Page 11 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

I have placed your newest manuscript into the publication schedule six months early, per your request. By the by, I recently encountered a bizarre rumor that you and your uncle drowned in a deluge in Epping Forest. I trust you are well?

— from Jean Laventille, publisher, to Georgiana Cleeve

“Do we keep brandy in the house?”

Edith Cleeve, the dowager Countess of Alverthorpe, blinked up from the engrossing state of her correspondence. “I beg your pardon?”

It had been three hours since her mad confrontation with Cat in Epping Forest, and Georgiana was still reliving it, regularly and repeatedly, with an unfortunate pinpoint focus upon the precise shape and color of Cat’s mouth.

She stifled a groan and tipped her head back against the armchair. She brought one hand up to cover her face, which was scrubbed of rainwater and still somehow vaguely hot. “Nothing. Never mind.”

“Does this have something to do with your abortive trip to the haunted churchyard? I had thought you meant to remain there all day—I was planning a lengthy walk with Bacon in the park—and yet here you are back in time for tea.”

Bacon, at the proximity of his name to the word walk, began turning hasty circles on the floor, and so Georgiana picked him up and relocated him to her lap.

His little body was heavy and soothing, and she attempted to get hold of herself.

“Unfortunately, yes. I encountered Lady Darling there. Again.”

Now her mother truly seemed interested. She replaced her correspondence within the writing desk and turned to face Georgiana. “Is that so?”

“Mm. Hence the desire for something alcoholic and, er, searing.”

Edith gave a delicate cough. “I see. I take it that your encounter did not bear fruit?”

“You could say that.” Georgiana resisted the urge to bury her face in Bacon’s fur and whimper.

“Do you suppose she followed you there? That does seem irregular.”

“Unfortunately,” Georgiana said, “no. She arrived first. She was—” She pondered explaining the cart situation and decided not to attempt it. “She was certainly there first. I am quite sure of it. I believe I… surprised her.”

“Do you think she means to set her next novel there? At Saint Botolph’s?”

“I don’t know.” Georgiana stroked the fine edge of Bacon’s floppy left ear. “I did not come to the point of inquiring, somehow.”

Hannah, their maid, entered with the furnishings for tea before Edith could mount a suitable reply.

There was a brief wrangling of cups and saucers and small cakes, and then, when Hannah withdrew, Edith’s gaze returned to Georgiana’s face.

“Does it seem possible to you that you might simply speak to Lady Darling? If you discuss your next project with her, perhaps you can agree to take divergent paths.”

“If she is deliberately imitating my work, do you not think that divulging my plans might effect precisely the opposite outcome?”

“Hmm.” Edith took a sip of her tea, steam rising around the planes of her face.

She looked younger than her years, though in truth she was not so far past youth.

She had been seventeen when she had married Georgiana’s father, the late earl, and only twenty-two when she had given birth to Georgiana, the third and last Cleeve child.

At forty-seven, her face was unlined and angled at the jaw, her chin pointed and her eyes the same light blue as Georgiana’s own.

“If you cannot diverge from Lady Darling, has it occurred to you that you might converge with her instead?”

Georgiana choked briefly upon tea vapors. “I beg your pardon?”

“Collaborate, I mean. On your next book. Publish together.” Edith’s voice was bright and earnest, as though such a thing were not utterly and completely impossible.

“You are both so adored by your enthusiastic readers. To combine your efforts would neatly eliminate any chance of similarity or imitation, while also providing your zealous admirers with a novel… er, a novel novel, as it were.”

“That is not—”

“Perhaps a special binding,” Edith went on blithely. “Gilt edges—have you had a printing with gilt all the way around yet?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Have you seen the way they’re marbling the endpapers these days? I saw one of the Austen novels in the shops last week with them, and the most delightful illustrations inside—watercolor on vellum, I think. One of those splendid gift editions.”

“Mother,” Georgiana said firmly, “no.”

Edith performed a restrained frown. “Whyever not?”

“It’s out of the question.”

Agitation pulsed through her at the idea, a hot tide of—of—what was it?

Some unnameable emotion. More than one. The very notion of setting out to confront Cat again—to spend more time in her presence—sent panic vibrating through Georgiana’s chest.

She could not deny the furious hunger that had risen inside her when she’d seen Cat’s rain-damp face in the shadows of Epping Forest. She had wanted Cat Lacey since before she knew what it meant to want.

At fifteen, Georgiana had fantasized madly about the ways she might foster conversation between them, imagined a thousand circumstances in which Cat’s bottomless glance might fall upon her—might see her as no one ever had.

She had thought about Cat—her face, her hands, the shape of her waist—in ways she had never once thought about the neighboring boys or the fellows from school that her brothers brought home.

And then, the next year, she had stumbled upon Cat locked in an embrace with one of the village girls in a shadowed corner behind the stables. Georgiana had crept silently away, flushed all over, one hand clapped to her mouth and the sight imprinted upon her mind.

It had proven remarkably clarifying. She’d wanted that —the hot slide of lips and tongue, the press and give of flesh. And she’d wanted it with Cat.

It had been almost a decade, and it seemed she still wanted it.

