I didn’t start it?” she asked nastily.
“Because I know my uncle and I know you. Why do you think I didn’t want to leave you alone with him?”
She blinked. “I naturally assumed you thought I’d say something cutting if you weren’t there to restrain me.”
Solomon smiled at her. “I wasn’t worried. You’re polite enough when you’re not unduly provoked.”
Her head started to ache. “What is wrong with all of you?”
Solomon chewed his lip. “Was it that bad? I was only gone a minute—”
“I am not polite,” she said despairingly.
His smile returned, wider this time. “Is that all? It’s not as if I said you were a sensible girl with a good head on her shoulders. You can be debonair, faintly sinister, and polite, you know.”
Damn him, he was laughing at her. “Why must you always be so damned patient and reasonable?”
“Well, I could be unreasonable and accusatory if you prefer, but I don’t think you’d find it entertaining after the first few minutes.” When her scowl didn’t lift, he said, “Cut line, Serena! You’d have been twice as annoyed if I’d assumed you’d started it, anyway.”
“Don’t act like you know me! You don’t. None of you know me.” She saw with dull satisfaction that he was beginning to lose his patience. Not surprising, of course. She could try the patience of a saint.
“I may not know you, Serena, but I’ve figured out by now that you never pass up the opportunity to enact a Cheltenham tragedy. If you don’t want to tell me what my uncle said, well and good, but don’t insult both our intelligences with this claptrap.”
“Damnation, I don’t enact Cheltenham tragedies!”
“Then what the hell is this? What are you so bloody upset about?”
“Your uncle thinks we—I don’t even know what he thinks. I think he likes me.”
“That’s what this is about?” He stared at her. “Are you so determined to be universally detested?”
Frustration welled up inside her. She couldn’t explain it; he would never understand.
He shrugged. “So you can enjoy dramatically disillusioning him when you toss me out on my ear.”
She was a bit put out that he could sound so cavalier about it. “Before that, he as near as told me I was a dissolute lady, born with a silver spoon in my mouth, trifling with your naive affections for the sake of my own high-born amusement.”
Solomon’s jaw dropped. “But that’s ridiculous. You work for a living, same as anyone! He might as well say I—” His face changed. He rubbed at his temple, looking defeated. “But he does think that, of course.”
“He does?” she asked, startled.
He shrugged. She’d noticed that he always did that when he was angry with someone on his own account, as if it wasn’t important. As if it didn’t matter how he felt. “Oh, yes. When I started working there after Cambridge, he was always at me to weigh my options, not to let him hold me back. He never lets me sit behind the counter or do fittings, because that would be too menial for me—but he never lets me touch the books either, because I think he thinks anyone who’s half a toff and went to university must have a wretched head for business. He thinks I’m just dabbling and when I get bored, I’ll take Uncle Dewington’s allowance and go. I’ve been working for him for four years now, and he just won’t—”
“I haven’t traded a poke for a fistful of the ready in five years, but no one’s read that notice in the Gazette.”
He sighed. “I’m awfully sorry.”
“It’s hardly your fault.”
“I mean, I’m sorry about my uncle. I’ll explain to him that you’re not trifling with me—”
“Please don’t,” she said in heartfelt tones.
Solomon laughed. “Sorry, forgot about the horrors of being approved of. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, eh? I guess you’ll just have to do what you want.”
Tears pricked at her eyes. “What if I don’t know what I want?”
“We’ll have to wait and see then, won’t we?” He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at her as if that was nothing, as if he really was willing to wait as long as it took, as if he didn’t mind waiting. As if he thought they might still know each other in twenty years.
“I told him that when I tossed you out on your ear you were unlikely to go into a fatal decline.”
He smiled oddly. “Perhaps you give me too much credit.”
“I generally find I don’t give you enough,” she