A Lily Among Thorns Read online

  Solomon was skeptical, but he turned the subject. “Where did you get the nickname of Siren?”

  “It sounds like my name,” she said shortly, and so coldly that he flushed. She signaled to a waiter, and in a very few minutes of awkward silence, their places were laid with gleaming silver and spotless china. Wine and water were poured, a basket of fresh hot rolls was placed with a flourish in the center of the table, and two attractive bowls of cucumber soup were set before them. Solomon’s mouth watered. He’d been living on bread and cheese and mince pies from the corner shop for a long time.

  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?”

  The girl went very still. “No, my lady.”

  “Are you sure? I dislike being lied to. And if you imagine I’d allow any of them to exact any sort of retribution from you, you’re an even greater fool than I took you for.”

  Charlotte’s lips tightened. “One of them pinched me.”

  Lady Serena’s mouth set dangerously. “Did he now? I find that interesting. I thought I’d made it very clear to everyone that I would not tolerate anything of that sort in my establishment.” One of the young men began an insincere apology, but she cut him off. “You gentlemen will kindly take your leave.”

  Amusement turned to shocked indignation; Lady Serena’s voice sliced through the angry babble. “Get out. Next time I will bar you from the premises permanently.”

  Solomon mentally shifted her from ordinary woman back to intimidating. Very, very intimidating. She was like an ice storm, a whirlwind of glittering frozen shards. And, like the first breath of icy air after sitting dully in a warm house, she made his blood run faster. He wanted to breathe her in.

  Maybe you ought to stick to chemistry and leave the overwrought poetry to Elijah, he told himself, concentrating on wiping the last of the soup from the wooden floor’s shining wax coat. But he wasn’t surprised when, grumbling but evidently mortified, the young men hastened to depart.

  Lady Serena sat back down, and Solomon put the sodden apron on Charlotte’s tray. “Thank you,” the girl said quietly. He smiled at her and returned to his chair. The hushed silence in the room quickly gave way to pleasantly scandalized murmurings. Only Lady Serena was silent, her eyes fixed on the empty table behind Solomon.

  Once, she picked up her spoon, but it rattled slightly against the lip of her bowl. Her eyes flew apprehensively to his, and then she looked away and set the spoon down again with an angry click. It took him a moment to believe the evidence of his own eyes. Her hands were shaking.

  He felt a sudden rush of sympathy, remembering more vividly than he had in a long time how badly he’d wanted to seem cool and collected in front of those boys at Cambridge, how he’d tried for a bored drawl and could never, ever manage it. How much he’d hated them for that.

  Don’t take it so hard, he wanted to tell her. You were amazing. But he didn’t need to be an empirical scientist to guess that she would hate that. She hadn’t even wanted to admit to being nettled by Lord Smollett. So he waited until the soup plates were removed and two lovely fillets of sole à la Lyonnaise were brought out to venture a “Lady Serena?”

  She started like a sleepwalker. “Yes, what is it?” She picked up her first fork and began to push the sole around her plate.

  “Are you—?” Her eyebrows drew together, and he gave up. “We were speaking of my robbery.”

  “Yes, of course. Your robbery,” she said mechanically. “Tell me about it.”

  Solomon didn’t want to discuss it either. He wanted to talk about something else, something that had nothing to do with business or family. He wanted to see if he could make her laugh. He wanted to tell her, even though he knew she would sneer (no, because he knew she would sneer; he liked her sneer) how much he’d like to be able to silence a party of young bucks with just a lifted brow and an icy tone of command. He’d always been able to manage chemical reactions, but people frequently eluded him.

  But his mother was at her wits’ end. Besides, just because he liked her and they both hated Lord Smollett, it didn’t mean anything. It certainly didn’t mean they had a connection or that she wanted to talk to him. He only felt as if it did because he missed his brother so much he would have talked to a rock if it stayed still long enough. Only you wouldn’t, would you? he thought. You haven’t wanted to talk to anyone in a year and a half. “It happened Monday last,” he said. “On the road not far from London, just before High Wycombe. I assumed the earrings would be sold immediately, but I’ve had no luck tracking them down. I’ve circulated their description to as many jewelers as I could find, but I’m sure I missed dozens. The earrings aren’t in any catalog and they aren’t valuable enough to be recognized on sight.”

