A Lily Among Thorns (3 page)

He glared at her. “I’m not ashamed of my address.”

He was so
prickly
. She tried not to smile again. “As worthy
and respectable as Cheapside no doubt is, it’s some little distance from me, and I want you on hand to consult with.”

“I don’t see why that’s necessary.”

It wasn’t necessary. In fact, it was probably a terrible idea. Too late. “You want my help, don’t you? Susannah and her betrothed are waiting . . .”

“You won’t help me unless I stay here?” He sounded as if he didn’t know whether to be annoyed, or just puzzled.

“Believe me, you won’t be arguing with me once you’ve had supper. My chef is the best in the business.”
You just think he hasn’t been eating enough. You’re acting like somebody’s
mother. She crossed her arms. “That’s my offer. Take it or leave it.”

He spread his hands in a frustrated, resigned gesture. “If I’m going to stay here, I’ll have to bring all my equipment from my rooms,” he warned her.

“Then do so at once.” She rang the bell on the wall behind her desk. When she was done with him, he’d be so far in her debt he’d never get out. She just had to do it before he realized who she was and headed for the hills.

How had he agreed to this? Lady Serena was strange and confusing and quite possibly mad, even if she
was
the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. But Uncle Dewington had said she could help find the earrings, and his mother was at her wit’s end. It was his duty to obtain Lady Serena’s help by any means necessary, and if that meant free lodgings and fine dining, well—

Put that way, why had he ever demurred? He really had turned into a hermit this last year and a half.

When the young black woman in spectacles who’d shown him in reappeared, Lady Serena instructed her, without looking at him and without any more sarcasm than seemed present in everything she said, to show him to the Stuart bedroom.

“The Stuart bedroom?” he asked, following the girl down a narrow, low hallway back to the public part of the inn.

“King Charles stayed here a lot, the one who was beheaded,” Sophy said. “Legend has it the future James the Second hid himself here for a spot, too, when he fled London before his father’s execution. That was long before her ladyship and monseigneur du Sacreval had anything to do with the place, obviously. It had a different name then.”

“Monseigneur du Sacreval?”

“Yes, sir. He came over during the Terror—his parents were slaughtered by their tenants.” She shrugged. “Likely deserved it. He went back to France to try to reclaim the title after Boney went to Elba, and we haven’t heard from him since, so the inn is Lady Serena’s now. It’s only fair. Most of the money was monseigneur’s, but all the head for trade was hers.”

“Why didn’t they call it the Sacreval Arms?”

“Why, sir, who cares about Frog noblemen? Half the people who come here have French chefs higher born than monseigneur. But anybody would like to be served by a marquess’s daughter, and that’s a fact. Cits and nobles alike.” She frowned. “They don’t see what it does to her. She didn’t always look like that.”

Solomon thought he knew what she meant. Lady Serena looked—well, she looked perfect. Her face was a perfect oval, her nose razor-straight and patrician. Her mouth looked as if it had come out of a Greek anatomy textbook, and so did her figure. Solomon had almost been tempted to get out his tape measure and start looking for instances of the Golden Mean. Her coloring only added to the impression—pale skin, pale gray eyes and black lashes, and hair as black and heavy as Ethiops mineral. The only impurity was a small birthmark over her left brow, like a circle of brown velvet.

But there had been something about the look on her face—something about the way she smiled without her eyes that said she wanted him to notice it; something that was polite and challenging, blank and vital all at once. She reminded him of a bead of mercury: bright and shining and gray, spellbinding and
utterly impenetrable to the eye. No one got that way without a lot of practice.

So yes, he thought he knew what Sophy meant by
she didn’t always look like that
, but he’d frequently found that playing dumb got better information. “What did she look like before? She could hardly have been more beautiful.”

Sophy caught her breath. “Men are all alike! But even you would—you didn’t see her before. She used to have the most expressive eyes.”

Solomon would have liked to see that.
You didn’t see her before
—before what? He was surprised by how much he wanted to know. But maybe if he knew, he’d understand how she could be so damn striking and yet he couldn’t remember where he’d seen her.

Perhaps feeling she had said too much, Sophy pressed her lips together. “Here we are, sir. The Stuart bedroom.”

A huge oak bed with far too many claret-colored hangings made the room look smaller than it was. A large portrait of King Charles I, “the one who was beheaded,” hung over the mantel.

The sun blazed in through a wide leaded-glass window to the right of the bed; it illuminated gleaming oak paneling, claret-colored paper, a thick claret-colored carpet (probably Aubusson, Solomon thought glumly), and a carved oak fireplace. Diana took aim across the hearth at Orion, and between them a clock, set in Apollo’s sun chariot, showed the time and the phases of the moon. Midsized rubies twinkled at him from half a dozen places in the carving, though one or two had fallen out over the years—or maybe been prised out by enterprising tenants.

