with the plan. When were they supposed to get another opportunity this good to catch Pursleigh? Who knew when he would meet with René again?
“Come,” Solomon called. She pushed the door open. He was in stocking feet and shirtsleeves, bent over something at his worktable. The lamp burned beside him. The Y of his braces defined his broad back and shoulders. His Arms livery had been made for someone slightly smaller, so the black breeches clung to his backside in an extremely impressive manner.
“What went wrong at the masquerade?”
He stood up and turned toward her. Serena sighed. “We don’t know,” he said. “Elijah thinks maybe we were wrong again, and Lady Pursleigh is the traitor. She passed Sacreval a note.”
Serena blinked. Henwitted Jenny Warrington, a spy? “I’ll check her banking records, too,” she said. “But I can’t imagine we’ll find anything. More likely she has a tendre for René.”
“Well, in that case Pursleigh decided to use IOUs, or maybe the paper they were written on, to communicate with Sacreval instead of cards. Either Spratt missed him hiding the paper in his costume, or he went and got them sometime in the five minutes we weren’t watching him.” He shook his head. “As if trying to blackmail poor Ravi weren’t bad enough, that blackguard Apollo may be responsible for the escape of a traitor.”
Serena’s heart swelled when she remembered Solomon facing down Lord Teasdale with perfect politeness. She’d seen him hesitate just inside the French doors and thought she’d have to intervene herself; it might have proven difficult to do so unobtrusively. But she should have known Solomon wouldn’t stand by and allow someone else to be bullied. “Do you really think I cut off their ears?” she asked.
Solomon smiled wickedly. “Don’t you?”
She looked down her nose, as well as she could at someone half a head taller than her. “Of course not. I prefer not to leave a mark.”
“So do you have any pointers for me?”
Serena frowned, thinking. “It wasn’t my style at all, but very effective in its own right. I felt as if I were being scolded by my governess.”
Solomon rolled his eyes. “Thanks.”
“I lived in fear of my governess!” she protested. “I assure you, her memory invokes an almost primeval terror.”
“My grandfather was a schoolmaster,” Solomon admitted. “And then, of course, my father was a tutor for a while.”
“Well, I’m grateful none of your family has ever shown any interest in a life of crime. The juxtaposition of your calm, almost professorial air with the brutal subject matter and the unspoken physical menace was really quite chilling.”
“Take off the wig,” he commanded suddenly.
She blinked. “I’m going to take it all off in a minute, but—”
“Please,” he said a little desperately, “just take it off.”
She did so, conscious that her hair must be flattened and disheveled underneath. He watched her with the quiet, perfect focus he could slip into so easily, as if he were content to observe indefinitely. She’d seen him give it to crucibles and organs and dress seams, but rarely to people. He gave it to her, though, sometimes. What did he see? She combed her hair ineffectually with her fingers. “I needed a costume no one would expect me to wear.”
“You really did look like an angel.”
“But if you had to choose a winged creature to represent me, it would be a harpy: yes, I know.”
His eyes darkened. “Sometimes around you I have trouble remembering the difference.”
She frowned in surprise, and then he was kissing her fiercely, his tongue in her mouth and his hands tangled in her hair.
Chapter 20
“I don’t ever want you to be anything but what you are,” he said raggedly. He kissed her jaw, her pulse, the curve of her neck; she tilted her head to let him, to silently beg for more. “You can be hateful sometimes, but you’re honest.”
“Is this about my rouge?” she inquired, concentrating so as not to sound breathless, and he laughed, his mouth opening against her collarbone.
“This evening, when I saw you—all I wanted—in the world—was for you to stand up straight—and say something”—his hands were on her waist, holding her steady as his mouth inched back up her neck to suck at a sensitive spot just above her racing pulse—“sardonic—and raise an eyebrow—”
“If I realized it would have this effect, I’d have stopped raising them days ago.”
He pulled back for a moment to look at her. “That would have been a damned shame.” He kissed her birthmark.