  Lady Serena shook her head impatiently. “Jewelers won’t help you. You need to seek out receivers.”

  “I don’t know any receivers.”

  Bullying him seemed to restore her good humor. She gave him a small, superior smile. “Naturally you don’t, Solomon. Why would a fine, upstanding citizen like you be acquainted with anyone who traffics in stolen goods? That is why you have engaged someone who knows every rogue in London by their Christian name to act for you in the matter.”


  So calling him by his Christian name hadn’t just been for Smollett’s benefit. She was teasing him about Uncle Dewington’s comment. Well, two could play that game. He smiled back. “Then what’s our first step, Serena?”

  She ignored the “our” and the “Serena” equally. “I’ll put out some initial inquiries, but anything more will have to wait. The greater part of the Carlton House set is coming here for dinner on Saturday and I won’t have time for anything else until after that.”

  Solomon felt ashamed of his awe, but he couldn’t help it. “The Carlton House set? You mean, the Prince Regent?”

  On anyone else, it would have been a grin. On her, it was an amused smile. “Surely you aren’t impressed? A good republican like you?”

  Solomon spent most of the next day collecting wallpaper samples for Lady Serena’s bed-hangings and attempting to match the saffron color of one of the most dilapidated rooms. At first it felt strange working in an unfamiliar room, but before long he’d forgotten everything but the three feet of table in front of him, clear and clean and brilliantly lit by his clockwork Carcel oil lamp, scrimped for and ordered from Paris. He loved working; it made everything else go away. Since Elijah’s death, it was the only thing that could.

  When someone knocked on his door, he started as if awakening from a drug-induced stupor. When had it gone dark out? He looked at the mantel clock and saw that it was nine o’clock. Hours ago, then. “Come.”

  Lady Serena swung the door open. Her eyebrows rose at the disarray of the room, lifting that little birthmark of hers with them. The elegant rug was rolled up to where it met the bed; a jumble of glass, brass, and iron occupied the remaining space, some of it loaded onto a large table Solomon had talked Sophy into having brought up.

  He wasn’t spared a sweeping look, either, and he realized he was wearing his oldest shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pair of awful mud-colored breeches someone had returned to his uncle’s shop. He’d lay odds there was a grimy smudge all across his forehead, too, where he’d wiped away the sweat. She was as alluring and perfect as ever, and he looked like a chimney sweep.

  Lady Serena wrinkled her nose and crossed to the window. “I make it a practice to keep all my rooms well-aired,” she said just as the wick in his lamp began to smoke.

  He flushed and took the glass chimney off to trim the wick. “You don’t smell it after a while. I can’t have varying temperatures and wind while I’m working.” Sure enough, the moment she opened the window, a damp gust of wind extinguished the lamp. Solomon felt at once vindicated and even more embarrassed. Fumbling for his tinder among the jars and crucibles, he glanced up at Lady Serena. In the moonlight her skin seemed to glint bluish-white, that distinctive birthmark thrown into sharp relief—

  “Serena!” came Sophy’s worried voice from the corridor just as Solomon’s fingers closed on the tinderbox. “Lord Blackthorne’s here!”

  Lady Serena froze. “What did you say?” Her voice sounded strangled.

  “Your father. He’s here!”

  Chapter 2

  A tall, imperious man strode into the dark room. “Thank you, girl, that will be all.” Solomon thought Sophy would have liked to stay, but after a moment’s hesitation she bobbed a curtsey and whisked herself out the door.

  Lady Serena turned to face her father. Solomon realized with a jolt that she was several inches shorter than Lord Blackthorne, and wished, irrationally, that it were not so. He hurried to strike a spark, but the flint and steel refused to cooperate.

  “So this is where I find you. In his room, in the dark!”

  “Why are you here, Father? This is my property and you’re not welcome.”

