A Lily Among Thorns (34 page)

Her heart almost stopped when she realized his meaning. He was offering his life in exchange for her freedom from her father’s threats.

He gave her a crooked, shaky smile. He could make an offer like that, but he couldn’t not look scared when he did it. Her heart swelled. “Don’t be stupid,” she said thickly, and opened his tinderbox.

As the last few papers crumbled into ash in Solomon’s big crucible, there was a hush from downstairs and they heard, very
clearly, a man yell, “—all the doors. Nobody do anything foolish. He won’t escape.” Booted feet strode down the corridor below them. Solomon breathed a sigh of relief. Elijah had come back with reinforcements, and sooner than Solomon had dared hope. If only he had come before Serena had burned that evidence!

He had wanted to help her against Sacreval. That was a joke. When had he done anything for Serena but be a convenient life to threaten when someone wanted to browbeat her into submission?

The marquis sagged like a puppet whose strings had been cut and let the gun fall to his side. “At least I saved
one
of my men.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a few sheets of paper. “
Sirène
, these are for you.” He spoke quickly, racing against the booted feet that were starting up the stairs. “It’s a marriage contract settling the Sacreval diamonds on you. Fraud is grounds for annulment in England. There is no such title as marquis du Sacreval and certainly no diamonds. There is also an affidavit swearing that the register is a forgery.”

Serena’s numb, blank look did not change.

“Oh,
ma petite sirène
, I would only have shot him in the leg.”

Serena made a heaving sound, her shoulders relaxing with a shudder. She shut her eyes, and when she opened them her lashes were wet. “Oh, René.”

“
Sirène
, it would be better if I were not taken,” he said gently.

She stilled.

“I won’t if you don’t want me to. But it will be easier this way.”

“
Easier?
” She sniffled, and that little sound broke Solomon’s heart.

“A trial would be painful for all of us. You would have to testify, your name would be in all the papers. And without a conviction you may not even need those documents to keep the Arms.” His mouth twisted into something like a smile. “I’ll try not to stain the wallpaper.”

“You know I don’t care about any of that,” Serena said quietly. “Not even the wallpaper. Don’t you?”

“I know.”

“Then do it if you want to. I don’t want to see you strung up and sliced open either.”

“Don’t look,” Sacreval said, but Serena never turned her eyes away as he raised the gun to his own temple. Halfway there, he looked at Solomon.

“Elijah works for the Foreign Office, doesn’t he?”

Solomon nodded.

“Tell him—” Sacreval stopped, and gave a glittering knifelike smile. “Tell him I knew all along. Tell him I was a heartless schemer who never loved him.”

Solomon’s eyes narrowed. “Give me that gun.” René obeyed, frowning, but both he and Serena leaped forward when Solomon pointed it at his own arm.

“What the hell are you doing?” Serena hissed.

“How much are you willing to wager that Rothschild was right and Napoleon’s been beaten?”

Her eyes widened, some life coming back into her face. “A great deal.”

“Then England doesn’t need Sacreval,” Solomon said. “Enough people have died. You know damn well they aren’t guarding
all
the doors. If I’m wounded, it’ll distract Elijah long enough for you to get him out the laundry tunnel.”

Serena stared at him, then picked up the knife from his worktable. “Is it clean?” She was so pale that he was reminded of their first meeting, how her skin had looked bluish-white, like arsenic. Only the lamplight gave her any color. But her hand was perfectly steady.

“Of course.”

“Kneel down.”

There was no time to ask why. He did it.

“Whatever you do, hold still.”

He felt her slice lightly along the top of his head. Almost instantly blood began pouring down his forehead. He stood, and she hooked a finger of her left hand into his cravat, pulled him forward, and kissed him, hard. Absolutely without expression, she licked a drop of blood off her lip and handed him the knife. “Thank you,” she said.

The booted feet were almost to the door. She picked up the gun and fired it straight into the wall. Solomon wiped the blood out of his eyes with his sleeve and by the time he looked up, the door to Serena’s room was swinging shut. They’d have to wait in her room until Elijah and his men were out of the hallway, then get out without being heard and go down the back stairs to the kitchen.

Elijah’s footsteps rang in the corridor. “We’re coming in!”

