A Lily Among Thorns(82)

“Can you keep your eyes off her for five seconds?” Elijah hissed, under cover of restacking some rolls that had fallen out of their basket. “If Sacreval notices, he’ll know it’s her and we’ll be rumbled.”

“Well, maybe you should stop staring at Sacreval, then!” Solomon hissed back, stung. “He’s bound to notice, and what reason can he possibly imagine?”

Elijah flushed a deep red and went back to his side of the table, leaving Solomon pleased that he had had the last word for once. Really, he hoped Elijah’s surveillance was usually subtler than this, or his career as a spy would not be long.

It was nearly eleven before Pursleigh and Sacreval sat down to play. This deck, too, was brought by a servant.

“Damn,” Elijah said. “Does he have a servant in his pay, too?”

Solomon looked at him. “They’re his servants, Li. They’re already in his pay.”

Elijah was opening his mouth to retort when they saw it. They saw Pursleigh pull two sheets of paper from his pocket and rip them both in four pieces. They saw him have a pen brought to the table. They saw him write something on the first piece and pass it over to the marquis, who looked at it carefully under the candle and smiled. “Where did he get that paper?” Elijah hissed furiously.

Solomon couldn’t believe it either. “He must have got it when Ravi was out on the balcony.”

“This is a nightmare. Anything could be written on those papers in invisible ink. He could be writing anything on them right now and no one would think it was anything more than an IOU.”

“Well, Sacreval is putting it in his pocket. We’ll just have to steal it from him somehow, along with the little pink note.”

Elijah blew his hair out of his eyes with a defeated sound. “We will, won’t we?”

Elijah took off his coat and cravat. He left his waistcoat on, though, and tousled his hair just so. They had to have Lord Pursleigh’s vowels and Lady Pursleigh’s billet-doux. They had to get them now, before René destroyed them.

He had known that sooner or later it would come to this. Sooner or later he would have to walk into René’s room and use what they had shared to move René one step closer to the gallows, simply because it was the worst thing that could happen and so it would. Now that it had, he couldn’t tell whether the knot in the pit of his stomach was nausea or excitement.

He walked down the hall and knocked on René’s door. René looked distinctly surprised to see him, but he opened the door wide.

The first thing Elijah saw when he stepped inside was the precious evidence, burning merrily on a silver salver.

“What’s that?” he asked, even though he already knew. Lady Pursleigh’s stationery burned with a sickly sweet rose scent. The room smelled like dying summer.

René smiled maliciously. “Love letters.”

Elijah’s entire reason for being there was already gone, but he realized too late that it must not have been his entire reason after all. Instead of leaving, he said, “Your mistress isn’t very subtle. People in France probably saw her pass you that note.”

“She does have more hair than wit,” René acknowledged. “But it is such delightful hair I am inclined to overlook the fault. One of those soft golden ringlets would make such a lovely keepsake, do you not think?”

Elijah said nothing.

René curled a lock of Elijah’s own yellow hair around his finger. Elijah flinched away, and René sighed. “You cannot have it both ways, chéri. Why will you not admit that you love me? That we are meant to be together?”

“I don’t love you!” Elijah strove to modulate his voice. “And we certainly aren’t meant to be together. After all, you’re a married man now, aren’t you?”

René was the reason Lady Serena had been going around looking like death. Because of René, Elijah’s brother might never be able to marry the woman he so obviously loved. Lady Serena was René’s best friend, and he had done this to her.

Elijah wished he could hate René for it, but he understood. Elijah had betrayed people he loved in the service of his country, too. He could have driven his brother to suicide. He still meant to drive René to his death.

René’s eyes darkened. For a long moment he was silent. “I am sorry that I am not the man you thought I was.” He sounded genuinely regretful, but then he would have had training for that. “I would have liked to be such a man. But you are not the man I thought you were either.”