A Lily Among Thorns(104)

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?”