A Lily Among Thorns (18 page)

His eyes narrowed. “I’m sorry, sir, but you have the advantage of me. Who are you, exactly?”

She laid her palm flat on the table and leaned forward. “I am Lady Serena Ravenshaw.”

His brows rose, his eyes flickering to her bound breasts. “I see. Well, in that case I won’t cross you. The Thorn’s network of spies is legend.” He flashed her an engaging grin eerily like Solomon’s—and yet with rather more dash and conscious charm. She felt inexplicably unsettled.

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” she said sharply, and gave him a last admonitory glare before returning to Decker, who stood watching her resignedly.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t like it if I caused an upheaval at the Arms,” he grumbled.

Serena shrugged. “Don’t tell me your taproom has never seen a jealous lovers’ spat before. That’s all anyone thought it was.”

Decker gave her a sideways grin. “A lovers’ spat, Thorn? Is that the handsome tailor I hear you were kissing in a hallway a few nights ago?”

Serena raised an eyebrow. “Been listening to gossip, Fritz?”

“When do I listen to anything else? Can’t say I wasn’t pleased to hear it. You deserve some fun. I’ve a soft spot for tailors myself. Meticulous, that’s what they are.” He smiled reminiscently and blew his red nose into a cherry-striped handkerchief. “But if he’s having a bit on the side, I say boot him out.”

She was caught between Scylla and Charybdis. God only knew what Elijah was up to, lurking around pretending to be dead and seeming, for a corpse, rather dangerous. She could hardly reveal that he wasn’t Solomon. Nor could she announce that she and Solomon weren’t lovers, since, well, no one would believe it. Which meant Fritz Decker thought she was being cheated on, and there was nothing she could do about it. It was humiliating. “That’s not what we were discussing,” she said icily, and left it at that.

“Well, you always were one for keeping up a brave front,” Decker said cheerily. If only she were a man, no one would say things like that to her.

He let them into a low unpainted room off the house’s yard and latched the door behind them. A table covered in equipment stood in the center of the room. She’d seen it plenty of times before, but now it made her think of Solomon. In the corner was a large safe. As well as running one of London’s less reputable molly houses, Decker was one of London’s more discreet fences. “Now how can I help you?”

“I’m here to get those earrings. These
are
the same pair you bought off a highwayman last week, are they not?” She drew Solomon’s sketch of the earrings from her pocket and handed it to Decker.

The look he gave her was really troubled. “These were the last things I ever expected
you
to ask about.”

She frowned. “Why?”

He pursed his lips. “I’ll tell you this much. I did have those earrings. They were here for almost five days. Then someone comes in yesterday morning, asking about them. I’m sorry, Thorn. They’re gone. Were gone hours before I got your note.”

“And who purchased them?”

His round mouth flattened out severely. “You know I won’t tell you. My business relies on discretion.”

“I’m discreet. And I would make it worth your while.”

He looked affronted. “I wasn’t asking for a bribe. I don’t betray my customers. In either of my professions.”

She leaned against the door frame, gave a long-suffering sigh, and fixed him with her blankest, mildest expression. “I need to know where those earrings went, Fritz. I should hate to have to resort to foolish violence.” He quailed. Serena felt a shock of pure malicious satisfaction. That would teach him to tell her she put up a brave front.

“I can’t, and I can’t,” he said pleadingly. “You’ve been accused of black things, Thorn, but violence to an undeserving man for pursuing his profession isn’t one of them.”

She grinned wolfishly. “You clearly haven’t heard my latest orders.”

He had. She saw it in his eyes. He took a hasty step backward. But he stuck obstinately to his guns. “Cutthroat ain’t a profession, and your father deserves what he gets. This is different. But even if it wasn’t, I’m between the devil and the deep sea. My life won’t be worth a copper penny if one of my transactions becomes a source of unpleasantness because of me, and that’s a fact.”

Damn it, he was right. Serena just wanted this over with so she could go back out there and deal with Elijah. It filled her with angry frustration that the information she needed was so damn close and yet she wasn’t going to get it.

On the other hand,
she thought,
if I can’t get the earrings, Solomon can’t leave yet.
No, that was a
bad
thing. She glared at Decker.

