A Lily Among Thorns

Chapter 28


Solomon made his way back to the room he shared with Elijah—the room he had shared with his brother since they were born. The candle was out, and Elijah was lying on his side facing the wall, but Solomon could tell that he wasn’t sleeping. Last night at the posting inn, it had been the same; but then he had let Elijah pretend and gone directly to his own bed. Not tonight. He lit the candle. “Li?”

After a moment, Elijah turned over and sat up. Except for his boots, he was still fully dressed, wearing his old bottle-green coat. For a jolting moment Solomon thought maybe it was all a dream, that Elijah was dead and not sitting here a few feet away. It couldn’t be a dream, he told himself. I would never dream that new darned place in the corner of Elijah’s pocket.

Then he remembered Serena saying that very first night, You didn’t just dream it, and holding up the corner of her quilt, and the strange sense of vertigo receded. It was all real, and he had been ready to let it slip away without trying.

“Li,” he began, “I’ve been a fool. I ought never to have said what I did—any of it.”

Elijah’s eyes shot up to meet his. “What?”

“Don’t look so surprised. I know I’ve failed you—and if you don’t want to speak to me again, at least this time I’ll know you’re all right—”

To his surprise, Elijah exploded. “Damn it, Sol, what the hell is wrong with you? Of course I want to speak to you again!”

Solomon sat down on the edge of his bed with a thump. “Thank God.”

“How could you ever think I wouldn’t?”

Solomon rubbed at his temple. “Well—you did without me before, didn’t you? I didn’t know it, but in a way you’ve been doing without me all our lives. I thought I knew you like the back of my hand, and now—I don’t know what to think. I remember being jealous of you when we were boys because you’d wink at pretty girls in the street when I was afraid to, and I feel as if I must have been blind—”

Elijah said a French word Solomon was sure couldn’t be translated in front of their mother. “Afraid—you were afraid? It was easy to wink at girls in the street because I didn’t want them! When it came to what I did want, I was so terrified I could barely see straight. After I kissed Alan the first time, I was sick in the bushes on my way home. I was sure he’d never speak to me again, and he’d tell everyone, and you’d never speak to me again either because there was something wrong with me, something twisted and diseased.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Solomon said fiercely.

“Thank you,” Elijah said with a rueful smile.

“God, how did I miss this? All those years—was I not paying attention? Didn’t I care? How could I have failed you this badly?”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Elijah broke in. “We failed each other—you didn’t know anything was wrong, but I did, and I didn’t fix it. God, I was always so jealous of you, too.”

Solomon stared. “Jealous of me?”

“Yes, you! You always knew where you belonged. You wanted to work for Uncle Hathaway and you wanted to be a chemist and you were good at it. You always knew exactly what you wanted and you always seemed to know what was right. Father approved of you. You didn’t while away your hours tinkering in the blacksmith’s shop and reading immoral French poetry. And he had no notion of the sick, shameful things I was really doing there. When I found out you were all going to think I was dead, I thought, ‘At least it’s me and not Solomon. None of them would know what to do without him.’” Elijah stopped for a moment. “You had no idea how lucky you were.”

So Serena had been right; Elijah didn’t think he was the dull, conventional one at all. His brother thought he was the lucky one, the one who had always known what to do. They had both been such blundering idiots. “I wish you had told me,” he said at last. “You didn’t have to do this alone.”

“I know that now. But I was afraid. I’m not the dashing, enigmatic one,” Elijah said desperately. “I’m just me, Sol, and you’re ready to let me go because you think I’ll be all right, but I need you.”

“You did all right without me in France,” he said, still struggling to accept this new vision of the world.

“You did all right, too.”

And as awful as the last year and a half had been, Solomon realized abruptly that Elijah was right. Even if his brother had never come back—life would have gone on, somehow. He could even have been happy. Serena had shown him that it was possible.

Elijah was still speaking. “In books they always say, ‘Without you it was as if someone had cut off my arm.’ Sol, without you I felt like someone had sawed open my skull and ripped out half my brain. But I had to get the hell out of here. I had to stop being afraid all the time. I had to be alone. Paris was so different from Shropshire—there were clubs full of people like me, and I was helping England, and I was good at it. All that careful acting, all those years, had just been practice. I felt right, suddenly. But I missed you.”

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I should have told you I was alive. I told myself you would know so I wouldn’t have to admit I was taking the coward’s way out.”

“We failed each other,” Solomon said, and it felt like absolution. He smiled. “So we’re all right now?”

Elijah smiled back. “We’re all right now.”

After a moment, Solomon asked, “When are you leaving for France?”

Elijah looked up guiltily. “As soon as I can. And—I never thanked you—”

“You don’t have to.”