And she could not have it. It was a ludicrous desire, a wish as far into fantasy as the supernatural events of her own books. She knew what happened to those she grew close to. Iris had lost her standing in society. Selina had nearly lost her library. And her mother and brothers…

Georgiana took a careful sip of tea and did not look at Edith when she spoke. “I imagine such an edition would be lovely, Mother, but it is not to be. There will be no convergence because I will not be writing about Saint Botolph’s. I have renounced High Ongar entirely.”

Edith placed her teacup back in her saucer. “Oh, Georgie, have you? You seemed so enthusiastic about the project.”

Damn it, she had been. In the past days, there had been enormous public demand for articles about the haunted churchyard, and she’d had the notion of publishing rapidly to capitalize upon the general fervor. Except…

Except she could not stop picturing Cat’s expression. When Georgiana had demanded to know if Cat was there for revenge, Cat had looked dumbfounded. As though such a thing had never occurred to her.

Could it be so? Was the woman really so pure of heart that she did not nurture her grievances against the entire Cleeve family?

Georgiana certainly had not forgotten what her father had done. How she herself had failed to act. Her rivalry with Lady Darling seemed almost foolish, somehow, when she recalled that Lady Darling was Cat Lacey. If Cat wanted Saint Botolph’s, then Georgiana supposed she would let Cat have it.

“The project did not satisfy me,” she said finally. “I have been contemplating alternatives all day.”

Edith was eyeing her appraisingly. “Have you, my dear? In that case—have you heard that Renwick House is open for visitors?”

Georgiana sat straighter in her chair. She had heard that about Renwick House—had had the news from her man of business and been briefly electrified by the information.

She had always been fascinated by the place, drawn to its strange, eerie charm.

Even as a child, she had wanted to step inside those dark imposing walls and uncover the house’s vast secrets.

But as quickly as the idea had come, she’d set it aside. Renwick House was too near Woodcote Hall. Too near to Percy and Ambrose.

“No,” she said. “I mean, yes, I did hear it, but—no. I can’t go there.”

“Georgie,” murmured her mother, and Georgiana looked down at her own fingers against Bacon’s dense white fur so that she did not have to meet her mother’s eyes.

After Georgiana had left—after Edith had gone with her—Alistair Cleeve had not let his sons associate with either of them. Georgiana had tried to write—to Ambrose, to Percy—but she knew the old earl had a habit of intercepting their mail. She’d never heard anything back.

And then one day, she’d stumbled across Percy in a London coffeehouse, his face pink with laughter as he’d sat among his friends.

He’d leapt to his feet and tripped his way across the room to embrace her—and for just a moment she’d thought that everything might be all right.

She had thought that she could have everything: her independence and her family both.

She’d been wrong.

She and Percy had met off and on for weeks in between Percy’s haphazard studies at Trinity College—until the day she’d come across him in a park, walking alongside a thin-lipped older man. The Regius Professor of Divinity, she’d learned later. Too late.

My sister, Percy had said, but the man had interrupted.

I know who she is, he had said. Briskly. Firmly. I was under the impression from your father, Mr. Cleeve, that your family had endeavored to eliminate this stain upon your name.

Percy’s mouth had opened to protest, but the man had not finished.

If you hope to secure a living in the Church, my boy, you cannot permit yourself to be soiled by this sort of association. Surely you must know that by now.

The professor had nodded at Georgiana then, polite, passionless. And then he’d turned his back on them both and walked away.

She’d felt hot all over, and then cold, frozen, sick with shame.

She knew—of course she had known that she’d demolished her own reputation by revealing herself as a Gothic novelist. But she had not realized until that moment—until the professor’s cool, brusque words had slid between her ribs—that anyone who kept company with her might be so destroyed.

But she should have known, shouldn’t she? She’d cost her mother everything. Even her family.

She could not let that happen to Percy too.

She’d wheeled around, putting her back to Percy, fighting the burn in her nose and throat. And when he’d tried to follow, she had not let him come after her.

When their father had died two years later, Georgiana had not opened any of the correspondence that had come from her brothers. Though she knew her mother wrote to them, Georgiana had cut them off, a merciless slide of steel against the taproot of their family.

She had done it to protect them. And she’d been right.

Without Georgiana to drag him down in the eyes of society, Percy had secured his living.

Ambrose had taken up his new seat in the Lords.

She’d seen in the papers last year that Ambrose had married, and the news had pierced her chest like a knife.

Like an icicle, cold all the way down to her heart.

She missed them, and she loved them, and it was because she loved them that she would not let them near her.

You chose this, she told herself fiercely. Do not pity yourself for the life that you devised.

Edith’s voice intruded gently on her thoughts. “Dearest. You need not encounter your brothers if you do not wish to. Wiltshire is large—there is room enough for you and your brothers both.”

Georgiana hesitated.

She had not thought to return to that familiar countryside ever in her life.

Wiltshire might as well have been erased from the map of England in her mind—she could not go back.

But then again, what her mother had said was true.

Renwick House was an hour or more from Woodcote Hall.

The land there was wide and open beneath the blue expanse of sky, and perhaps—

Perhaps she did not need to foreclose the entire western part of England in order to keep her brothers safe.

“I do,” she said after a long moment, “wish to see the inside of the haunted manor.”

Her mother smiled, small and satisfied. “I shall take it as done then.”

Georgiana took a breath. She stroked a palm across Bacon’s glossy back, then looked at her mother. “All right,” she said firmly. “On to Renwick House.”