A Lily Among Thorns Read Online Free PDF Page B

low tastes, girl. But surely you didn’t expect me to stand by.”
    Solomon swallowed his affront and waited for her to deny the implication. But her birthmark lifted as she raised an eyebrow and smiled. “What do you intend to do about it? The Ravenshaw Arms is mine. I’m of age. I’ll ally myself with whomever I please.”
    “No, you won’t. You’re correct: I can’t take the inn from you. But a father has some rights, even in these degenerate times.” He paused, grimly satisfied. “For example, I could have you put in Bedlam. Self-destructive promiscuity.”
    Solomon clenched his fist. It wasn’t his business. He turned to Lady Serena, waiting for her to put her father in his place, as she had Lord Smollett and the table of young men at dinner. But she didn’t. She just stood there.
    Her eyes reminded Solomon of an experiment he’d done with frozen mercury. He’d put a tiny chip in a glass of water, and in an instant had been left with a block of ice, and at the center a living drop of quicksilver.
    He was abruptly and blindly angry. Only it wasn’t abrupt; it wasn’t new. He’d been filled with blind anger for a year and a half, he realized. And he’d ignored it and shoved it down, because there was no one to blame for Elijah’s death, except God and perhaps Napoleon. There was no point railing at beings who were so far away and so utterly unaffected by his resentment. Lord Blackthorne was right here, and he was going to pay for that look on Lady Serena’s face. “How dare you, my lord? You—you—” He could hear his voice going Shropshire until his words rolledand lilted in his mouth. “She owes you no more loyalty than she owes the Corsican monster! Have you never read that ‘he that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind?’”
    “Keep your nose out of what don’t concern you, boy, or you may lose it. This is between myself and my daughter.” Lord Blackthorne’s snarl would ordinarily have had Solomon hurrying to shut his mouth. But Lord Blackthorne wasn’t a customer and Solomon wasn’t backing down. It was all he could do to keep his voice from swelling until it could have filled every corner of his father’s church.
Everybody fights the way they’re trained
, Elijah used to say.
    “You call her your daughter, but ‘a friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity’! How much more so a father, bound to his child by the most unbreakable and sacred ties of responsibility and natural affection? To suggest what you have suggested—to threaten one who should rely on you for protection—” He gulped for breath and plunged on. “Your daughter has done what none of your blood has done since the Conquest—kept an honest roof over her head with the fruits of her own honest labor! And you come here and insult her under it. Are you not
ashamed
?”
    Lord Blackthorne’s lips were white. “If you were a gentleman I would call you out for that. As it is, you are fit only for horsewhipping.”
    “That’s just as well, for I should certainly not meet you,” Solomon bit out. “Dueling is an outmoded and barbaric custom, fit only for killing off the stupider members of a thoroughly useless class.”
    Lord Blackthorne had been angry. Now, he was simply astonished. “Is he this prosy between the sheets?” he asked his daughter.
    Her smile was cold, but her eyes were dancing now. “Oh no, Father.
There
he is pure poetry.”
    That pulled Solomon up short. Lord Blackthorne wasn’t goingto believe
that
, was he? Solomon could barely believe she’d said it. He blinked again to dispel the images called up by her suggestive tone of voice.
Definitely lacking in verisimilitude
, he told himself.
    But Lord Blackthorne’s jaw dropped, and Lady Serena’s smile widened. “Now get out before I have you tossed out.”
    Lord Blackthorne gave them the look of a cornered wolf. “I want him gone or I shall take steps. I give you two weeks. Good night.” With that Parthian