A Lily Among Thorns(52)

A slow, pleased smile spread across Elijah’s face, and Serena felt her temperature rising. Good God, was she blushing? “No,” he said. “He isn’t, and doesn’t.”

Serena concentrated very hard on watching the road for a hackney. Finally one came, and she hailed it. As Elijah was climbing in ahead of her, he flung back carelessly over his shoulder, “Oh, and Thorn, do me a favor, would you?”

“It depends on the favor.”

He did not meet her eyes. “Don’t tell Solomon where you found me?”

Her heart clenched. “It’s no fun to have your family angry with you for sleeping with the wrong people, is it?”

He laughed. Then his brows drew together. “Surely Solomon isn’t the wrong people.”

“You Hathaways seem to have rather a lot of unjustified family pride,” Serena said in some amusement. “Of course he is. But I’m not sleeping with him.”

Elijah looked disappointed.

“I give you my word Solomon won’t hear about your predilections from me. You should tell him, though. I think he’d take it very well, after the first few days.”

“Maybe. What were you there for, if I may ask?”

“As you would know if you’d been at home, your family earrings have been stolen and Susannah refuses to get married without them. Solomon has engaged me to find them. Decker is a receiver.”

Elijah’s eyes widened. “Susannah is getting married?”

“So I’m told.”

“Who’s the bridegroom?”

She shrugged.

The carriage pulled into the Arms’ courtyard. Serena won the ensuing argument about who would pay the hackney fare. “Come on upstairs. But let me go in first—I’d like to soften the shock a little.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Elijah, but he let her.

Solomon heard Elijah’s step on the stair, but he ignored it. Hearing Elijah’s step wasn’t uncommon these days. At the beginning his heart had always jumped and begun to beat faster, but when he looked it was never Elijah. By now he’d got his heart’s reaction down to an almost imperceptible tremor and he never looked—but the step was coming down the hall, and it really seemed to be Elijah’s.

If you open that door, he told himself firmly, you will see some young buck trying to break into Serena’s room, and he will call you the Hatherdasher. Then the connecting door opened and Serena came in.

Solomon was so shocked he forgot all about the step. “Serena, I can’t believe you!” he said, standing. “What are you wearing?”

Serena looked down at her frock coat and Hessians in annoyance. “Solomon, I really don’t have time for this right now—”

“You bought that from Fitzhugh! How could you be such a gull? Just look at that waistcoat. Not only is the color streaky, but if he had cut it differently and added some extra quilting toward the bottom, it would have hid your shape much better. And it’s not as if his prices are cut-rate. Promise me you’ll go to my uncle next time.”

Serena smiled at him. “It was secondhand, but all right, I promise. Listen, I’ve got something to tell you. Maybe you should sit down. I—I met someone while I was out this morning, someone you thought—”

Solomon had already burst out of the room. “Elijah! Where are you? Elijah!”

When Serena followed Solomon into the hall, she had to jump back very nimbly to avoid being bowled over by a careening, shouting tangle of Hathaway limbs. It was several minutes before Solomon finally separated himself from Elijah, laughing and very pale and trying shakily to catch his breath. “I thought you were dead, you bastard! We all did.”

Elijah looked down and scuffed the toe of his boot. “I’m sorry. It couldn’t be helped, but I thought—I suppose I thought you would know I was all right.”

Solomon’s mouth twisted. Serena, remembering Solomon say I didn’t even know when he died, wanted to rip Elijah’s unexpectedly still-beating heart out of his chest.

“I did!” Solomon said. “But I couldn’t let myself believe it. Men who’ve lost an arm can still feel their fingers itch, can’t they? It’s been a year and a half, Elijah! A year and a half of thinking you were gone, do you know what that feels like?” Elijah began to speak, but Solomon interrupted him. “No! No, you don’t, because I never let you think I was dead!”