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