A Lily Among Thorns, page 10
She didn’t know what she would like, just that she didn’t want to go home yet.
“Your fiancé is truly talented,” the rector enthused. “You must be very proud.”
“I am,” Serena said softly. Solomon flushed and looked away, frowning in annoyance. Of course he thought she was shamming. She felt, if possible, worse. She wanted—suddenly she knew what she wanted.
“Play something for me.” She sat down on the floor of the dusty organ loft, hugging her knees and leaning her head against the wooden paneling. From here she couldn’t see over the wooden railing of the balcony. It made her feel small and invisible, and therefore safe.
Solomon sat. He laid his hand on her head for a brief moment, and then began playing something simple and elegiac that Serena soon recognized as “Angels We Have Heard on High.”
Leaning against the vibrating wood, she felt the notes thrum through her and rise to fill the grimy arched ceiling that was all she could still see of the church. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, dust tickling the back of her throat. The music shifted, soaring triumphantly. A tear slipped down her cheek; she hurriedly brushed it away.
Solomon squinted against the sunlight, stealing a glance at Serena as they stepped out of the church. When he had turned and seen her in the organ loft, she had looked positively woebegone, all the fight gone out of her for once. Now her eyes were unreadable again, and only a little subdued.
“I take it you found the record?” he asked gently.
She nodded. “It was sent to the bishop, too.”
He swore under his breath. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Neither had I.”
“Where does the bishop keep his records?”
Serena eyed him in faint amusement. “I feel a bad influence. But it’s no use. I’d have to hire someone to replace the entire sheet in the register, and I’d have to have someone break in twice to the archives, once to steal the page and once to replace it with another, and even if they don’t get caught, there’s still the chance that someone will remember making the copy, or they’ll have sent a copy to the archdeacon, or who knows what, and then it will look like I’m the forger.”
“So what are you going to do next?”
“Right now?” she asked, with an undercurrent in her voice that he couldn’t identify. “I’m going to do something more sensible with my hair.”
“Oh, don’t. I like it like that.”
But Serena ruthlessly pulled out pin after pin. “Here, hold these for me.” He held out his hand and a dozen pins fell into it. She unknotted the orange and gold bandeau. Her hair fell over her shoulders, black and untidy. The wind blew it into her eyes and she tried to blow it back as she shoved the bandeau into her reticule. He realized that this morning was the first time he’d seen her outside in daylight.
In the sun, her raven hair shone deep brown in places. He tried to imagine her at seventeen, wearing sprigged muslin and standing in the long rough grass of a Cornish cliff with the wind in her face—and found it was surprisingly easy.
She ran her fingers through her hair and twisted it expertly into its usual tight coil. Holding it in place with one hand, she stretched out the other for the pins. Solomon put his hand behind his back.
Serena rolled her eyes. “Oh, very amusing. Give them back.”
“Mm-mm.”
“This isn’t funny, Solomon.” Serena raised her eyebrows and shook her outstretched hand emphatically.
“Leave it down.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t, all right?” she said with a sort of concentrated hopeless resentment. Too late he recognized the undercurrent in her voice—hysteria. “I know this is how you want me to be. I saw how you were looking at me in that church. You want that laughing flower of a girl who clings to your arm, but I can’t be that. You think that if you just keep digging at me and trying to crack me open I’ll giggle and say, ‘Oh, la, Mr. Hathaway, what a tease you are!’ You think it’s somewhere underneath but it’s not. I am what I am and—and you can go to the devil! Oh God, I can’t breathe.”
Solomon held out the pins at once, aghast. Instead of taking one at a time, she snatched them all, as if she didn’t trust him not to change his mind.
“That’s not true, I—” He stopped. He had been charmed by the act. It had been a relief, just for a few moments, to have a Serena who laughed and spoke freely and smiled up at him without a trace of irony. Who didn’t see him as someone she needed to fight. “I’m sorry.”
She shoved pins into her hair and didn’t look at him.
