A Lily Among Thorns(88)

“If you want something done right, do it yourself.”

His eyebrow only moved a fraction of an inch, but she flushed all over. She’d liked it when he’d done it for her, and they both knew it.

“It’s not safe,” he said, getting up and pulling on his shirt and breeches. The loss of his bare skin felt like grief.

“René won’t hurt me.” It sounded stupid, when René had hurt her.

Solomon obviously thought so too. “I’m coming with you.”

She sneered, but her hands were trembling, which spoiled the effect. “You would make a terrible spy. There are some jobs that are for one person.”

“Some are for two.”

She didn’t feel like arguing. She had to get somewhere where she wasn’t standing next to an empty bed. “Do as you like.”

So he crept down the hall beside her. She slipped her master key from her pocket and slid it into the lock that Sophy had taken care to oil just that morning. It turned silently. The hinges had been oiled, too, and the door made no noise at all as Serena opened it.

Oh God, she thought in horror. How could she have been such a fool?

She tried desperately to back out, whispering, “We should come back later,” but it was too late. Solomon had seen René’s bed over her shoulder.

Sleeping on his stomach under tangled sheets, his head pillowed on René’s shoulder and one arm thrown carelessly across René’s waist, was Elijah.





Chapter 21


The brothers sat in Solomon’s room without speaking. Elijah had dressed and was hugging his bottle-green coat around himself as if it were chilly. It wasn’t. He and Serena had been naked and he’d never been cold. He couldn’t think about that now. He looked back at his brother, and broke the silence with an effort. “How long—how long have you—”

“How long have I been a sodomite?” Elijah asked harshly. “About as long as you haven’t been one, I daresay.”

Solomon flinched. “How long have you and Sacreval been— ”

“Lovers?”

They had always finished each other’s sentences, so eager to move on to the next one. Now Solomon just didn’t have the courage to finish them himself.

“Since I met him in Paris.”

Solomon stared. “You mean, all this time—”

“I hadn’t slept with him again until tonight, if that’s what you’re asking. For God’s sake, I’m working to—” Elijah cut off with a glance at the door. Hang him, he mouthed, his face contorted with misery.

Solomon remembered Elijah staring as the marquis and Lady Pursleigh leaned toward each other in the candlelight, and the pen almost snapping in his hand when he wrote that he was here to hang the marquis du Sacreval. Suddenly Elijah’s constant moody snappishness since his return resolved itself into perfect, gleaming sense. Part of Solomon thought with relief, It wasn’t my fault. Then he thought of something else. “You slept with Sir Nigel.”

Elijah bit his lip. “Sol, please—”

“You did, didn’t you.”

“Yes.” So soft he wouldn’t have heard it if it were anyone but Elijah.

“I don’t know you anymore.”

“You know me better than anyone!”

Solomon shook his head. “I always told you everything.”

“I always hoped you weren’t.”

It took a moment for Solomon to catch his meaning. “You mean, you wished that I—” He couldn’t keep the revulsion from his voice and Elijah didn’t even flinch, just huddled deeper into his ratty old jacket.

“I just didn’t want to be alone.”

“You’ve never been alone.” Solomon barely recognized his own voice. “Not like I was. For a year and a half. I had no one. You—have you ever done anything but lie to me?”

“I can’t lie to you, you know that,” Elijah snapped. “I just—didn’t tell the truth.”

Solomon snorted.

“When I started this job, they told me that the best lie is a half-truth. But I already knew that.”

“I’m glad that our connection had some professional value to you!”

Before he could say anything else, Serena came in through the connecting door with a tea tray. It was late; she must have made it up herself, alone in the dark kitchen. “I thought you could use this,” she said, her voice neutral. Even in the throes of passion she’d kept command of her voice. Only when he’d said he loved her had it risen, breaking like a snapped thread.