heated look of hers. “You’re not as wise as you seem if you think most men are any different.”
There was silence. They regarded each other across the table, and Solomon could see this was a fight he couldn’t win. He didn’t even know why they were fighting. He hunched his shoulders and picked up his roll. “Maybe not.”
Lady Serena gave him a surprised frown. For a moment he thought she was going to say something, but there was a sound of breaking china and raucous laughter behind him. She rose from her chair to see what had happened and went pale with anger. Paler, anyway.
Solomon turned; a chubby serving girl was loading broken china onto a tray, to the great amusement of a party of young bloods at a nearby table. Cucumber soup spattered her apron and spread across the floor. He had a very clear memory of one of those men “accidentally” bumping into him as he carried an expensive set of glass pipes across the quad.
Solomon got down on the parquet—carefully, so as not to stain his breeches. “Give me your apron,” he said quietly. “I’ll mop up the soup.”
The girl fumbled at her apron strings, tugging it off and pressing it into his hands. “I’ll get my things as soon as I’m cleared up here, my lady.”
Lady Serena’s eyebrows rose. “Don’t be a fool, Charlotte. There’s a reason I don’t put carpets in the dining room. I’m very pleased with your work so far.” She turned to the group of young men, who tried unsuccessfully to hide their grins. Solomon felt the old knot of useless anger in his throat, watching them. “These—gentlemen—didn’t have anything to do with your little mishap, did they?”
The girl went very still. “No, my lady.”
“Are you sure? I dislike being lied to. And if you imagine I’d allow any of them to exact any sort of retribution from you, you’re an even greater fool than I took you for.”
Charlotte’s lips tightened. “One of them pinched me.”
Lady Serena’s mouth set dangerously. “Did he now? I find that interesting. I thought I’d made it very clear to everyone that I would not tolerate anything of that sort in my establishment.” One of the young men began an insincere apology, but she cut him off. “You gentlemen will kindly take your leave.”
Amusement turned to shocked indignation; Lady Serena’s voice sliced through the angry babble. “Get out. Next time I will bar you from the premises permanently.”
Solomon mentally shifted her from ordinary woman back to intimidating. Very, very intimidating. She was like an ice storm, a whirlwind of glittering frozen shards. And, like the first breath of icy air after sitting dully in a warm house, she made his blood run faster. He wanted to breathe her in.
Maybe you ought to stick to chemistry and leave the overwrought poetry to Elijah, he told himself, concentrating on wiping the last of the soup from the wooden floor’s shining wax coat. But he wasn’t surprised when, grumbling but evidently mortified, the young men hastened to depart.
Lady Serena sat back down, and Solomon put the sodden apron on Charlotte’s tray. “Thank you,” the girl said quietly. He smiled at her and returned to his chair. The hushed silence in the room quickly gave way to pleasantly scandalized murmurings. Only Lady Serena was silent, her eyes fixed on the empty table behind Solomon.
Once, she picked up her spoon, but it rattled slightly against the lip of her bowl. Her eyes flew apprehensively to his, and then she looked away and set the spoon down again with an angry click. It took him a moment to believe the evidence of his own eyes. Her hands were shaking.
He felt a sudden rush of sympathy, remembering more vividly than he had in a long time how badly he’d wanted to seem cool and collected in front of those boys at Cambridge, how he’d tried for a bored drawl and could never, ever manage it. How much he’d hated them for that.
Don’t take it so hard, he wanted to tell her. You were amazing. But he didn’t need to be an empirical scientist to guess that she would hate that. She hadn’t even wanted to admit to being nettled by Lord Smollett. So he waited until the soup plates were removed and two lovely fillets of sole à la Lyonnaise were brought out to venture a “Lady Serena?”
She started like a sleepwalker. “Yes, what is it?” She picked up her first fork and began