Nothing. He opened the second one. Running his fingers along the back of the drawer, he found something solid. A tiny box. He didn’t move it, just shoved aside some stockings and took off the lid. What he saw surprised him so much that he didn’t even hear René sit up in bed.
But when René’s feet hit the floor, Elijah had just enough time to return the lid and hide the box again before his wrists were seized from behind. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” René asked in a dangerous voice.
“Trying to borrow a pair of stockings.” Elijah twisted his head to look at him. “Is there something in your drawer you don’t want me to see?” He reached for the drawer again and just managed to scrabble at some folded breeches before René spun him around.
“I want to see what’s in your secret drawer,” Elijah insisted, laughing, and tried to wrestle himself back around. “Let me go!” René started to tickle him, and he wriggled, and soon enough they were back on the bed.
Serena picked her shift up off the floor and pulled it back over her head.
“You don’t have to say anything back,” Solomon said behind her, sounding as if each word were an effort. “But—it’s a promise I can keep. I didn’t know I was going to say it. But it’s true.”
She turned to glare at him. It was a mistake. He was still naked. It was unnatural and improbable, how beautiful he was. He was perfect, and she was—not. “It’s true today. But will it be true tomorrow? Will it be true in three months when you’ve seen me every day and I’ve snapped your head off half the time and you’re tired of it? You think no one’s loved me before?” She knew what love was. Love was belonging to someone else, it was letting yourself become what they wanted. And then when they were gone, because you weren’t what they needed after all, you didn’t even have yourself. All Serena had was herself.
“I’m not Daubenay,” Solomon said sharply.
“Yes,” she said wildly, “you’re exactly like Daubenay. What I have to give isn’t enough. You’ll never be satisfied until you have it all, until I’m yours and I can’t—I can’t—because after all you love me and how could I—”
“I’m yours.”
The feeling of not being able to breathe returned, like an enormous weight on her chest, the weight of a responsibility she would inevitably fail to live up to. “But I don’t want you!” she said desperately.
He closed his eyes as if in pain, and she hadn’t meant it like that, but what could she say?
Then his eyes snapped open. Serena stood stock-still, remembering how those eyes had watched her tumble headlong into orgasm. “You damn well do,” he said furiously. “And not just for this either.” He made a rude gesture toward his groin. “Last time—when you tried to seduce me—all you wanted that night was my friendship, but you were too much of a coward to ask. You’d rather pervert this into something cheap and dishonest and make this—what we have—even if it’s not love, you shouldn’t make it into a lie.” He let out a short, frustrated breath. “I’d ask you what you were afraid of if you hadn’t made it so damned obvious.”
“I’m going to get Jenny’s note and those vowels from René,” she said. “Go back to sleep.”
“Let Elijah do it.”
“If you want something done right, do it yourself.”
His eyebrow only moved a fraction of an inch, but she flushed all over. She’d liked it when he’d done it for her, and they both knew it.
“It’s not safe,” he said, getting up and pulling on his shirt and breeches. The loss of his bare skin felt like grief.
“René won’t hurt me.” It sounded stupid, when René had hurt her.
Solomon obviously thought so too. “I’m coming with you.”
She sneered, but her hands were trembling, which spoiled the effect. “You would make a terrible spy. There are some jobs that are for one person.”
“Some are for two.”
She didn’t feel like arguing. She had to get somewhere where she wasn’t standing next to an empty bed. “Do as you like.”
So he crept down the hall beside her. She slipped her master key from her pocket and slid it into the lock that Sophy had taken care to oil just that morning. It turned silently. The hinges had been oiled, too, and the door made no noise at all as Serena opened it.
Oh God,