“I owe you a debt, Thorn,” Decker said unexpectedly, stepping forward again. “You didn’t have to warn me about that police raid, and you did. And I like you, for all you could frighten our Lord himself. So let me warn you to be careful. I’m troubled in my mind that you should be asking about those earrings.”

“Oh la,” she drawled. “I’m ever so touched. I can make such practical use of
that
information. At least tell me one thing: were the earrings whole when you sold them?”

He nodded. His relieved smile that she was relenting just made
her angrier. People weren’t supposed to look at her like that. They weren’t supposed to like her. Being
liked
didn’t keep you safe. You couldn’t predict it or rely on it. It was just something you had to keep earning, over and over.

“Thank you,” she said. “But bear in mind that the
next
time I come across information that
you
need, I just may keep it to myself.” But she didn’t find Decker’s hurt expression any more pleasant than his smile. It was an empty threat anyway, and he probably knew it.

Solomon was throwing her off her game, and now that the earrings were missing again, who knew when she could be rid of him?

To her surprise, Elijah was waiting patiently when she returned to the taproom. She motioned him to stay while she had a few words with Ravi Bhattacharya, who was still sitting at the bar with his head high and an empty glass of gin in his hand.

That business concluded, Serena jerked her head toward the door, and Elijah stood and followed her. They were waiting for a hackney on the pavement when Serena asked abruptly, “Is your brother—does he—” She gestured toward the pub behind them, frustrated that she couldn’t seem to just come out and ask. But what would she say?
Does your brother like men? Because that would explain why he hasn’t slept with me.

A slow, pleased smile spread across Elijah’s face, and Serena felt her temperature rising. Good God, was she blushing? “No,” he said. “He isn’t, and doesn’t.”

Serena concentrated very hard on watching the road for a hackney. Finally one came, and she hailed it. As Elijah was climbing in ahead of her, he flung back carelessly over his shoulder, “Oh, and Thorn, do me a favor, would you?”

“It depends on the favor.”

He did not meet her eyes. “Don’t tell Solomon where you found me?”

Her heart clenched. “It’s no fun to have your family angry with you for sleeping with the wrong people, is it?”

He laughed. Then his brows drew together. “Surely
Solomon
isn’t the wrong people.”

“You Hathaways seem to have rather a lot of unjustified family pride,” Serena said in some amusement. “Of course he is. But I’m not sleeping with him.”

Elijah looked disappointed.

“I give you my word Solomon won’t hear about your predilections from me. You should tell him, though. I think he’d take it very well, after the first few days.”

“Maybe. What were
you
there for, if I may ask?”

“As you would know if you’d been at home, your family earrings have been stolen and Susannah refuses to get married without them. Solomon has engaged me to find them. Decker is a receiver.”

Elijah’s eyes widened. “Susannah is getting married?”

“So I’m told.”

“Who’s the bridegroom?”

She shrugged.

The carriage pulled into the Arms’ courtyard. Serena won the ensuing argument about who would pay the hackney fare. “Come on upstairs. But let me go in first—I’d like to soften the shock a little.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Elijah, but he let her.

Solomon heard Elijah’s step on the stair, but he ignored it. Hearing Elijah’s step wasn’t uncommon these days. At the beginning his heart had always jumped and begun to beat faster, but when he looked it was never Elijah. By now he’d got his heart’s reaction down to an almost imperceptible tremor and he never looked—but the step was coming down the hall, and it really seemed to be Elijah’s.

If you open that door,
he told himself firmly,
you will see some
young buck trying to break into Serena’s room, and he will call you the Hatherdasher
. Then the connecting door opened and Serena came in.

Solomon was so shocked he forgot all about the step. “Serena, I can’t believe you!” he said, standing. “
What
are you wearing?”

Serena looked down at her frock coat and Hessians in annoyance. “Solomon, I really don’t have time for this right now—”

“You bought that from Fitzhugh! How
could
you be such a gull? Just look at that waistcoat. Not only is the color
streaky
, but if he had cut it differently and added some extra quilting toward the bottom, it would have hid your shape
much
better. And it’s not as if his prices are cut-rate. Promise me you’ll go to my uncle next time.”

