A Lily Among Thorns(6)
“The Stuart bedroom?” he asked, following the girl down a narrow, low hallway back to the public part of the inn.
“King Charles stayed here a lot, the one who was beheaded,” Sophy said. “Legend has it the future James the Second hid himself here for a spot, too, when he fled London before his father’s execution. That was long before her ladyship and monseigneur du Sacreval had anything to do with the place, obviously. It had a different name then.”
“Monseigneur du Sacreval?”
“Yes, sir. He came over during the Terror—his parents were slaughtered by their tenants.” She shrugged. “Likely deserved it. He went back to France to try to reclaim the title after Boney went to Elba, and we haven’t heard from him since, so the inn is Lady Serena’s now. It’s only fair. Most of the money was monseigneur’s, but all the head for trade was hers.”
“Why didn’t they call it the Sacreval Arms?”
“Why, sir, who cares about Frog noblemen? Half the people who come here have French chefs higher born than monseigneur. But anybody would like to be served by a marquess’s daughter, and that’s a fact. Cits and nobles alike.” She frowned. “They don’t see what it does to her. She didn’t always look like that.”
Solomon thought he knew what she meant. Lady Serena looked—well, she looked perfect. Her face was a perfect oval, her nose razor-straight and patrician. Her mouth looked as if it had come out of a Greek anatomy textbook, and so did her figure. Solomon had almost been tempted to get out his tape measure and start looking for instances of the Golden Mean. Her coloring only added to the impression—pale skin, pale gray eyes and black lashes, and hair as black and heavy as Ethiops mineral. The only impurity was a small birthmark over her left brow, like a circle of brown velvet.
But there had been something about the look on her face—something about the way she smiled without her eyes that said she wanted him to notice it; something that was polite and challenging, blank and vital all at once. She reminded him of a bead of mercury: bright and shining and gray, spellbinding and utterly impenetrable to the eye. No one got that way without a lot of practice.
So yes, he thought he knew what Sophy meant by she didn’t always look like that, but he’d frequently found that playing dumb got better information. “What did she look like before? She could hardly have been more beautiful.”
Sophy caught her breath. “Men are all alike! But even you would—you didn’t see her before. She used to have the most expressive eyes.”
Solomon would have liked to see that. You didn’t see her before—before what? He was surprised by how much he wanted to know. But maybe if he knew, he’d understand how she could be so damn striking and yet he couldn’t remember where he’d seen her.
Perhaps feeling she had said too much, Sophy pressed her lips together. “Here we are, sir. The Stuart bedroom.”
A huge oak bed with far too many claret-colored hangings made the room look smaller than it was. A large portrait of King Charles I, “the one who was beheaded,” hung over the mantel.
The sun blazed in through a wide leaded-glass window to the right of the bed; it illuminated gleaming oak paneling, claret-colored paper, a thick claret-colored carpet (probably Aubusson, Solomon thought glumly), and a carved oak fireplace. Diana took aim across the hearth at Orion, and between them a clock, set in Apollo’s sun chariot, showed the time and the phases of the moon. Midsized rubies twinkled at him from half a dozen places in the carving, though one or two had fallen out over the years—or maybe been prised out by enterprising tenants.
On the wall to his right, a sturdy oak door was set in an ornate door frame. “Is that a dressing room?”
“No, sir, that leads to Lady Serena’s room,” she answered without expression.
He glanced at her in surprise.
She shrugged. “This used to be monseigneur’s own room. It locks from her side, so don’t try to take advantage.” Solomon tried to look innocent. Since he’d instantly begun to speculate as to whether monseigneur had taken advantage, he probably wasn’t succeeding.
All in all, the room was far grander than anything he’d ever not wanted to touch in case he got fingerprints on it. Charles’s headless body must be turning over in its grave at the idea of a Hathaway sleeping in its bed, and all because Lady Serena thought it was funny that he wasn’t a Jacobite.
But he didn’t appear to have a choice, so after muttering, “At least no one will be able to tell if I spill claret on anything,” he resigned himself to the inevitable. If he got started right away, he could borrow Uncle Dewington’s coach and driver and have his laboratory transported here before dinner, maybe start work on a new dye. A gray, quicksilver sort of dye.