He sighed. “Serena, let’s take the day off, shall we? I have to go to Hathaway’s Fine Tailoring to deliver a few things, but after that we can go on a picnic or something, visit the British Museum, I don’t know—” He trailed off. “Sorry. I guess that must sound awfully childish.”
The awkward silence was pierced by the shrill cry of the woman in the stall across the street. “Savoy cake and trifle, only tuppence! Naples biscuits, a farthing each!”
Serena smiled shakily. “I want a piece of tipsy cake.”
Chapter 9
Serena noticed that Solomon’s steps were getting slower and slower as they turned onto Savile Row. They were going at a crawl by the time Solomon stopped under a green-and-white striped awning. Hathaway’s Fine Tailoring was emblazoned on the shop window in gold and black lettering. Underneath, in smaller letters, it read Since 1786. Everything the Well-Dressed Gentleman Requires. We Match Any Colour. A set each of fashionable morning, evening, and riding dress was prominently displayed, as well as a selection of waistcoats, ranging from brilliantly colored, heavily embroidered brocade to subtly tinted and unadorned piqué. Solomon was looking anywhere but at her now. “You needn’t come in if you don’t wish to.”
Oh. Somehow she hadn’t expected that. “I’ll try not to be too vulgar in front of your relations.”
His eyes flashed, and his mouth compressed into a thin, tight line. He slapped the flat of his hand against the door and pushed it open. A bell tinkled. Solomon bowed with a flourish. “After you,” he said, adding something under his breath that sounded like, Deserves what she gets.
Perhaps the tipsy cake had been a mistake. She felt decidedly sticky. “Is there any custard on my face?” she asked in as dignified a way as possible, but it was hard to sound dignified asking something like that.
He gave her a wicked smile and nodded.
Serena narrowed her eyes. “Where, might I ask?”
Solomon brushed his thumb over the side of her mouth. “There,” he said in his husky voice.
At once every nerve she had was tingling. The tears she knew were just below the surface threatened again. She hadn’t cried in years, and now it seemed that it was all she felt like doing.
She pulled a handkerchief out of her reticule and looked at it for a moment. Then, knowing there was no help for it, she spit into the handkerchief and rubbed at her mouth. “Is it gone?”
His hazel eyes were almost blue with amusement. He nodded, and she swept ahead of him through the door.
The shop was very clean and very neat. Bolts of cloth stacked on shelves completely obscured the wall to their left. To the right was a table covered in copies of Ackermann’s Repository, colored plates of French fashions, and diagrams on the proper method of tying a cravat. That was all, except for a door to the right of the counter that must lead to the fitting rooms. The walls were beautifully whitewashed, and the wooden floor shone. A boy in his late teens sprawled behind the counter, nose buried in a Minerva Press novel. His fair hair was flattened over his forehead and teased up farther back in an eager attempt at sophistication that only made him look impossibly youthful.
“Hullo, Arthur,” Solomon said. “Is Uncle about?”
“He’s in the back.”
Serena was momentarily disconcerted by his voice. It was distinctly London, where Solomon’s was Cambridge with a hint of Shropshire.
Arthur gave her the once-over and whistled appreciatively. “And you must be Lady Serena.”
She inclined her head. Solomon shot his cousin a warning glance. “Sorry. Lady Serena, may I present my cousin Arthur?”
Arthur sketched a bow from his chair. “Enchanté,” he said with a refreshing lack of concern for proper French pronunciation. “You’re much more beautiful than I was expecting, seeing as you’ve been taking liberties with our Sol.”
And yes, she had just been making a silent vow to be civil if it killed her, but she couldn’t be expected to let that slide. “That’s funny, because you’re much less mouthwatering than I was expecting, seeing as you’re Solomon’s cousin.”
Solomon flushed, and it was her turn for his warning glance, but Arthur laughed good-naturedly. “Perhaps I’ll just let you go and speak to Father.”
Solomon offered her his arm. They went through several unoccupied fitting rooms before emerging in the true back of the shop: a low-ceilinged room furnished with two long tables, at which half a dozen men sat and sewed by the light from several enormous windows. At the near end of the right-hand table, a heavyset man in his mid-forties was cutting out a coat. His blond hair was darker than Solomon’s and liberally streaked with gray, but his abstracted frown was very familiar. Serena assumed that his half-glasses were truly necessary. When he looked up, his eyes were brown, not hazel.
