A Lily Among Thorns(97)

Only René was left now.

Solomon watched Serena, who was staring out the window of their hackney. It had been hard for her to turn over Lady Pursleigh; he could see that. And he thought he saw why.

He would have said that no two women could be more different, and yet—both women, forced to fend for themselves in a man’s world, had been obliged to choose masks. Jenny Pursleigh, faced with men’s expectations of what a pretty girl should be, fulfilled them all. Serena rejected them, every single one. Lady Pursleigh pretended to feelings she didn’t in the least have. Serena pretended to feel absolutely nothing.

He’d resented that, all this time. But he was beginning to understand, finally, that the stubbornly blank lines of her face weren’t a rejection. Not of him, anyway. They were an open challenge, a refusal to perform for the crowd.

I can’t be what you want, she had said. What, exactly, did she think he wanted? He remembered Miss Jeeves, the happy, girlish role she’d played at St. Andrew of the Cross, and how angry she’d been when he enjoyed it. Did she think he wanted what Lord Pursleigh wanted? And how, living in the world they lived in, could he expect her to think anything else?

The afternoon stretched. Sacreval did not return. He must have really gone for good. There was nothing left to do. Serena retreated to her office, and Elijah was holed up in his own room with a couple of other agents. Solomon wondered what would happen between him and Serena now. They had found the earrings. She no longer needed his help against Sacreval. He was on the very last wallpaper sample for the Arms. Once he had matched it, he and Serena would have no external reason for further contact. He didn’t know how matters stood between him and Elijah either, or how they would stand.

He tried to work on Serena’s last dye, but his heart wasn’t in it. In fact, his heart was dead set against it. Instead, he tried to read a poor translation of one of Chevreul’s papers on indigo, ate an early supper alone in his room, and went to bed.

He dreamed he was thrashing Elijah. He was smashing Elijah’s face with his fist and kicking him in the chest, and he could feel each blow in his own body, each sudden bright blossoming of pain. He could feel it when Elijah’s ribs cracked.

He woke up. It was dark. Serena stood over him, having evidently shaken him awake. She looked so worried about him: her jaw tight and her hand firm on his shoulder, her perfect brows drawn together stubbornly as if she were doing a painful duty but would be damned before she’d let anyone, including Solomon, stop her. He wanted to bury his face in her shoulder and cry, and he thought she might let him. Instead he pulled her down on top of him and kissed her, smelling sweat and almonds.

Reluctantly, he pulled away.

“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely, passing the back of his hand across his eyes. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why not?”

He sat up, giving her a rueful smile. “Because it was stupid.” She glared at him, not bothering to set her clothes to rights. He had to get out of this room.

“I’m going to get my earrings.” Having a goal cleared his mind, a little. By dint of not looking at her, he managed to get out of bed and pull on his breeches—carefully—before changing his nightshirt for a shirt. “Can I have your key?”

She rolled her eyes, tugged her clothes into place, and went into her room to get it. She came back holding the key, but instead of giving it to him she went past him and out into the hall without a word. He followed her.

The earrings were not where Elijah had seen them. Serena watched him search tensely for a minute or two before suggesting, “Try the ledge inside the chimney. I sometimes hide things there in my room.” He got soot all over his hands, but she was right.

Back in the Stuart room, he set the earrings on his worktable and went to wash his hands in the basin. When he turned around, Serena was turning the box from side to side, trying to see the earrings in the moonlight.

She saw him watching her. “We should examine them for damage,” she said hastily.

He sighed and lit the lamp. Light glinted off the Hathaway rubies lying in her palm. What would they look like in her ears? He glanced at her face. She was gazing at the earrings with a kind of fascinated horror.

Then someone put a key into the lock and turned it, and before Serena could do more than take a step toward the fireplace poker, Sacreval was in the room with a gun pointed straight at them.

Neither of them moved as he shut and locked the door from the inside with his free hand. “Back away from that table, sirène,” he said calmly.