“How dare you, my lord? You—you—” He could hear his voice going Shropshire until his words rolled and lilted in his mouth. “She owes you no more loyalty than she owes the Corsican monster! Have you never read that ‘he that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind?’”
“Keep your nose out of what don’t concern you, boy, or you may lose it. This is between myself and my daughter.” Lord Blackthorne’s snarl would ordinarily have had Solomon hurrying to shut his mouth. But Lord Blackthorne wasn’t a customer and Solomon wasn’t backing down. It was all he could do to keep his voice from swelling until it could have filled every corner of his father’s church. Everybody fights the way they’re trained, Elijah used to say.
“You call her your daughter, but ‘a friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity’! How much more so a father, bound to his child by the most unbreakable and sacred ties of responsibility and natural affection? To suggest what you have suggested—to threaten one who should rely on you for protection—” He gulped for breath and plunged on. “Your daughter has done what none of your blood has done since the Conquest—kept an honest roof over her head with the fruits of her own honest labor! And you come here and insult her under it. Are you not ashamed?”
Lord Blackthorne’s lips were white. “If you were a gentleman I would call you out for that. As it is, you are fit only for horsewhipping.”
“That’s just as well, for I should certainly not meet you,” Solomon bit out. “Dueling is an outmoded and barbaric custom, fit only for killing off the stupider members of a thoroughly useless class.”
Lord Blackthorne had been angry. Now, he was simply astonished. “Is he this prosy between the sheets?” he asked his daughter.
Her smile was cold, but her eyes were dancing now. “Oh no, Father. There he is pure poetry.”
That pulled Solomon up short. Lord Blackthorne wasn’t going to believe that, was he? Solomon could barely believe she’d said it. He blinked again to dispel the images called up by her suggestive tone of voice. Definitely lacking in verisimilitude, he told himself.
But Lord Blackthorne’s jaw dropped, and Lady Serena’s smile widened. “Now get out before I have you tossed out.”
Lord Blackthorne gave them the look of a cornered wolf. “I want him gone or I shall take steps. I give you two weeks. Good night.” With that Parthian shot he stormed out.
They stood staring at each other for a moment. Lady Serena’s smile was gone, but there was something warm and tired in her expression that he’d never seen before. “Has anyone ever told you you’re beautiful when you’re angry?”
He gave an unsteady, surprised laugh, trying to slow the exhilarated pounding of his heart. He felt clean, like a lanced wound. “I don’t know what came over me. That is—it’s my best impression of my father giving a sermon. That’s his accent. My brother Elijah used to fall out of his chair laughing.”
She met his gaze and shook her head regretfully. “You show such a touching faith in my character that I’m almost loath to destroy it. You called me an honest woman. I’m not. I’m one of the most notorious ex-whores in London.” Her face showed perfect unconcern, but she didn’t appear to be breathing. He couldn’t believe that that was what she was worrying about, now, after her father’s threats. Did she care that much what he thought?
He grinned at her. “I know.”
She blinked. “You know?”
“I recognized you as soon as I saw you in the dark.”
Serena couldn’t believe it. He knew, and still he’d defended her.
Once, when she was eighteen and had done something new with her protector, and not liked it, she had lain in bed after he’d gone home and shivered in the dark and thought, No honest man will ever want me now.
She didn’t, generally, let herself dwell on things like that; there was no use moping over facts, and honest men could go hang. But that night she hadn’t been able to help herself. For days afterward, despite her best efforts, she had felt cold and miserable and damaged, somehow, inside—ruined.
Solomon wasn’t looking at her as if he thought she was ruined.
He’d done the same thing six years ago; he’d come into that awful place and looked at her as if he saw her, as if he wanted to see her. And that forced her to see him,