“I think I do. You shouldn’t have done it, but if I had walked into that room and seen his brains all over the wall—” Elijah swallowed.

“I know.”

“I may be back very soon. He may not want me anymore.”

Solomon snorted. “Doing it a little too brown, Li. When a man’s final thought before he blows his brains out is to say what will make you feel best about driving him to it, he wants you.”

Elijah looked up quickly. “It wasn’t really his final thought, was it?”

Solomon assumed a romantic attitude. “‘Please, tell him I’”—he sniffled and wiped away an imaginary tear with a dramatic forefinger—“‘tell him I never loved him. Tell him I knew all along. Tell him I was a blackhearted rogue. Oh, Elijah, Elijah!’”

Elijah reached over and punched him in the shoulder, but he was beaming. “So—you think he’ll take me back?”

“He’d better, or I’ll be facing him at twenty paces for trifling with my brother.”

“I thought you didn’t approve of dueling.”

“Well, no sense being slavish about it,” Solomon replied airily.

Elijah laughed. “Thanks, Sol.” He flashed a wicked grin. “So, you and Serena?”

Solomon swallowed hard and looked away, his relief fading. “I don’t know.” And finally, he began to tell his brother the whole story.

“I’m glad Solomon brought you,” Mrs. Hathaway told Serena as they were in the kitchen preparing for dinner on Saturday.

Serena set down the spoons with a clatter. “How can you be? He oughtn’t to have done it.”

Mrs. Hathaway’s eyebrows rose. “Well, perhaps it was a little thoughtless of him. It hasn’t been a very comfortable visit for you, has it?” She sighed. “I hope we haven’t given you a disgust of us.”

No, it hadn’t been a comfortable visit. True to his word, in the day and a half since their arrival Solomon had—not ignored her, never that, but there had been no more intimate conversations. He hadn’t flirted. He’d watched her, that was all. His private communications and whispered asides had been saved for Elijah, and while she was glad matters were mended between them, she missed him dreadfully already. And even the new distance between them didn’t spare her from Mr. Hathaway’s evident skepticism or his attempts to keep Susannah from spending too much time in her company.

The worst of it was that she couldn’t even long for the visit to be over, because when it was, they would go back to London and Solomon would leave—unless she asked him to stay. And how could she do that?

“Of course you haven’t,” she said. “That wasn’t what I meant at all. Solomon loves you and I don’t want—he’ll quarrel with his father and I told him he couldn’t bring me here even if you’re all being very kind ignoring my awful reputation—” Her voice was rising alarmingly; she snapped her mouth shut and stood very still.

“Oh, you poor dear!” Mrs. Hathaway put an arm around Serena’s shoulders. “Here, sit down, I see we need to talk. Would you like some tea?”

“No, thank you. Won’t they be expecting their dinner?”

Mrs. Hathaway’s eyes glinted brown like Solomon’s when he was particularly determined about something. “They can wait.” So they sat. Serena focused all her energy on not twisting her handkerchief in her lap.

“Allow me to apologize for my husband. I’ve spoken to him about his behavior, I promise you.”

“Oh, I wish you hadn’t—”

“I certainly did. But really, you mustn’t take it to heart. Mr. Hathaway was much ruder to Jonas, I assure you.”

“He was?” Serena wondered what Mr. Hathaway would think of René. Nothing good, probably.

“Jonas won’t even come to church anymore.”

“Isn’t he a Methodist?”

“Yes, but he used to come every week when he was first courting Susannah. That was before some rather sharp words passed between them on the subject of the church’s organ.”

“The organ?”

Mrs. Hathaway smiled. “My husband is emphatically low church, but he loves that organ, and Solomon plays it. When Jonas intimated that perhaps incense would be next, Mr. Hathaway was very intemperate in his response.”

Serena was surprised into a smile. “Oh, dear.”

Mrs. Hathaway sighed. “You can’t blame Solomon for wanting to show you off.”

“What do you mean?”

Mrs. Hathaway smiled fondly. “It’s obvious how proud he is of you, and well, he’s always been so shy. Elijah was the one who was more popular with girls, you know, and—”

“But Solomon and I aren’t—we’re not—you didn’t really think—” She had never lied so badly in her life.

But Mrs. Hathaway believed her. Her face fell. “Don’t you care for Solomon?”

When had she ever cared for anything more? “You thought that Solomon and I—You wouldn’t mind Solomon bringing home his—his—”

“Solomon wouldn’t bring anyone here that he wasn’t in deadly earnest about,” Mrs. Hathaway said flatly. “Oh, dear. Are you sure you can’t feel anything for him?”

Serena had not the slightest notion what to say. “He’ll get over me,” she said at last.

