A Lily Among Thorns(22)
Solomon grinned. “No, I wasn’t. But Elijah was for about two months. Being the parson’s sons, we had unlimited access to the churchyard. He even penned a few verses on the brevity of life.” He had been marvelously good at drooping languidly, but his verses, which he had read to Solomon with great enthusiasm, had been uniformly bad.
Serena moved a step closer in silent acknowledgment. He found it unexpectedly comforting. “Did it drive the young ladies wild?” she asked.
“Naturally. Who doesn’t wish to be kissed behind a tombstone?”
“Who indeed?” She sighed. “I’d better go see if the flowers have arrived. Let me know if you need anything.” She disappeared out the door. He watched her go, trying not to remember the way she’d curved under his hands when he’d pinned her dress.
“She takes such a childlike pleasure in spiting her fazzer,” Antoine said. “And never once has he come here to appreciate it, until zis week.”
Solomon stared. “Never?” He had known he was undesirable, but so undesirable that Lord Blackthorne had broken a five-year pattern to get rid of him? His social standing had reached a new low, and Blackthorne was an even viler snob than he’d thought.
“Not once. It is a subject of much conversation among ze staff.” He turned calculating eyes on Solomon. “You were zere. What did he want?”
“Er. I don’t think I ought to tell you.”
“No, you oughtn’t. But Sophy was worried, and she told me to ask. Are you sure you will not reveal your secrets?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“All right zen,” Antoine said with a Gallic shrug that was the image of Sacreval’s. “Let me show you what we have bought you. Ze finest pears in London, zat is what!”
The dining room was scrubbed, the good china laid out, and all the waiters and waitresses dressed in their finest livery. Serena resisted the urge to go and look at herself in the mirror again. The gown would look as perfect this time as it had the previous twenty-seven, and she would look just as pale and cold. It was how she wanted to look, and yet thinking of Solomon—with his grins and flushes and expressive hazel eyes, and the way the set of his shoulders could tell you exactly how he was feeling at all times—she couldn’t help wondering if she repelled him. She tried not to regret her tongue-tied schoolgirl self. That self could never have survived the past six years.
That self couldn’t have curtsied politely to the Prince Regent and ten of his closest friends. She couldn’t have smoothly ignored the men’s ogling, knowing she’d slept with at least half of them, or brushed off their wives’ avid stares, as if she were some outlandish creature in a menagerie.
That self certainly couldn’t have hidden her boundless contempt for Sir Percy Blakeney and his inane little wife. She didn’t care how many French aristocrats the former Scarlet Pimpernel had saved from the Terror, he was insufferable. It was only five minutes into the meal, and he was already telling that story about escaping through the gates of Paris in ’93 dressed as an old hag, with the de Tourneys hidden under the cabbages.
“Wherever did you get that stunning gown?” Lady Blakeney asked Serena in her charmingly accented English. “The clarity of the color is remarkable. It is as bright as those waistcoats my husband ordered from Hathaway’s Fine Tailoring!”
“As a matter of fact,” Serena said, “it is from Hathaway’s. It was designed for me by Mr. Solomon Hathaway himself.” She wondered what they would say if she told them he had fitted it, too.
Lord Alvanley, celebrated wit and dandy, smiled maliciously. “I say, Dewington, I believe she’s speaking of your nephew!”
“You’ve boasted often enough of having designed a gown for the Siren yourself,” Dewington snapped. Lady Dewington elbowed him.
Alvanley had the grace to look abashed. He threw Serena an apprehensive glance. She gritted her teeth. She remembered that gown. It hadn’t been very comfortable, but the dandy had offered her fifty pounds to wear it. He still owed her the money.
“He makes up the dyes, don’t he?” asked Sir Percy. “Talented fellow, for a shopkeeper—oh, sorry, your nevvy, of course, Dewington.”
“Well, a young man must sow his wild oats somehow,” Dewington said without conviction.
“There!” said Lady Blakeney. “Did I not say it was from Hathaway’s?”
Sir Percy beamed proudly. “So you did, m’dear. Demmed clever woman, my wife. Cleverest woman in Europe, don’t you know. Star of the Comédie Française. I had to fight my way into her greenroom.” No one had called Lady Blakeney the cleverest woman in Europe in at least fifteen years. Serena had her private suspicions that those who had, even then, had not been Europe’s brightest lights.