she sat on the edge of the bed. The candlelight made her look rich and rounded, darkness between her breasts and caressing her legs where the fringe of her wrap shivered and shook when she moved.
She cleared her throat. “So, the prodigal son returns,” she said, in a husky voice that told him she was looking at him, too.
He half-laughed and tried to keep his eyes on her face. “You noticed Mother made a fatted calf joke before we’d been here half a day.” Of course, if Elijah was the prodigal son, then he was the dutiful, bitter one. There was a truth to that that disturbed him. “Do you mean that I envy him?”
She shook her head. Probably she hadn’t, but he found he wanted to talk to her about it anyway. Even here, in the bosom of his family, it was her he turned to. “I’m ashamed of it,” he said. “Nothing’s ever made me happier than knowing he’s back. But mixed with the joy—I’m right back to envying him for dressing better than me, for heaven’s sake. I want to have outgrown that.”
“Do you want to know a secret? I think the way he does his hair looks rather silly.”
He gave her a quick, pleased smile, then looked away. “Mother will be so upset when she finds he’s going back to France.”
“René can never come back to England now, can he?” She sounded sad.
Solomon couldn’t help feeling that Sacreval didn’t deserve all this devotion. “No, and Elijah won’t come back either. He’ll run off to France, and I’ll never see him again.” He was going to be alone all over again. And this time, he would know that it was because Elijah chose it.
Serena made a restless, abrupt gesture. “You can’t blame him for being angry with you.” She sounded angry, too. She thought he was whining, probably. And he was.
“I know he’s right,” he said steadily. “I am the dull, conventional one. But I’m trying to—I’m doing my best. I don’t know what more I can do.”
Serena wrapped the end of one of her braids around her finger, her mouth twisting. “Solomon, you aren’t the dull, conventional one.”
“Aren’t I?”
“No. I agree it might look that way—”
He snorted.
“—to people who aren’t very bright,” she finished. “You’ve got to stop thinking he’s just the calf-bound, gilt-edged edition of you. It isn’t fair to either of you. You’re two different people.”
“Then why—Serena, he said it. And that’s why you don’t believe I love you, isn’t it? Because you think I’m just a narrow-minded parson’s son who can’t possibly really want you. No matter how many times I tell you I don’t care—”
“It’s easy for you not to care!” she snapped. “It’s easy for you not to consider it—for the moment, anyway, because no one’s making you. Solomon, this isn’t about you!”
He blinked. “What’s it about, then?”
She closed her eyes for a moment. “Solomon, do you remember what I said to you after we kissed in the hallway, that first time?”
His lips tightened. “You said it was boring.”
“But was it boring?”
He swallowed, remembering the way she’d trembled, the way the wool of her gown and the curve of her hips had felt under his hands. How shy and sweet her lips had been under his. “No.”
“I was afraid,” she said, a weight and a quiver in her voice that told him she meant, I am afraid. “I was afraid and I said what I knew would hurt you. Elijah—when he said that to you, he wasn’t angry with you. He was just angry, because he was sick of being afraid. Because now you knew his deepest, dirtiest secret, and you could do whatever you liked with it. And why shouldn’t he be afraid? You didn’t react well when you found out about René. And then—do you think he liked you to see the way Varney treated him? He didn’t want to make even scum like that angry enough at him to want revenge. Do you think that’s the figure he wanted to cut in front of his brother?”
“I don’t think any the worse of him for it,” Solomon protested, but he was starting to feel sick.
“Don’t you?” she demanded intently. “You blamed him for it. ‘I hate to see you exposing yourself to the insults of men like Varney,’” she mimicked. “As if he did it on purpose!”
Was that how it had sounded to Elijah? It wasn’t what he’d meant—was it? He just wanted his brother to be safe. “Sacreval