she thought in horror. How could she have been such a fool?
She tried desperately to back out, whispering, “We should come back later,” but it was too late. Solomon had seen René’s bed over her shoulder.
Sleeping on his stomach under tangled sheets, his head pillowed on René’s shoulder and one arm thrown carelessly across René’s waist, was Elijah.
Chapter 21
The brothers sat in Solomon’s room without speaking. Elijah had dressed and was hugging his bottle-green coat around himself as if it were chilly. It wasn’t. He and Serena had been naked and he’d never been cold. He couldn’t think about that now. He looked back at his brother, and broke the silence with an effort. “How long—how long have you—”
“How long have I been a sodomite?” Elijah asked harshly. “About as long as you haven’t been one, I daresay.”
Solomon flinched. “How long have you and Sacreval been— ”
“Lovers?”
They had always finished each other’s sentences, so eager to move on to the next one. Now Solomon just didn’t have the courage to finish them himself.
“Since I met him in Paris.”
Solomon stared. “You mean, all this time—”
“I hadn’t slept with him again until tonight, if that’s what you’re asking. For God’s sake, I’m working to—” Elijah cut off with a glance at the door. Hang him, he mouthed, his face contorted with misery.
Solomon remembered Elijah staring as the marquis and Lady Pursleigh leaned toward each other in the candlelight, and the pen almost snapping in his hand when he wrote that he was here to hang the marquis du Sacreval. Suddenly Elijah’s constant moody snappishness since his return resolved itself into perfect, gleaming sense. Part of Solomon thought with relief, It wasn’t my fault. Then he thought of something else. “You slept with Sir Nigel.”
Elijah bit his lip. “Sol, please—”
“You did, didn’t you.”
“Yes.” So soft he wouldn’t have heard it if it were anyone but Elijah.
“I don’t know you anymore.”
“You know me better than anyone!”
Solomon shook his head. “I always told you everything.”
“I always hoped you weren’t.”
It took a moment for Solomon to catch his meaning. “You mean, you wished that I—” He couldn’t keep the revulsion from his voice and Elijah didn’t even flinch, just huddled deeper into his ratty old jacket.
“I just didn’t want to be alone.”
“You’ve never been alone.” Solomon barely recognized his own voice. “Not like I was. For a year and a half. I had no one. You—have you ever done anything but lie to me?”
“I can’t lie to you, you know that,” Elijah snapped. “I just—didn’t tell the truth.”
Solomon snorted.
“When I started this job, they told me that the best lie is a half-truth. But I already knew that.”
“I’m glad that our connection had some professional value to you!”
Before he could say anything else, Serena came in through the connecting door with a tea tray. It was late; she must have made it up herself, alone in the dark kitchen. “I thought you could use this,” she said, her voice neutral. Even in the throes of passion she’d kept command of her voice. Only when he’d said he loved her had it risen, breaking like a snapped thread.
Her hair fell across her face and fringes rustled as she set the tray down on the table between them. She gathered her clothes off the floor. Her robe gaped a little as she bent over. Then she handed Solomon a note and walked out. He couldn’t drag his eyes away from her until she’d shut the door.
He opened the torn-off strip of paper. In the same neat hand that filled her account books, it said, A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. He looked at Elijah, who obviously wanted to know what the note said and couldn’t bring himself to ask for fear of a refusal. Silently Solomon pushed it across the table.
Elijah read it and passed it back. “Proverbs Seventeen: Seventeen,” he said wryly. Their eyes met, and for a second Solomon could feel Elijah’s terror beating against his own ribs like a trapped bird. Then Elijah looked away and said, “I wouldn’t have thought Lady Serena even owned a Bible.”
“I said it to her father, actually,” Solomon said.
“Really?”
He nodded. “It was the best impression of Father I’ve ever done, you would have died—” He cut off abruptly. “I’ll do an encore for you sometime.”
Elijah raised his head hopefully. Solomon thought of the look in Elijah’s eyes when he’d sat up in Sacreval’s bed and seen Solomon. It was a look Solomon