A Lily Among Thorns

Chapter 29


The sky was gray, but it was warm and the country lanes were picturesque. The path they were on led to an apple wood half a mile off, and when they wandered off onto the grass it was uneven and soft underfoot. Everything was so different from London. She had forgotten how clear the air was in the country.

“Solomon, I—” Now that the moment was here, she didn’t know how to begin. “I—I want to talk to you.”

“I thought you might.” His face, for once, gave nothing away.

“I don’t—I don’t know how to say it.” Her tongue felt clumsy in her mouth.

“You never do,” he said with a touch of bitterness.

“Don’t be an ass,” she said. “I’m trying.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Don’t patronize me. I know I don’t. But I am, because I want to.”

“You look like you’d rather have your teeth pulled with red-hot pincers,” he said. “When I tell you I love you, you look at me as if I’m holding your head underwater. I can’t—I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to be like Daubenay. I don’t want to make demands and beg until you hate me.” But he waited, listening. He’d always believed she could do this, if she wanted to.

A few drops of summer rain splashed onto her hand and she shook them off. “I could never hate you,” she got out. And yes, she would rather have her teeth pulled with red-hot pincers, but pulling out her teeth would never bring that wild, wary hope into Solomon’s eyes.

And surely nothing, not even this, could be more terrifying than losing him. Serena was tired of putting a brave face on things. She plunged forward.

“I’m no good at hating people, can’t you see that? I try and I try and—oh, Lord Smollett is easy, I hate him right enough, but just look what happened with René. I thought he’d turned on me, I thought he didn’t care what became of me, and I still couldn’t hate him. I gossiped with him, I laughed at his jokes, I persuaded Elijah not to turn him in to the Foreign Office, and it wasn’t because of those marriage lines. It was because the thought of him with a noose around his neck and a knife in his gut made me ill. And what I feel for you—it’s so much more.” It was raining a little harder now, but Serena didn’t move, didn’t even raise a hand to shield her face. Neither did Solomon.

“It’s easy for you to say ‘I love you.’ Plenty of people have loved you and stood by you and told you you were worth the trouble. I—it isn’t easy for me. I don’t know how to say it, I don’t know how to do it. I don’t even know if this is love. It’s deeper than I thought it would be—if I tried to uproot it, it would pull my heart out of my chest. I need you so desperately. I need you to make demands, I need you to hurt me. I need you to love me, and you could stop. You could decide I’m not what you wanted after all, that I’m not worth the trouble, and I won’t be able to stop feeling this way, I won’t be able to hate you, I won’t be able to live—”

Tears stood in her eyes and Solomon, Solomon was looking at her like she was the Holy Grail, like she was the sacred thing he’d been seeking all his life.

“Oh, God, Serena, I—” he began incoherently. Then he stopped himself, smiling shakily. “I’ll try to save the transports and the fevered kisses for a few minutes from now, shall I?”

She stared at her interlocked hands. They were white at the knuckles. A drop of water fell from her hair into her eyes. “I would appreciate that.”

“You’ve never made any particular effort to be pleasant to me, have you?”

She shook her head.

“You’ve been quite a lot of trouble, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” she said in a low voice.

“I think you’re worth it. And I always will.”

“Why?”

“There isn’t—there isn’t a reason. I just love you.” She opened her mouth to protest and he said, “All of you. Even the wretched parts. Even your nasty streak and your boring gray gowns.”

She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what more she needed to hear.

“Now you’re just fishing for compliments,” he said.

“I am not,” she said indignantly, and he stopped trying to hide his smile. He pulled her to him, turning her so her back was to his front, and wrapped his arms around her. “I love you because you understand me,” he whispered in her ear. “I love you because you never give up. I love you because we both hate that Jack Ashton doesn’t pay his bills on time, and because there is no dye that can match the color of your eyes.” He nipped her ear. “Besides, have you ever looked in a mirror?”

She hit him, laughing, and then they were tussling and swatting at each other, giggling and dizzy and light-headed. They fetched up against an apple tree, shaking water down on themselves, and a small red-and-gold apple fell from the tree past Solomon’s shoulder. Solomon reached out and caught it with unwonted grace.

