A Lily Among Thorns(8)

He’d often thanked Heaven for sending him to Cambridge (much oftener than he’d thanked Uncle Dewington for the same favor), but it was generally for the excellent education in chemistry he’d received there. Now he was grateful that Cambridge had taught him a more arcane science, one his republican mother had scorned and his father had never known: which spoon to use and the correct manner of unfolding his napkin.

When Lady Serena had tasted her wine, selected a roll, and picked up her spoon, he finally dared to try the soup. Ohhh. It was all worth it—Lady Serena’s mockery and Charles I’s portrait and Lord Smollett—just for this. “It’s ambrosial!”

Her face lit with a startlingly genuine smile—Solomon felt a tug, somewhere in his chest—and then she looked away, as if she didn’t want him to see it. “Good. Have a roll, they’re baked fresh.”

He hesitated. But he couldn’t say no, so he stripped his gloves off and laid them on the table. She could see his hands, now, the stains and blotches and calluses. The tiny round acid scars that dotted his skin. He’d got used to this over the years. The prick of anxiety and self-consciousness had grown dull and distant, especially since Elijah died. He’d outgrown it, he’d thought; he’d realized how trivial it was. And yet here he was, afraid to look at Lady Serena’s expression. He took a roll, instead, and broke it apart. Steam rose from the center. It smelled delicious.

He glanced up at Lady Serena. She was staring at his hands. He put the roll down on his plate and pushed it away.

She blinked and raised her luminous gray eyes to his face. “No, I was only—” She sighed. “These earrings of yours, you said there was a verse about them?”

He cringed. “Do you really want to hear it? It doesn’t even scan.”

“You never know what may prove important.”

Solomon gave in to the inevitable.

“‘Wouldst thou have the rose of fortune fair?

Place these jewels among Phoebe’s sweet hair.

By the thistle of ill fate wouldst be undone?

Then let the jewels languish, nor shine in the sun.’

“You must imagine, of course, that ‘sun’ is spelled s-o-n-n-e,” he concluded.

“Hmm. It certainly lacks artistic merit.”

He laughed. “Maybe, but it incorporates the Royalist mania for the English rose and Scottish thistle, which is in its favor.”

She nodded. “They certainly seem to have left enough inns with that name. ‘The Rose and Thistle’ was even the name of the Arms when René and I bought it.”

“Oh yes, the Stuart bedroom. Why did Charles have need of an inn in his own capital?”

“He’d taken a fancy to his clockmaker’s daughter. That mantel clock is one of the man’s creations. Charles brought her here so he could derive a delicious satisfaction from ruining the girl under her father’s nose, so to speak.” The depth of bitterness in her voice surprised him.

“I told you the Stuarts were a bad lot,” he said, trying to make light of it.

She gave him that icy, heated look of hers. “You’re not as wise as you seem if you think most men are any different.”

There was silence. They regarded each other across the table, and Solomon could see this was a fight he couldn’t win. He didn’t even know why they were fighting. He hunched his shoulders and picked up his roll. “Maybe not.”

Lady Serena gave him a surprised frown. For a moment he thought she was going to say something, but there was a sound of breaking china and raucous laughter behind him. She rose from her chair to see what had happened and went pale with anger. Paler, anyway.

Solomon turned; a chubby serving girl was loading broken china onto a tray, to the great amusement of a party of young bloods at a nearby table. Cucumber soup spattered her apron and spread across the floor. He had a very clear memory of one of those men “accidentally” bumping into him as he carried an expensive set of glass pipes across the quad.

Solomon got down on the parquet—carefully, so as not to stain his breeches. “Give me your apron,” he said quietly. “I’ll mop up the soup.”

The girl fumbled at her apron strings, tugging it off and pressing it into his hands. “I’ll get my things as soon as I’m cleared up here, my lady.”

Lady Serena’s eyebrows rose. “Don’t be a fool, Charlotte. There’s a reason I don’t put carpets in the dining room. I’m very pleased with your work so far.” She turned to the group of young men, who tried unsuccessfully to hide their grins. Solomon felt the old knot of useless anger in his throat, watching them. “These—gentlemen—didn’t have anything to do with your little mishap, did they?”