A Lily Among Thorns, page 25
He tried to work on Serena’s last dye, but his heart wasn’t in it. In fact, his heart was dead set against it. Instead, he tried to read a poor translation of one of Chevreul’s papers on indigo, ate an early supper alone in his room, and went to bed.
He dreamed he was thrashing Elijah. He was smashing Elijah’s face with his fist and kicking him in the chest, and he could feel each blow in his own body, each sudden bright blossoming of pain. He could feel it when Elijah’s ribs cracked.
He woke up. It was dark. Serena stood over him, having evidently shaken him awake. She looked so worried about him: her jaw tight and her hand firm on his shoulder, her perfect brows drawn together stubbornly as if she were doing a painful duty but would be damned before she’d let anyone, including Solomon, stop her. He wanted to bury his face in her shoulder and cry, and he thought she might let him. Instead he pulled her down on top of him and kissed her, smelling sweat and almonds.
Reluctantly, he pulled away.
“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely, passing the back of his hand across his eyes. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?”
He sat up, giving her a rueful smile. “Because it was stupid.” She glared at him, not bothering to set her clothes to rights. He had to get out of this room.
“I’m going to get my earrings.” Having a goal cleared his mind, a little. By dint of not looking at her, he managed to get out of bed and pull on his breeches—carefully—before changing his nightshirt for a shirt. “Can I have your key?”
She rolled her eyes, tugged her clothes into place, and went into her room to get it. She came back holding the key, but instead of giving it to him she went past him and out into the hall without a word. He followed her.
The earrings were not where Elijah had seen them. Serena watched him search tensely for a minute or two before suggesting, “Try the ledge inside the chimney. I sometimes hide things there in my room.” He got soot all over his hands, but she was right.
Back in the Stuart room, he set the earrings on his worktable and went to wash his hands in the basin. When he turned around, Serena was turning the box from side to side, trying to see the earrings in the moonlight.
She saw him watching her. “We should examine them for damage,” she said hastily.
He sighed and lit the lamp. Light glinted off the Hathaway rubies lying in her palm. What would they look like in her ears? He glanced at her face. She was gazing at the earrings with a kind of fascinated horror.
Then someone put a key into the lock and turned it, and before Serena could do more than take a step toward the fireplace poker, Sacreval was in the room with a gun pointed straight at them.
Neither of them moved as he shut and locked the door from the inside with his free hand. “Back away from that table, sirène,” he said calmly.
“You couldn’t shoot me,” Serena said with confidence.
He smiled a little sadly. “That is why I am not pointing the gun at you.” And it was true, Solomon realized. The pistol was aimed straight and true for his own heart.
Chapter 24
Serena had a sudden vivid memory of pointing her pistol at the face of some drunk young tulip who’d broken into her room on a dare, back in the early days of the Arms. René had heard and come in. As in all battles, he’d said, the heart makes a better target than the head. Even if you are a little off, you are likely to hit some vital organ or other. She’d said she was never a little off, and he had smiled approvingly and shrugged and said, Have it your own way then, but he’d escorted the tulip off the premises himself and the next day the bar had appeared across her door—
Serena snapped herself back into the present.
“You can’t shoot him either,” she said calmly, still hoping against hope that she could somehow brazen this out. “He’s Elijah’s brother, or have you forgotten?”
“Back away from the table,” René repeated.
The look on his face made her ill. “Oh, but you would, wouldn’t you? And you would think you were doing a fine thing, a noble act, sacrificing your chance at happiness for—God, for what, René? Why the devil did you come back?”
“Back away from the table,” René said through gritted teeth, and he cocked the pistol.
Her back was against the wall and she couldn’t remember moving. The sound of that pistol cocking was the loudest thing she had ever heard. There was still a roaring in her ears like a hundred people cheering.
“Let him go,” she said, her voice sounding distant in her own ears. “Let him go, and I’ll give you whatever you want.”
“I don’t think so,” said René.
“I’ll sign over the Arms to you.”
René looked pitying. “I don’t want the Arms, sirène.”
Of course he didn’t want the Arms anymore. She couldn’t think. She had simply offered him the biggest thing she could think of, like poor Jenny Pursleigh trying to bribe her with sex and her carefully hoarded cash. René had ruined Jenny, too.
