A Lily Among Thorns(90)

Elijah’s mouth twisted. “Poor girl.”

“So—you’re not interested in Serena, then?”

Elijah laughed incredulously. “Don’t be ridiculous. Besides, it’s plain as a pikestaff she’s only got eyes for you.”

Solomon swallowed and looked away. “I need to think about this,” he said abruptly. He stood up. “I need to sleep.”

Elijah nodded and went out silently. Solomon lifted the lid on Serena’s pot and saw that it contained chocolate. It was rapidly cooling, but he poured himself a cup anyway, not bothering to add sugar. He’d just taken his first bitter sip when Sacreval walked in. His jaw was set and he was very pale.

“What in God’s name are you doing here?”

“I came to talk to you about your brother.”

“You ought to be ashamed to speak of him,” Solomon said viciously. Dissolute Frenchman.

A muscle jumped in Sacreval’s jaw. “You ought to be ashamed to say so,” he said quietly. “You want your brother to repent of what he is? You want him to crawl through life apologizing for existing?”

“Why couldn’t you leave him alone?” Solomon was embarrassed by the childishness of it the moment it left his mouth, but he couldn’t help wanting to blame the whole mess on Sacreval. He turned everything he touched to ashes. Look what he had done to Serena—what would he take from Elijah when he was through with him? What had he already taken?

The marquis smiled crookedly, something sparking in his eyes that Solomon told himself was just lust. “Because he shone,” Sacreval said. “From the first moment I saw him, there was a glow around him like our Savior in a painting.”

“How dare you speak our Lord’s name, you filthy—” The marquis sucked in his breath sharply, and Solomon shut his lips on the slur.

“You English,” Sacreval said furiously. “As if speaking it were the crime. You were happy for him to sin as much as he liked so long as he did not speak of it to you. So long as he felt properly ashamed and you did not have to hear it, you did not care.”

Solomon surged to his feet. “That’s not true,” he bit out. “I didn’t know! He never told me. He never told me anything.”

“Because he knew that you would do exactly as you are doing. Last week he said to me, ‘René, we cannot ever again, because it would kill me if he knew.’ And his voice was shaking.”

That was a lie, Solomon thought. Because he couldn’t say, ‘You’re a spy and I must kill you.’ But Elijah had said, not three minutes ago, The best lie is a half-truth.

“The other reason I did not leave him alone,” the marquis continued, “is because if I had, they would have killed him.”

Solomon’s head snapped up. “Who?”

The marquis shrugged. “The police, who else? They raided the house we were in, in Paris. Your brother should have fled, but no, he is an Englishman, he faces three men down so that a fifteen-year-old whore can escape. By the time I reached him they were kicking in his ribs.”

Bile rose in Solomon’s throat, swamping his anger. “Christ,” he said thickly.

Sacreval shrugged again. “They thought we ought to be ashamed. It was not a barroom brawl, but it was true what I said before. He could barely walk.”

“Christ,” Solomon repeated. He looked at the marquis almost pleadingly. “Is that going to be Elijah’s life? Skulking around? Consorting with fifteen-year-old whores and their clients? Being beaten in disreputable houses? What kind of life is that?”

There was something wistful in the marquis’s smile. “As odd as it may seem, an honest one.”

Solomon laughed weakly.

“It is not all bad. I like disreputable houses. And the time I spent with your brother in Paris was the happiest of my life.”

“You’re not going to tell me you love him,” Solomon said incredulously.

“Not if you don’t wish me to. But that does not change the fact that it is true.” He laughed softly at Solomon’s expression. “What, did you think it was all unnatural lusts and depravity? Perhaps you should have read the sonnets of your Shakespeare more carefully.” He stood there a moment longer, but when Solomon said nothing, he shrugged and walked out of the room.

Solomon thought about booted feet in Elijah’s ribs. He thought about the tight knot of revulsion in his chest, and about anybody else looking at Elijah and feeling it.