  The lamp finally, blessedly, flared into light, and Solomon replaced the chimney before looking up at Lord Blackthorne. He blinked at the family resemblance: the razor-straight, patrician nose and hawklike gray eyes. It was impossible to guess if they’d shared the raven hair, as Lord Blackthorne’s thick locks were completely gray. And his attire, while expensive, was not as tasteful or well-tailored as his daughter’s. Solomon repressed a professional shudder at the combination of black and brown.

  “I’ve stayed away too long as it is. Even you must admit that I have been patient with you, Reenie.”

  “You certainly left me to myself,” she said lightly. A little too lightly, and it occurred to Solomon for the first time that she was probably younger than he was. She made it look easy, her self-reliance and her air of command, but it wasn’t, not really. And she had had to learn it, somewhere along the way. You didn’t see her before, Sophy had said.

  “It wasn’t enough that you dragged the Ravenshaw name through the mud, not enough that you gave it to a common inn, not enough that every day I hear your name bandied about by men I would never allow in my home, but now you take up with a Cit?” Lord Blackthorne’s eyes swept Solomon and his chiseled mouth curled into a sneer—less polished than his daughter’s, but still effective. “Hell, Cit is too good a name for him! You’ve allied yourself with a tradesman. You have low tastes, girl. But surely you didn’t expect me to stand by.”

  Solomon swallowed his affront and waited for her to deny the implication. But her birthmark lifted as she raised an eyebrow and smiled. “What do you intend to do about it? The Ravenshaw Arms is mine. I’m of age. I’ll ally myself with whomever I please.”

  “No, you won’t. You’re correct: I can’t take the inn from you. But a father has some rights, even in these degenerate times.” He paused, grimly satisfied. “For example, I could have you put in Bedlam. Self-destructive promiscuity.”

  Solomon clenched his fist. It wasn’t his business. He turned to Lady Serena, waiting for her to put her father in his place, as she had Lord Smollett and the table of young men at dinner. But she didn’t. She just stood there.

  Her eyes reminded Solomon of an experiment he’d done with frozen mercury. He’d put a tiny chip in a glass of water, and in an instant had been left with a block of ice, and at the center a living drop of quicksilver.

  He was abruptly and blindly angry. Only it wasn’t abrupt; it wasn’t new. He’d been filled with blind anger for a year and a half, he realized. And he’d ignored it and shoved it down, because there was no one to blame for Elijah’s death, except God and perhaps Napoleon. There was no point railing at beings who were so far away and so utterly unaffected by his resentment. Lord Blackthorne was right here, and he was going to pay for that look on Lady Serena’s face. “How dare you, my lord? You—you—” He could hear his voice going Shropshire until his words rolled and lilted in his mouth. “She owes you no more loyalty than she owes the Corsican monster! Have you never read that ‘he that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind?’”

  “Keep your nose out of what don’t concern you, boy, or you may lose it. This is between myself and my daughter.” Lord Blackthorne’s snarl would ordinarily have had Solomon hurrying to shut his mouth. But Lord Blackthorne wasn’t a customer and Solomon wasn’t backing down. It was all he could do to keep his voice from swelling until it could have filled every corner of his father’s church. Everybody fights the way they’re trained, Elijah used to say.

  “You call her your daughter, but ‘a friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity’! How much more so a father, bound to his child by the most unbreakable and sacred ties of responsibility and natural affection? To suggest what you have suggested—to threaten one who should rely on you for protection—” He gulped for breath and plunged on. “Your daughter has done what none of your blood has done since the Conquest—kept an honest roof over her head with the fruits of her own honest labor! And you come here and insult her under it. Are you not ashamed?”

  Lord Blackthorne’s lips were white. “If you were a gentleman I would call you out for that. As it is, you are fit only for horsewhipping.”

  “That’s just as well, for I should certainly not meet you,” Solomon bit out. “Dueling is an outmoded and barbaric custom, fit only for killing off the stupider members of a thoroughly useless class.”

  Lord Blackthorne had been angry. Now, he was simply astonished. “Is he this prosy between the sheets?” he asked his daughter.

  Her smile was cold, but her eyes were dancing now. “Oh no, Father. There he is pure poetry.”