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Hathaway said worriedly. “He doesn’t get over things easily. And I’ve never seen him look at anyone the way he looks at you.”

“How—how does he look at me?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed! As if—as if he doesn’t quite believe he’s not dreaming. As if someone had lit a candle behind his eyes. Mr. Hathaway and I—we just assumed—”

Serena got that feeling again, as if everything was tilting sideways, the spoons about to slip off the table and crash onto the floor. “You really want me and Solomon to—”

Mrs. Hathaway sighed. “I just want my children to be happy.”

“And you think I can make him happy?” An edge of skepticism made its way into Serena’s voice despite her best efforts.

Mrs. Hathaway gave her a sharp look. “You don’t?”

“I’m not—I’m not the sort of woman who makes people happy,” she said, but it was starting to sound unconvincing even to her, as if the idea were a dress she had outgrown.

Mrs. Hathaway pursed her lips. “You don’t seem to have made yourself very happy, certainly.” She watched Serena, then said, “You know, I ran away from home too when I was a girl.”

“Yes, to get married.”

“True. I don’t say I approve of the choice you made. If Mr. Hathaway hadn’t married me, I would have gone back home. But—well, perhaps it’s rude of me to tell you this, but I never thought your father would be very easy to live with.”

Of course Mrs. Hathaway had known her father. They were all the same age. “Did you—did you know my mother?” she asked, her heart beating faster. She didn’t know what she wanted to hear.

Mrs. Hathaway hesitated. “Yes. I—well, she was a very pretty, charming girl. You reminded me of her when we first met. But I don’t suppose she could have stood up to him.”

Serena blinked back tears, suddenly, for the pretty, charming girl her mother had been—even if Mrs. Hathaway obviously hadn’t liked her. Of course Serena’s girlish airs and graces, when she used them, were clumsily copied from her mother, who had thought they would protect her and had found out her mistake.

“But what I meant to say is that I do understand what made you do it,” Mrs. Hathaway said. “I know what it’s like to be raised as a gently bred girl and to feel as if your family is smothering you with a pillow and telling you it’s for your own good. I told them to go hang, too, and then I cried myself to sleep when my parents wouldn’t speak to me anymore.” She laughed. “I was a great trial to him, but Mr. Hathaway was very patient.” She reached across the table and put her hand on Serena’s arm. “Can you not bring yourself to confide in me?”

To her surprise, Serena wanted to. That was how she’d felt, at home. It had been such a relief to break the rules. She’d never heard anyone say it out loud before. But she looked at Mrs. Hathaway, comfortable and motherly with the late afternoon sun streaming through the kitchen windows and turning her butter-colored hair to honey and her hazel eyes a warm gray, and the words dried up in her throat. “No, ma’am,” she said with some difficulty. “I’d like to, but—”

“All right, then.” Mrs. Hathaway squeezed her arm. “I’ve been awfully selfish, thinking only of my son, but of course you must follow your own heart. Don’t let him wear you down—Solomon can be awfully persistent when he wants something. When he was seven and wanted his first chemistry set, he talked about it for six weeks straight until we sent away to London for it. And then when he decided nothing would do but Cambridge, we heard of nothing else for a good half a year until I gave in and asked my brother if he would send him when he was ready. My brother-in-law didn’t want to hire him either. Thought he was born for better things, I suppose.” Mrs. Hathaway pressed her lips together for a moment. “But Solomon talked him round. He’s always known what he wanted, that boy.”

Serena stared at the heap of spoons. Did Solomon really know what he wanted? Because if he did, then—

Serena had believed that she would make Solomon and herself miserable, and that he would let her. But—he wasn’t letting her, was he? He was breaking it off. All this time, she had called him naive and deluded for loving her. But maybe Mrs. Hathaway was right—he merely saw things as they were and knew what he wanted.

She had thought of herself as different from other women; she had thought of Mrs. Hathaway as practically another species. But they were the same, really. Or they could be. The difference between them was that, like Solomon, Mrs. Hathaway dared to try to be happy.

That wasn’t naiveté, it was confidence and courage, and Serena had refused to see it because then she would have to face her own fear and self-doubt, her own inability to believe she could have what she wanted—or having it, that she could be worthy of it.

What had Solomon said? That sometimes love wasn’t worth what one had to sacrifice for it? Serena was suddenly afraid that all the things she had refused to sacrifice might not be worth what she had lost, what she still stood to lose. She had moped all this time about being ruined, but here she was, ruining herself. Turning herself into a hermit and a coward.

“I—would you be very angry if I asked Solomon to take a walk with me instead of going to dinner?” she asked. It was rude, but she didn’t want to wait.

Mrs. Hathaway gave her a beaming smile. “Not at all.”