On the wall to his right, a sturdy oak door was set in an ornate door frame. “Is that a dressing room?”

“No, sir, that leads to Lady Serena’s room,” she answered without expression.

He glanced at her in surprise.

She shrugged. “This used to be monseigneur’s own room. It locks from her side, so don’t try to take advantage.” Solomon tried to look innocent. Since he’d instantly begun to speculate as to whether monseigneur had taken advantage, he probably wasn’t succeeding.

All in all, the room was far grander than anything he’d ever not wanted to touch in case he got fingerprints on it. Charles’s headless body must be turning over in its grave at the idea of a Hathaway sleeping in its bed, and all because Lady Serena thought it was funny that he wasn’t a Jacobite.

But he didn’t appear to have a choice, so after muttering, “At least no one will be able to tell if I spill claret on anything,” he resigned himself to the inevitable. If he got started right away, he could borrow Uncle Dewington’s coach and driver and have his laboratory transported here before dinner, maybe start work on a new dye. A gray, quicksilver sort of dye.

Solomon stopped short in the doorway to the dining room. Surely that wasn’t—but yes, it was. Of course it was. Lord Smollett. The bane of his Cambridge career.

“Welcome to the Ravenshaw Arms, my lord,” Lady Serena said graciously. “Your usual table is waiting for you.”

“Thank you, m’dear,” said the all-too-familiar drawl. “You are an excellent hostess. Although I much preferred your other career.” Smollett guffawed. Solomon, gritting his teeth, considered going back to his room and locking the door.

Lady Serena smiled blandly, but a tenseness in her jaw suggested her teeth were gritted, too. “As flattering as that is, I can’t say the same for myself.”

“Now that’s not very flattering to
me
!” said Smollett. What did he mean by that? What had Lady Serena’s other career been? She didn’t so much as lift an eyebrow, but Solomon could almost hear her say,
Exactly.
He tried surreptitiously to attract her attention.

But Smollett spotted him before she did. “Well, if it isn’t the Hatherdasher!” He strode purposefully toward his new prey. “Matching the upholstery, are you?”

Solomon sighed. Some things never changed. “Why yes, I am, as a matter of fact. May I congratulate you on the cut of your coat, my lord? Weston’s, isn’t it? We have a new piqué jonquil waistcoat in the window that would go perfectly.”

“Dash it all, Hathaway, you talk like a damn tradesman!” He paused to consider this. “Course, you are one. I might have known you wouldn’t be anyplace so dashing on your own account. A fellow like you hardly has hopes of slipping into the Siren’s bed.” He laughed again.

Solomon leaned hopelessly against the door frame and gazed over the top of Smollett’s head. Hadn’t he had enough of this at school? Now he couldn’t even write to Elijah about it later and laugh.

Luckily, Lady Serena apparently
had
had enough. “Oh, Solomon!” she called carelessly. “What the devil were you about, keeping me waiting all this time? I’d nearly given up on you. I saved that little table in the corner for us. Oh, pardon me, my lord.” She brushed past Lord Smollett and, taking Solomon’s arm in a proprietary grip, tugged him in the direction she’d indicated.

Solomon tried not to smile smugly at the expression on Smollett’s face. “Thank you,” he said when they were out of range. “Lord Smollett has a somewhat paralyzing effect on me.”

“I believe he has that effect generally,” Lady Serena said, surprising him. She let go of his arm, rather to his regret, and sat down in the chair that faced the room without waiting for him to pull it out for her.

“Yes, well, he gave me my Cambridge nickname. The—” He stopped.

Her eyes crinkled. “The Hatherdasher, yes, I heard.”

“You and everyone else in the room.”

“Smollett came up with that? He must be cleverer than I gave him credit for.”

“I mean, it’s a bit rich, coming from someone whose name originally meant ‘small head’!”

Something very like a snort escaped Lady Serena. She’d seemed so intimidating at their first meeting, but maybe he’d just been nervous. Maybe she was an ordinary woman after all. “It did?” she asked.

“Yes, I came across it once in an etymological text. I told him, but he and his friends just looked at each other and laughed. It was an utter rout.”

“You can’t fight the Smolletts of this world on their own terms. But I find utter indifference works wonders.”

“‘Forsake the foolish, and live.’ Yes, I know.” He ducked his head at her quizzical expression. “Proverbs Nine: Six. Sorry, I—the Proverbs were written by Solomon, you know, so I liked them when I was a boy.”

“And you were the sort of boy who memorized things.”

There was a smile in her dry voice, so he laughed instead of taking offense. “How did you guess? But forsaking the foolish—it’s easier said than done. You seemed rather nettled yourself when I came in.”

She stiffened. “It takes a deal more than Lord Smollett to nettle
me
.”

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.