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people he didn’t know and called by a name that wasn’t his. When Elijah was alive, it had usually annoyed him and sometimes entertained him enormously. Now it did neither.
    Shortly after Elijah died, someone who hadn’t known yet had mistaken Solomon for his twin, and he’d gone along with it for a joke the way he sometimes had before, thinking—God, he’d been stupid—thinking that it might make him feel better. After five sentences he’d gone outside and been sick.
    “
Mais pourquoi tu ne réponds pas? T’es pas heureux de me voir
?”
    “I—I’m sorry, I don’t speak French.”
    The man frowned, laughed, and ran his fingers through his dark hair, making it stand straight up. “You do not speak French!” he said in lightly accented English. “Thierry, you are teasing me! And me, I did not even know you speak English!
Tiens
, do not pretend not to know me any longer. I am not so sure I can bear it.”
    He wanted to snap at the man, to tell him to go away and stop making Solomon feel like this. “I’m sorry, but it’s true,” he said gently. “You must have been a friend of my brother’s.”
    The man stilled in a way that reminded Solomon a little of Serena. “Your brother?”
    “Yes, my brother Elijah. He spoke French very well.”
    The man’s dark eyes examined Solomon, suspicious at first and then merely disappointed. “No, I see you are not he. But it is his face, his voice: yes, his brother. I—did not know he was English.” He shook himself a little, and asked more cheerfully, “But Thierry—Elijah”—he pronounced it carefully—“you are his brother, you know where he is—how I can find him?”
    Solomon looked away. “Elijah’s dead.”
    “Pardon?” But from the tremor in his voice, Solomon thought the man had understood.
    “He’s dead. I’m sorry.”
    “Dead. As, he lives no more?”
    Solomon nodded. How many more times would he have to say it?
    All the blood drained from the man’s face. “I see. How did he die, if you please?”
    “He was killed by—” Solomon was about to say
the French
, but thought better of it. “He was shot.”
    The man’s lips parted, as if he himself had taken a bullet. “I see. Please, accept my condolences on the loss of your brother.”
    “Thank you. How—how did you know him? Please, I’d like to hear—” Actually, he could imagine it easily. It would have been very like Elijah to meet the Frenchman by chance and see if he could pass himself off as French, and very like Elijah—who had always been announcing he would build a six—no, an eight—no, a twelve-story house of cards, and who had always laughed when it came tumbling down—to see how far he could take it. Apparently rather far.
    “Well, after all, I did not know him very well.”
    “But—”
    “
Mais non
, I assure you, we did not meet but once or twice.”
    “René!” Lady Serena’s voice, behind them, was more unabashedly happy than he’d ever heard it. Solomon felt a small, irrational pang of jealousy. “How charming to see you again. But what is the matter? You look queer as Dick’s hatband.”
    “Nothing,
ma petite sirène
,” he said as she ushered the two of them into her office. “It will pass. I—only I knew this gentleman’s brother, a little, and he is dead, it appears.”
    Serena stole a glance at Solomon. “Yes,” she said quietly. “He is.” They stood in silence for a few moments. “But I must introduce to you the gentleman who has taken your room. René, allow me to present Solomon Hathaway. Solomon, this is René, marquis du Sacreval and my erstwhile business partner.” She still sounded so damn happy and trying to hide it, like a child who thought she was too old to make a fuss about Christmas.
    The marquis and Solomon evinced equal surprise—Solomon would have almost said the Frenchman looked unsettled. “Did you say Hattaway?” he asked, nose wrinkling. “How very English. And are you from Stratford?”
    “Yes, Hathaway,”