“‘As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons,’” she quoted, as he dried the fruit on his sleeve. “And what am I? A Thorn among the lilies.”

He stilled in his polishing, and met her gaze. “‘Thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot in thee,’” he promised softly, “no spot save this”—he brushed a thumb over the birthmark on her brow, and she shivered—“and this”—he made a small circle with his finger on her chemisette, over where the second birthmark lay, and desire unfurled inside her like a flowering tree—“and this—”

“Solomon!” she snapped in a small, pleased tone, and his eyes gleamed.

“I wouldn’t trade one of those spots for all the muslin in India,” he told her. “And is there any difference, really, between a thorn among lilies and a lily among thorns?”

But Serena did not give this philosophical speculation the attention it deserved, because Solomon held out the apple in his scarred hand and the world ground to a halt. Slowly, she reached out and took it. Slowly she brought it to her lips, and just as her teeth broke the skin with a crunch, he said, “Marry me.”

Serena choked and spat out apple onto the ground. She stared at him in stunned disbelief. “You can’t be serious.”

He laughed. “So you’re willing to accept my pledges of undying devotion, but you can’t believe that I want to marry you?”

“But—but—” she sputtered, “have you run mad? You don’t marry a woman like me. You can’t. It just—it isn’t done.”

“Funny, I never thought that would be your objection. Not quite as unconventional as you like to appear, are you, my straitlaced sweetheart?”

There was a challenge in his eyes, and something in Serena rose joyfully to meet it. After all, she had never refused a dare in her life. “All right,” she said, and found to her surprise that it was easy. She took another bite of apple. It was sweet and tart and tasted like happiness. “Let’s get married.”

He beamed. “If my father starts reading the banns next Sunday, we can be married in a month.”

There was a problem with that, but Serena wanted to let him smile a little while longer. “Will your father mind?” she asked instead.

“Are you joking? This is exactly what he wants. It’s us living in sin that he’d hate.”

Serena blinked. Then she gave up; nothing made sense when Hathaways were involved. And she couldn’t put off reminding him any longer. “It may not be for some time, though,” she cautioned.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m still legally married to René.”

He caught her hands. “Poor Serena. This isn’t the best month of your life, is it? And here I am asking you to give me more—”

And now it was her turn to reach up and gently place a hand over his mouth. He bit her palm lightly, and she felt a lazy warmth settle in her belly. “It is the best month of my life,” she told him. “And if René’s papers don’t get me an annulment, we can save up for a divorce, and perhaps in five or ten years—” It still seemed unreal, to think in five or ten years, and to believe that Solomon would be there.

Unexpectedly, he grinned behind her hand. “You’ll get an annulment. Just leave it to me.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Suffering delusions of grandeur?”

“Don’t you trust me?” he asked with a teasing grin.

And the funny thing was, she did. He wouldn’t say it if he didn’t know it was true. “With my life.”

He grinned wider. “I’m going to trade the Prince Regent Mother’s tartlet recipe.”

Oh God, that would really work. It would, and they would be married—she lunged at him and kissed him. It hurt her jaw, but she didn’t care.

A short time later, she said rather unsteadily, “But don’t think this means I’m not going to insist on very stringent marriage settlements.”

“I never for a moment thought you wouldn’t.” He laughed. “I feel faint with happiness. If I swoon, don’t tell my uncle, all right?”

She smiled suggestively. “Do you know what would make you even more light-headed?”

His eyes lit with anticipation.

“Cartwheels,” she said cruelly.

His eyes narrowed. “It’s raining.”

“Not very hard.”

“I’d rather stay here, where it’s nice and dry.” He began nuzzling her neck. It was actually fairly wet under the tree, but Serena didn’t say so.

“How—how often do people walk this way?” she gasped.

“Not very often,” he said, and kept going.

When they walked back to the house, sometime later, they were both dripping wet and muddy in patches. “I think you ruined my dress,” Serena grumbled happily.

“I’ll make you another.”

Serena looked about her at the misty, sparkling countryside. Everything looked clean and new and full of possibilities. She lifted the muddy hem of her skirt away from her toes with one hand, and reached out for Solomon’s hand with the other. “I want a red one.”