“It’s all right, Serena,” Solomon said. “Sacreval isn’t going to shoot me if you just do as he says.” He sounded calmer than she was. Her strength was just an act, had always been an act.
But it was an act she could still do. She drew in a deep breath and pulled herself up and away from the wall. “Very well, René. What is it you do want?”
René nodded at her approvingly, just as he had when she’d threatened the tulip, and she felt sick. “You are holding the Hathaway earrings, are you not?”
She unclenched her fist and held out her hand, palm up, so he could see the rubies in their box.
“Very good, sirène. I want you to examine them very carefully for any kind of catch or spring.”
It was hard to see, even in the light from Solomon’s newfangled clockwork lamp, but after an endless half minute or so she saw the tiny catch. She pressed it back, hard, and the central ruby and its gold backing popped out and lay in her hand.
René smiled in relief. “Excellent. Now, is there a piece of the backing that isn’t attached?”
She looked, and sure enough, a thin strip of gold flipped out and extended from the back center of the gem. It looked almost like a key—she gasped.
“Good,” he said, seeing that she understood. “Now do the same for the other and go and put them in their places.”
“They’ll go back together, won’t they?” Solomon asked worriedly. “Susannah needs them.”
“Hush, Solomon.” Serena walked over to the mantelpiece. The left ruby fitted perfectly into the empty socket at the bottom of Diana’s carved hair—she had always wondered why there was a tiny slit at the back. The other ruby fit equally perfectly into the empty socket in the sun’s biggest right-hand ray. She looked at René, waiting for his signal.
He nodded. “Turn them, I think. It will need both of you. I couldn’t reach, and between that and the guard you set on the room, I’ve had a devil of a time.”
“So sorry to have inconvenienced you.” Why had she posted the guard? If she hadn’t, he would be gone now. He’d only come back for this. If he hurt Solomon—
“Don’t try anything,” René said as Solomon moved closer to her. She tried to calculate how much of Solomon’s body she could shield with her own and decided that it was not enough to take the risk. Together they twisted the rubies, and the entire left-hand side of the mantel sprung forward slightly with an audible click. Serena felt oddly betrayed, as if the Arms had been conspiring with René against her.
“That royal bastard!” Solomon gave the portrait of Charles I a glare, as if that king were somehow to blame for his son’s perfidy to the Hathaways. “He might have told us!”
Serena ignored him, looking at René.
“I want you to open it and take out all the papers that you see in there and burn them. I would like to blindfold you, but I do not have time, so let me warn you now: if you try to keep any back or leave any in there, I will see, and he will die. It is as simple as that.”
She swung open the front of the carving. The back of the carving was covered in clockwork, and a shelf divided the interior into two compartments. The bottom compartment was empty. The top one held a mass of papers. She took them out, careful not to let any fall. “Why the devil would I try to keep any back—”
And then she saw the map. Even in the semi-dark she recognized that bit of Cornish coastline. Ravenscroft. “My father? My father was helping you?” She gaped. “I suppose that explains his sudden interest in me—”
There was a knock on the door. “Sol?” Elijah’s voice asked. René turned white, but his hand did not shake. He raised his eyebrows meaningfully. Solomon didn’t answer. In the listening silence Serena became aware that what she had thought was a roaring in her ears really was people cheering in the room below. She felt dimly that she ought to wonder why.
“Sol, I heard Lady Serena’s voice, I know you’re in there.”
Solomon looked at René, who nodded, very slowly.
“That you, Elijah?”
Serena was amazed at how natural his voice sounded.
“Can I come in?” Elijah asked.
“The devil you can, Li. Serena and I are a trifle occupied at present and we wish you at Jericho.”
When had he learned to lie so well?
Elijah laughed. “To Jericho I go, then.” His footsteps retreated.
René let out his breath. “Now burn them, and I wouldn’t recommend trying to throw acid at me or anything of that nature,” he said softly. Serena was already moving to obey him when Solomon spoke.
“No, wait,” he said.
Serena and René both stared at him.
“You might need those. If your father threatens to lock you up again. Sacreval said he couldn’t shoot you.”
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.
