this, if she wanted to.
A few drops of summer rain splashed onto her hand and she shook them off. “I could never hate you,” she got out. And yes, she would rather have her teeth pulled with red-hot pincers, but pulling out her teeth would never bring that wild, wary hope into Solomon’s eyes.
And surely nothing, not even this, could be more terrifying than losing him. Serena was tired of putting a brave face on things. She plunged forward.
“I’m no good at hating people, can’t you see that? I try and I try and—oh, Lord Smollett is easy, I hate him right enough, but just look what happened with René. I thought he’d turned on me, I thought he didn’t care what became of me, and I still couldn’t hate him. I gossiped with him, I laughed at his jokes, I persuaded Elijah not to turn him in to the Foreign Office, and it wasn’t because of those marriage lines. It was because the thought of him with a noose around his neck and a knife in his gut made me ill. And what I feel for you—it’s so much more.” It was raining a little harder now, but Serena didn’t move, didn’t even raise a hand to shield her face. Neither did Solomon.
“It’s easy for you to say ‘I love you.’ Plenty of people have loved you and stood by you and told you you were worth the trouble. I—it isn’t easy for me. I don’t know how to say it, I don’t know how to do it. I don’t even know if this is love. It’s deeper than I thought it would be—if I tried to uproot it, it would pull my heart out of my chest. I need you so desperately. I need you to make demands, I need you to hurt me. I need you to love me, and you could stop. You could decide I’m not what you wanted after all, that I’m not worth the trouble, and I won’t be able to stop feeling this way, I won’t be able to hate you, I won’t be able to live—”
Tears stood in her eyes and Solomon, Solomon was looking at her like she was the Holy Grail, like she was the sacred thing he’d been seeking all his life.
“Oh, God, Serena, I—” he began incoherently. Then he stopped himself, smiling shakily. “I’ll try to save the transports and the fevered kisses for a few minutes from now, shall I?”
She stared at her interlocked hands. They were white at the knuckles. A drop of water fell from her hair into her eyes. “I would appreciate that.”
“You’ve never made any particular effort to be pleasant to me, have you?”
She shook her head.
“You’ve been quite a lot of trouble, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” she said in a low voice.
“I think you’re worth it. And I always will.”
“Why?”
“There isn’t—there isn’t a reason. I just love you.” She opened her mouth to protest and he said, “All of you. Even the wretched parts. Even your nasty streak and your boring gray gowns.”
She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what more she needed to hear.
“Now you’re just fishing for compliments,” he said.
“I am not,” she said indignantly, and he stopped trying to hide his smile. He pulled her to him, turning her so her back was to his front, and wrapped his arms around her. “I love you because you understand me,” he whispered in her ear. “I love you because you never give up. I love you because we both hate that Jack Ashton doesn’t pay his bills on time, and because there is no dye that can match the color of your eyes.” He nipped her ear. “Besides, have you ever looked in a mirror?”
She hit him, laughing, and then they were tussling and swatting at each other, giggling and dizzy and light-headed. They fetched up against an apple tree, shaking water down on themselves, and a small red-and-gold apple fell from the tree past Solomon’s shoulder. Solomon reached out and caught it with unwonted grace.
“‘As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons,’” she quoted, as he dried the fruit on his sleeve. “And what am I? A Thorn among the lilies.”
He stilled in his polishing, and met her gaze. “‘Thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot in thee,’” he promised softly, “no spot save this”—he brushed a thumb over the birthmark on her brow, and she