A Lily Among Thorns(60)

She came down the stairs, and even though Solomon had designed the dress himself, seeing her in it took his breath away. Its midnight blue folds took on a silver sheen when they caught the light (he’d worked through the night on that dye), and a wave of silver spangles rose from the hemline and crested halfway up her calves. More spangles edged a modest, square neckline and short unpuffed sleeves.

Serena had taken her hair out of its severe bun and made a complex coil at the crown of her head. She’d allowed a few tresses to escape—she’d even curled them, and scattered spangles and tiny blue silk flowers here and there in the blackness. She held long white kid gloves in one hand. Solomon felt suddenly unsure of himself.

“Well?” she said. “Behold your handiwork. Are you satisfied?”

He smiled ruefully. “You look like someone who wouldn’t associate with me. I feel as if I ought to kiss your hand.”

“Well, if you feel you must, don’t let me stop you.” She held out her hand.

He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. Slowly, he reached out his own gloved hand to grasp her bare one. She didn’t pull away. His eyes closed involuntarily as his lips brushed her naked skin. The insides of his eyelids were awash with visions of kissing her arm, her shoulder, her breasts—

He dropped her hand abruptly and stepped back. “Sorry, I’ve never been good at doing the pretty.”

“I thought you did that rather well.”

The little sentence hung in the air between them, and then Solomon, already nervous at the prospect of an evening of hobnobbing with the Upper Ten Thousand—spying, he thought, I’m nervous about spying—said, “Those little flowers in your hair match splendidly. Where did you find them?”

He cursed inwardly. Of all the things he might have said, why did he pick that one? It was like at school, when he hadn’t been able to talk about cards or racing or hounds or boxing, hadn’t known a thing about any of the usual pursuits of the wealthy, so he’d tried to talk about clothes. It was an acceptable topic of conversation for gentlemen, but when he did it, it was because he was the Hatherdasher.

Serena grinned at him, though. “I got a patch of material from my dressmaker and sent one of the maids out shopping.”

“You’re going to make Uncle Hathaway rich,” he said with awed sincerity. It was the nearest he could safely come to You’re beautiful. He thought it would make her uncomfortable if he said that.

She raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t do it for your uncle,” she said, pulling on her gloves. “This is a mission.” But there was a warm undercurrent in her voice that said she meant exactly the opposite. That she’d done it for him.

“I—I got you something to go with it.” Not looking at her, he lifted a thin, wrapped parcel from the inlaid table next to them. “I know you never wear jewelry, but—”

Her face went cold, suddenly. “Jewelry is a bad investment. You can never sell it for what it cost.”

He swallowed. This had seemed like such a good idea when he saw it in the window of the pawnshop. Of course jewelry was something men gave their mistresses, but they were going to a ball and she didn’t have any. And it had cost only four shillings and he’d thought it would be all right. “I didn’t mean—it wasn’t very expensive. And if you hate it, I can probably take it back, so don’t feel you have to, I just thought you might like it—” He tried to cut the string around the package, missed, and almost sliced his thumb open.

“Let me,” she said, and he handed her the knife. She sliced the wrapping open and unrolled it with movements so precise they seemed angry. Then she tipped the bracelet into her palm and stared at it. It was made of gray-and-white cameos, ringed with glittering chips of faceted steel and linked together by tiny wrought-iron loops. On each cameo was a woman’s face, contorted and howling with fury. Some had coiling snakes instead of hair.

“I’m a siren, not a gorgon, you know.” But the warmth was back in her voice. She liked it.

Solomon let out the breath he’d been holding and grinned at her. “You’d like to turn people to stone with a look, though, wouldn’t you? Hold out your wrist.”





Chapter 14


The first person Serena saw in Mrs. Elbourn’s ballroom was Lord Smollett. He took one look at the deep blue gown with its spangles and guffawed. “Must say, you never used to need that much fabric to dress as a lady of the evening!”