn’t react well when you found out about René. And then—do you think he liked you to see the way Varney treated him? He didn’t want to make even scum like that angry enough at him to want revenge. Do you think that’s the figure he wanted to cut in front of his brother?”

“I don’t think any the worse of him for it,” Solomon protested, but he was starting to feel sick.

“Don’t you?” she demanded intently. “You blamed him for it. ‘I hate to see you exposing yourself to the insults of men like Varney,’” she mimicked. “As if he did it on purpose!”

Was that how it had sounded to Elijah? It wasn’t what he’d meant—was it? He just wanted his brother to be safe. “Sacreval told me that in Paris, the police beat Elijah so badly he could not walk. How am I supposed to approve of something that—that—”

“My father could have me locked up on a word,” Serena said flatly. “Lord Braithwaite threatened and insulted me at a ton party. René could pretend to be my husband and take everything I owned, and no one would stop him. Because I’m a woman and because of the life I’ve lived, I sleep with a bar across my door and a loaded pistol in my night table. And I’m not asking for your approval for any of it.”

In a sudden, blinding flash everything was clear. It was as she said: Elijah and Serena weren’t angry with him. They were just sick of being afraid. But they couldn’t stop, because it was dangerous simply to be themselves, simply for them to live honest lives. And what he had said to Elijah was, If you stopped being yourself, you would be safe. No one had ever said that to Solomon, because it was already safe to be him. No wonder Elijah was angry.

And no wonder Serena was angry. He remembered what she’d said outside St. Andrew of the Cross: You think that if you just keep digging at me and trying to crack me open I’ll giggle and say, ‘Oh, la, Mr. Hathaway, what a tease you are!’ It wasn’t really true; he had never wanted her to be sweeter or kinder. But he had wanted to crack her open. He still did. He wanted her to show herself to him, all the thoughts and feelings she’d been hiding for years.

He’d thought he could make her happy, that everything would be all right if she would just understand that he didn’t care about her past—but she was right, it was easy for him not to care. It was Serena who cared, who cared deeply because she’d been deeply hurt. She was still being hurt every day, every time some blackguard like Smollett made a crass joke and every time a party of young bloods bullied a waitress.

This wasn’t about him. It was about Serena, and about his brother. They were sick of being afraid—and hell, so was he. He was sick of being afraid that he wasn’t good enough, when it had never been about that to begin with. He was sick of dragging things out because he was afraid to put them to the test.

“You’re right,” he said.

She blinked, her face going from “ready for battle” to “speechless” in about five seconds. He couldn’t help laughing, even as his heart ached. How was he going to live, knowing that Serena was across town making a face and he couldn’t see it? “You’re right,” he said again. “I haven’t been fair. I was afraid, too. Afraid of being alone, I suppose. Afraid of being without you. But—you know, I—” His voice cracked. Damn.

“Solomon—” she said, and he loved the way she said his name so much that he had to keep talking or he might do something selfish like tell her that.

“I never believed, before I met you, that I could go my own way,” he said. “That I could deserve more than someone was willing to give me. That love might not be worth the sacrifices we have to make for it. You’ve taught me that. What I mean is—I do understand, if you decide you don’t want—” He waved a hand between them, as if in a moment the word that would describe all that lay between them would pop into his head. As if such a word existed. He shook his head. “This.”

She stared at him, the shadows making her eyes look huge. “You’re giving up?”

He stood up. “That’s exactly the problem. This has turned into some kind of tug-of-war. I’m not giving up. I’m just saying that I won’t push you anymore. I won’t ask for anything. I’ve been torturing you, and it’s not fair. If nothing’s changed when we go back to London on Sunday, I’ll leave. Just please—make a decision that will make you happy. Take good care of yourself.”

She looked as lost as he felt. He went to the bed and stood looking down at her: at her perfect face and her perfect body that suddenly, for the first time, looked ordinary.

She wasn’t a goddess, or an angel, or a harpy. She was a woman, a frightened, unhappy, determined, beautiful woman, and he loved her so badly that just leaning down and brushing his lips across her left temple, where her birthmark was, brought tears to his eyes. “Thank you for everything,” he said, and left.