Serena smiled at him. “It was secondhand, but all right, I promise. Listen, I’ve got something to tell you. Maybe you should sit down. I—I met someone while I was out this morning, someone you thought—”

Solomon had already burst out of the room. “Elijah! Where are you?
Elijah
!”

When Serena followed Solomon into the hall, she had to jump back very nimbly to avoid being bowled over by a careening, shouting tangle of Hathaway limbs. It was several minutes before Solomon finally separated himself from Elijah, laughing and very pale and trying shakily to catch his breath. “I thought you were dead, you bastard! We all did.”

Elijah looked down and scuffed the toe of his boot. “I’m sorry. It couldn’t be helped, but I thought—I suppose I thought you would know I was all right.”

Solomon’s mouth twisted. Serena, remembering Solomon say
I didn’t even know when he died
, wanted to rip Elijah’s unexpectedly still-beating heart out of his chest.

“I
did!
” Solomon said. “But I couldn’t let myself believe it. Men
who’ve lost an arm can still feel their fingers itch, can’t they? It’s been a year and a half, Elijah! A year and a half of thinking you were gone, do you know what that feels like?” Elijah began to speak, but Solomon interrupted him. “No! No, you
don’t
, because
I
never let you think I was
dead
!”

“I said I was sorry—”

But Solomon was only winding up. “And Mother! She lost a stone and didn’t even alter her clothes! Father couldn’t get into a proper rage for months! It was
painful
to hear him preach, and
Susannah
—why didn’t you
write
to us? And now you’re right here in London looking as debonair as ever, only
more
so because I would wager a hundred guineas that’s Parisian tailoring, and I only know because Serena saw you in the
street
?”

“I was on my way here, you nodcock! As if I haven’t been going mad wanting to see you all this time! I’ll tell you all about it later, all right, only
not now
—”

They were too caught up in their argument to realize how loud they had become. So when the door across the hall opened and a tousled René in an elegant violet dressing gown stuck his head out, they jumped back with identical expressions of guilty chagrin. It was easy to picture them as caught-out little boys. It was adorable.

Then Elijah’s expression changed. So did René’s; he broke into a delighted grin. “
Thierry
!”

“René,” Elijah acknowledged as he was seized in a warm embrace. René stepped back, beaming. Elijah looked less pleased. He shook René’s hands off his shoulders with a glance at Solomon that said,
God spare me from emotional Frenchmen
. René did not stop beaming. Serena suddenly got a very unpleasant feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Thierry! Your idiot of a brother told me you were dead!”

“He thought I was,” Elijah said flatly. “Everyone did.”

“But—but how is this possible?”

“I was in the army. They seconded me to a Spanish unit. We were on a reconnaissance mission behind enemy lines and a bullet killed my horse. I hit my head falling, and when I woke up my unit was gone.” He glanced at Solomon. “I had no hope of getting back to the English army—I didn’t even know where it was—and I spoke French well enough to pass, so I got rid of my uniform and decided to make my way back to England through France. I thought they could ship me out again from here if they wanted. But when Boney was sent to Elba, I decided to stay and see a little of Paris.”

He looked at Solomon again and said, “I sent you a few letters. I suppose the reestablished mail lines weren’t as reliable as they claimed. And then war broke out again and I couldn’t get out. I had to go back to pretending to be French. That’s when I met René.” He looked at René and raised his chin a little.

“He was in a tavern brawl,” René revealed. “He could barely walk. I took him in out of the goodness of my heart.” Elijah glared.

“How lucky that you found such a selfless benefactor as our own marquis,” Serena said when Solomon said nothing in response to this touching narrative.

Elijah smiled incredulously. “Marquis?”

“Yes,” René said quickly. “It appears we were both incognito. I am the marquis du Sacreval. Or I will be, when Louis XVIII restores my titles.”

Elijah started, frowning. “
You’re
the marquis du Sacreval?”

“Yes.”

“Oh Lord, I haven’t time for this now. I’ve got to speak to my brother.” And grabbing Solomon’s arm, Elijah towed him into his room and slammed the door.