“Ah, Solomon,” Mr. Hathaway said in a tone not calculated to reassure. “Just the man I’ve been wanting to see.”
Solomon gulped. “Lady Serena, may I present my uncle, Mr. John Hathaway?”
Mr. Hathaway bowed very politely. “A privilege, my lady.”
“The same, I’m sure.”
He ushered them into a cramped office with only one tiny, high window. “Sol, I’ve had six ladies in since this morning wanting to buy our cloth. I thought I’d need a pair of shears to cut Lady Blakeney loose! You ought to realize that the margin of profit on a length of dyed cloth is much lower than on a finished garment. I was happy to contribute toward a new gown for Lady Serena since she is being so helpful to us, and the hangings for the Ravenshaw Arms are a large enough order to be profitable, but we aren’t a wholesaler, you know.”
Solomon looked hurt, but he stood his ground. “I was meaning to talk to you about that, Uncle. I hate to see a profitable market go to waste. Have you considered going into partnership with Mrs. Cook?”
A deep flush suffused the tailor’s cheeks. Apparently Solomon had got that trait from his father’s side of the family. “Mrs. Cook? Why should you ask? Simply because she comes to dinner occasionally and—and has been so good as to take Clara on as her assistant—”
Serena glanced at Solomon. He was trying to hide a smile. “Of course, Uncle. But surely you’ve noticed that she orders her material through Hyams. Mrs. Cook has a good eye for color and design, but she will never rise to the top of her profession so long as her draper uses such inferior dyes. I worry that Clara’s formative years should be spent in anything less than a truly modish establishment.”
Mr. Hathaway cleared his throat nervously. “Well, when you put it like that—and Mrs. Cook is a woman with a good head on her shoulders.”
“Mrs. Cook is a fine woman,” Solomon agreed gently. “And Arthur and Clara and Jack are very fond of her.” He met his uncle’s sharp eyes guilelessly. “It was just an idea.”
“Mm, well, I’ll think on it.”
“Thank you, Uncle. But my real reason for coming by was to bring you this.” Solomon dipped a hand in his pocket and came up with two hanks of brilliantly colored embroidery thread and a set of pale cream handkerchiefs. Each item had a scrap of like-colored cloth tied round it.
For the first time, Mr. Hathaway broke into a smile. “You matched them perfectly! Clever lad.”
Solomon smiled proudly back. “We match any color. I’ll send the new batches of pearl gray and bottle green round to the warehouse tomorrow. Have you any commissions for me?”
“Actually, we’ll need a large quantity of your black. It looks like Lady M.’s going to stick her spoon in the wall any day now.”
Solomon nodded. “Will do. Is that all?”
Mr. Hathaway’s eyes flickered to Serena. “I’m not sure. Would you mind fetching my orders records from behind the counter?” Solomon hesitated, glancing at Serena. “Solomon?”
“Lady Serena, why don’t you come with me?” Solomon suggested. “I can show you—”
She was tempted to escape, and that decided her. “I’m fine here, thank you.”
Solomon’s lips tightened, and he left the room. Mr. Hathaway regarded Serena over the top of his half-moon glasses. So this was the effect Solomon was going for with his own spectacles. He didn’t come close to his uncle’s mild, shrewd scrutiny. Perhaps in twenty years he’d have managed it. She realized with a pang that she would never know. They were unlikely to still know each other.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Mr. Hathaway said.
She really didn’t need this. “All true.”
“I’ve also heard that you and my nephew were seen in a compromising position Saturday night.”
So they had been seen kissing in the hallway; it was all over London. She had known she shouldn’t, she had known it was stupid—but that was precisely the trouble. She had known, and she hadn’t been able to stop herself. For a brief moment, she hadn’t cared. Well, she would have to carry it off now. She would have to pretend that she was in control of this thing, that she had meant to do it.