“Wait!” Solomon called weakly. “I’m coming.” Serena wouldn’t be pleased if he let Elijah shoot her lock off.

“Solomon! Are you shot?”

“I’m fine,” he mumbled. “I just—” Lying to Elijah was tricky, but it could be done. He concentrated very hard on his fear that the marquis would be caught and Serena accused of aiding him.

He knocked the bottle of Madeira onto the floor on his way to the door. Glass shattered across the floor—that might slow them down if they tried to go for the connecting door. “Sorry,” he called. “Just a little woozy—” He did feel a little light-headed, actually. He turned the key in the lock and then, as Elijah pushed the door open, he collapsed onto the floor with an impressive thud. His elbow jarred painfully.

“Solomon!” Elijah cried wildly, rushing into the room followed by two of his fellow agents. They immediately made for the connecting door. One of them trod on Solomon’s hand in his haste, and he gave a completely sincere groan of pain.

“Have a care, will you?” Elijah said sharply, heaving Solomon up.

“Wait, not that way,” Solomon said weakly, and to his relief
they stopped. He tried to sit up as noisily as possible, listening for Serena’s door opening from the next room. Was that it? Elijah started to frantically feel Solomon’s scalp. Solomon knocked his hand away under pretext of trying to wipe the blood away from his eyes with a supposedly shaky arm. “Which way did he go, Sol?” Elijah demanded. “He won’t make it to the gallows, I swear. I’ll kill him myself for this.”

“‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.’” Solomon gave Elijah a small smile. “I’ll be all right. It’s Serena I’m worried about. He took her with him while you were—” He jerked his head in the direction of the door to the hallway. It really did hurt, and he winced. Elijah bit his lip, and with his brother thus distracted by murderous thoughts, Solomon said, “He said—there are a lot of people in the dining room who could get hurt.”
The best lie is a half-truth.

Elijah’s lips thinned. “If he thinks he can take her out the public rooms and get away with it, he’ll find his mistake. Be careful, gentlemen. If you let the lady get hurt, we’ll all have to answer to his lordship her father. Tread carefully and don’t hesitate to shoot if you see an opportunity.” The agents nodded and disappeared out the door and, hopefully, down the main stairs.

Solomon closed his eyes in silent prayer.

“Steady on, Sol,” Elijah said softly. “Scalp wounds always look worse than they are. Let me get you to the bed.”

“Shouldn’t you be chasing after Sacreval? He’s got Serena.”

“He’s unlikely to get far. We’re watching all the doors. I’ll go as soon as I’ve seen to you. Now let me get you to the bed.”

Solomon got to his feet, shaking his head. “I’ll stain the sheets. Just get me some water. I’d say Madeira, but it’s soaking into the floorboards as we speak.” He hoped Serena wouldn’t mind too much.

“Let’s start with the water, shall we?”

“There are some clean rags on my worktable.”

“Perfect. Sit on the bench by the lamp.”

Elijah brought the pitcher over to the table, wet a rag, and gently dabbed at Solomon’s cut. It stung, and Solomon drew in a hissing breath and jerked his head away.

“Solomon, you have to let me look at it.”

“It’s nothing.” But he could only resist for so long, and finally he sat still and let Elijah lift the lamp to examine his head. Elijah froze. Solomon braced himself.

“This isn’t a bullet wound,” Elijah said in a hard voice.

They couldn’t ask the kitchen to bear the burden of treason with them, so when they went through the kitchen door, Serena was in front of René like a shield. This was the part with the most likelihood of going wrong. His arm was around her throat and he had the cool butt of the pistol pressed against her temple. “Open the tunnel,” René said.

There was absolute silence. This late, the only people working were Antoine, marinating meat for tomorrow’s dinner, and two kitchen boys readying food for breakfast. Frozen in horror, they stared at the pair.

“Open the tunnel or she dies,” René said. Antoine reached for his knife.

“Please, Antoine,” Serena said. “Just let him go.” It worked. Antoine hurried across the floor to the trapdoor and tugged on the iron ring. René pushed her gently across the kitchen.

“You son of a bitch,” Antoine said viciously, all traces of his French accent gone. “You’ll never get out of here alive.”