Mr. Hathaway’s desk was a mess, covered in paper and books and even a pair of scissors and a few spools of thread. That’s no way to run a business, Serena thought. It didn’t make sense—the shop was obviously doing splendidly—but that slight feeling of superiority gave her courage anyway. “Also true,” she said calmly.
He harrumphed, his eyebrows rising in surprise. “What precisely is your interest in the boy?”
Serena raised her eyebrows back. “Your nephew is very charming.”
“I won’t stand by and see him made a May game of.”
“As much as I admire your plain speaking, Mr. Hathaway, it’s really none of your affair.”
“That boy’s welfare is very much my affair. Sol’s a dear lad, but he needs looking after. I doubt he understands that the likes of you don’t condescend to care for the likes of him. I’m sure you have your uses for him, and perhaps you even find him amusing. But when you’re tired of him you’ll toss him out on his ear and he won’t be able to bear it. I don’t know how far you are in his confidence, Lady Serena, but his brother was killed in Spain a year and a half ago.”
She was having trouble breathing again. How dare he? As if that were something she should be tactfully informed of by relatives.
“There were times . . .” Mr. Hathaway faltered, and though his face closed completely after a moment, Serena knew what she had seen. She felt infinitesimally more charitable toward him. “It broke my heart to see him.”
Serena would have laid odds that that wasn’t what he had been about to say.
“Now he’s finally back on his feet, and I’ve no desire to see all that undone by—I beg your pardon, my lady—a careless flirt. For the boy’s sake, end it now.”
She was silent for a moment. “So you are telling me you think your nephew is a milksop, Mr. Hathaway?”
Hathaway frowned. “Of course not, but he’s a sensitive lad, and—”
“He’s not a lad, Mr. Hathaway. He’s a man grown.” She paused. “I noticed your shop promises to match any color?”
He nodded stiffly.
“We both know it is Solomon who matches every color. Half the ladies in London are dying to have a gown colored by him, and you scolded him for it like a naughty schoolboy. I doubt you pay him a fraction of what he’s worth. Furthermore, both you and your son have had the gall to be puzzled as to what I could possibly see in him.”
Her nerves were buzzing as if she had just drunk eight cups of coffee, but it was a welcome change from the dead, dull feeling of a few minutes ago. “Solomon has decided he is willing to work for you under these conditions. Very well, it is none of my affair. But Solomon will also decide whether or not he is interested in a liaison with the Siren, and when I toss him out on his ear, I trust he will be man enough not to go into a decline.” She couldn’t resist a final scathing witticism. “Should he do so, however, I will be sure to have my chef send you an excellent recipe for a restorative broth. You can spoon-feed it to him while you read him the sermons of Hannah More.”
Mr. Hathaway made a noise in the back of his throat that might almost have been amusement. “That’s very generous of you.” He chewed his lip thoughtfully. “I also heard you haven’t taken a single lover since—well. In years.”
The buzzing in her nerves died out, leaving her feeling worn and tender. Christ, not this. “Or perhaps I haven’t taken any stupid enough to gossip about it.”
“You haven’t precisely been discreet about Solomon.” Mr. Hathaway looked at her speculatively. Serena knew her face was blank, but—her actions spoke for themselves, didn’t they? She’d been kissing Solomon in the hallway like an infatuated girl. Mr. Hathaway had to know how nearly impossible it would be for her to toss Solomon out on his ear. She had already tried, and failed.
This was exactly why she hadn’t taken any lovers since she’d come to the Arms. She’d known it would make her weak. She’d known it would make people see her as a helpless girl again.
Sure enough, Mr. Hathaway smiled. “Well, perhaps I won’t send to my brother for his copy of Hannah More just yet.”
Serena felt suffocated.
“What’s that about Hannah More?” Solomon walked back into the room with a wide, flat book under his arm.
“Lady Serena was merely offering me her opinion as to whether Clara would find her essays edifying.”
Solomon blinked. “But when Father sent her a copy of Practical Piety for her birthday, you said you’d thank him to refrain from trying to turn Clara into a canting milk-and-water killjoy, and then you burned it!”