“Then neither will she,” René said, his voice strung taut. Serena shuddered. It was probably true, if not for the reasons Antoine thought.

The chef spat on the ground at their feet, but he stepped aside and left the way to the tunnel open. Hatred twisted his face. Serena, remembering the hours he and René had spent together,
wanted to explain to him that it was all right, that it wasn’t real. But that was impossible. She let René drag her down the stairs.

“If I hear anyone else come through this door, I will shoot her on the spot,” René told them. “If you can hold them off long enough, though, I’ll let her go safe and sound. Now close it and go about your business.”

And the door closed over them, sealing the tunnel in darkness. René let her go, and they raced down the tunnel. When they got to the other end that came out at the laundry, they crouched down and listened.

Serena’s heart sank. The laundry should have been empty at this hour, but the distinct sounds of sex came from above them: a faint rhythmic thumping and the occasional moan. Someone was using the laundry for illicit dalliance. She cursed.

“We’ll give them two minutes to finish and go away,” René said quietly. “Then we try to brazen it out, like we did back there. Once we get out, I can scale the fence behind the laundry.” He sounded unnaturally calm.

Serena wondered how many times in the course of his career he had waited in darkness for the sounds of someone coming to arrest him. “Where will you go from there? What if they’re watching the street?”

“I don’t think I should tell you,” René said. “It will be easier for you to lie that way. I don’t think they’ll be watching the street. They may be watching the courtyard. I shall have to take my chances. They are better than they were a few minutes ago,
sirène
. Thank you.”

They settled down next to each other in the dark, counting the seconds and trying to ignore the sounds from above. Serena tried to think of what she would do if she were escaping over the back wall. She thought that if he could be quiet, René’s chances of getting out of the courtyard unseen were good—the back door to the laundry came out in a narrow strip of yard enclosed on
two sides by fence and shielded from view of most of the rest of the yard. There couldn’t be many of the Foreign Office agents, and if they didn’t know about the tunnel, there was no reason to put someone anywhere he might see René. In his place, once out, she would probably cross the alley, cut through some back gardens, come out in another street, and look for a hackney working late.

She shivered, wondering how many of the agents would know René by sight. If there weren’t any watching the street—if they were watching the doors from the inside—it would probably be all right. But the thought of René walking across even that narrow strip of courtyard with nothing to hide or shield him was terrifying.

These were the last two minutes she might ever spend with him. She wanted suddenly to have one last ordinary, friendly conversation. “How did you know the earrings opened the fireplace?”

He chuckled. “The fireplace opens in two different ways. It
was
made by Charles the First’s own clockmaker. You saw when we opened it—there’s a clockwork timing mechanism of some sort with an unknown delay. You can open it once just by twisting Diana’s hand halfway round, as I discovered. At that moment I happened to be in a hurry to hide those papers where you wouldn’t find them. I was hasty. But once I’d hidden those papers in there and closed it, it refused to open that way again. I had given them up for lost when I saw some Stuart letters on display in an old
bibliothèque
in Paris. In one, Charles the Second wrote to his brother from Scotland, mysteriously assuring him that he had got the ruby earrings from their mother and would recapture his hidden treasure from the Rose and Thistle as soon as he reached London. In the other he said he’d given the earrings away to a fellow named Hathaway, in Shropshire.”

“Was there a hidden treasure?” Serena asked.

“Not when I opened it. It had been two hundred years. Anyone
could have found it in the meantime.” He paused. “I am so sorry,
sirène
,” he said, speaking fast. “I never wanted to use the marriage lines. But when I saw you had given my room to a Hathaway from Shropshire, I panicked. For all I knew, he had the earrings and the full secret of their use. If you had found those papers and turned your father in, my entire web of informants would have been useless. Everything went through Ravenscroft.”

“It’s all right.” It wasn’t, really. He had hurt her so much. He hadn’t wanted to, but he had been willing to. And she would have been willing to kill him for the Arms. She didn’t want to think about it.

She did have one question, though, that she had to know the answer to. “My father didn’t—didn’t send you to me, did he? When you came to me and asked me to be your partner?” She didn’t know what she wanted to hear—yes, her father had wanted to save her and she owed him everything? Or no, the Arms was still hers and her father had never cared for a moment?