Page 15 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

Georgiana was forced to take another swallow of the liquid in order to restore herself before she could respond. “She?” she managed finally. “Do you—ah—mean Miss Lacey?”

Graves had begun her slow walk toward the door, but she paused at Georgiana’s question. “Miss Lacey is in the library.”

“Oh. So by she, you meant…?”

But Graves had already begun to walk again, and she did not turn or answer.

She’s out there.

Good God.

Georgiana gazed down at her breakfast of brown on brown, then sighed and delivered the plate of eggs to Bacon.

After the dog had finished his breakfast—with far more enthusiasm than Georgiana thought reasonable—she set off to wander the house in search of the library.

She had not seen it in her brief exploration of the north wing the day before, nor on her walk to and from her bedchamber in the south wing.

She proceeded perpendicularly this time, Bacon at her heels, and peered into rooms as she crossed through the oratory and onward.

She passed a dilapidated sitting room, a truly terrifying portrait gallery, and what might have been an orangery, except all the trees were dead, before she finally came upon the library. The door stood wide, and the room itself was nearly as large as the oratory, and—

Oh. Georgiana’s heart squeezed.

It had been a beautiful place. She could tell it had been, its past incarnation like a palimpsest visible beneath the current ruin.

The floor was tiled with huge black-and-white marble squares.

There were shelves on shelves on shelves of books, and a balcony accessible by ladder that wrapped around the circumference of the room.

The bindings had all matched, once—had probably been crimson.

But the ceiling on the south side of the room had partially collapsed and was open to the elements.

All the books on that side were water-damaged and sun-faded, and—

Goodness. There were birds roosting on the southern shelves, which were quite thoroughly decorated with the evidence of the birds’ long-term residence.

On the north side of the room, curled in a sun-dappled armchair, sat Cat. She was wrapped in a cloak against the wintry chill in the room and every scrap of her attention was directed toward the book in her lap.

Georgiana allowed herself a single moment to become accustomed to Cat’s potency. Cat was nibbling, as she tended to do, on the ruby-red curve of her lower lip. Her left forefinger slid languorously back and forth across the scrolled wooden arm of the chair.

Georgiana swallowed and then cleared her throat to get Cat’s attention.

Cat looked up, startled. She stiffened when she saw Georgiana and then, very slowly, set the book down and swung her feet to the floor.

She had her shoes off. Her left stocking had a hole at the toe.

“You cannot say,” Cat said deliberately, “that I have followed you this time. I was here first.”

From the stubborn lift of her chin and the sheer defiance of her tone, Georgiana rather suspected Cat had slept in the room in order to stake her claim.

“No,” Georgiana said.

Cat scowled at her. “Of course I was. How do you find it possible to argue about objective facts?”

“I don’t mean to argue with you—”

“You have not ceased arguing with me since the moment I encountered you hiding in a shrub!” Cat’s mouth had taken on the suggestion of a pout. “Did you not see me inside this room, manifestly here before you entered?”

“No,” Georgiana said again. Curse the woman, could she not sit still for Georgiana’s prepared remarks? “I meant—I knew you were in here. I came here intentionally. To find you.”

The pout deepened for a half a moment and then shivered away into a slightly mollified line. “Oh.”

“I…” Georgiana felt her throat tighten, and she steeled herself. “I think you are right. We can share the house. Share—our ideas. I do not think it out of the question.”

It was not impossible—merely difficult, for a thousand different reasons.

It was terrible to be in such close proximity.

Even now, as she waited for Cat’s response, her eyes skimmed the line of Cat’s jaw, the delicate skin beneath, the way the sunlight turned her dark hair into a tapestry of umber and russet and almost-gold.

She wanted Cat, and she could not want her, and the fact that Cat loathed her—was justified in her antipathy—only made it all worse. She wanted Cat to say no—to say the idea was a mistake. To go.

And she wanted Cat not to go, and the tension drew out long and slow between them.

“You do not think it out of the question?” Cat said finally.

“No,” Georgiana said. It was, perhaps, the third time she’d uttered the word, which suggested her general feeling of doom when she considered Cat Lacey. “I was too hasty yesterday. I was… overset. By all the bats.”

There was a brief moment in which Cat regarded her coolly. And then, as Georgiana watched, Cat’s mouth tilted up on one side.

There was amusement in her expression, but no mockery. If there was a joke, it was one that was meant to be shared.

Her smile had always been so. Her pleasure was open, generous, easy —as though it cost her nothing to smile like that. As though Georgiana might smile back the same way.

“All right,” Cat said. “No bats in your book, then. I’m taking them for myself.”

Cat’s voice was pitched low, throatier than Georgiana’s own, and dear God, Georgiana’s wits had been scattered to the wind by that smile, because she could hardly make sense of the fact that Cat had accepted her proposal. That both of them were going to remain.

She tripped over Bacon, which was the moment she realized she’d begun to back away. She regained her balance, apologized to the dog, and then looked back at Cat, who looked pleased and amused and still distressingly haloed by the sun.

“Indeed,” Georgiana said. “Yes. I had thought… I had prepared some notion of shifts. That is—not shifts. Not—not undergarments. Times. Alternating periods of time.”

Heavenly Mary, she had rehearsed this, and it was still coming out disastrously. Now Cat looked vaguely concerned for her faculties.

She tried again. “I thought we might draw up a schedule for when we will inhabit the various parts of the house so that we need not interfere with one another. And then perhaps in the evenings, at dinner, we can—”

“You mean to come down to dinner then?” Cat said blandly.

Georgiana tried to ignore the heat in her face. “Yes. I thought perhaps over dinner we might discuss our intentions for our manuscripts, and which parts of the house’s history and setting we mean to use. As”—she moistened her lips—“as you said.”

“Mm,” Cat said, as if considering. Suddenly there was a different expression on her face, something Georgiana could not quite make out. Something arch and impudent, there in the shape of her wine-red mouth.

Georgiana’s lower belly turned over.

“Or,” Cat said finally, “we could do it now. Tell me about your book. And your… shifts.”

Georgiana clenched her teeth and grappled for composure. “Surely we don’t need to do it immediately—”

“Why not? It seems more logical to outline our intentions as early on in the process as possible, so that our books do not intersect once again.”

Unfortunately, it did seem logical. Bacon, evidently in agreement with this plan, wandered away from Georgiana to investigate the birds, which greeted his arrival with a sort of noisy avian clamor.

“All right,” Georgiana said. “Fine. Yes. I am here at Renwick primarily for the setting. My manuscript is about a young architect who is hired to complete the construction of a cursed abbey.”

Cat regarded her for a moment without speaking.

Georgiana wanted to squirm under Cat’s dark gaze and absolutely refused to do so. “If you say that you are writing an architect as well, I shall—”

“No,” Cat said, and the sudden bloom of her smile cut off the rest of Georgiana’s sentence. “No, not at all. I like it, though.”

Honestly, the pleasure that Georgiana felt at that scrap of praise from Cat’s mouth was dreadful. Hideous. She blushed harder and cursed herself. “What is yours about?”

“I don’t entirely know just yet. Not architects, though.

” Cat strolled over to the nearest set of shelves and trailed her fingers along the faded bindings.

“I had thought to write about a family cursed not to die; I meant to model their home after Renwick House. But now”—she slipped a book from the shelf and let it open in her hand—“I find myself increasingly interested in the Renwick ghost.”

“The ghost?”

Despite herself, Georgiana was reminded forcefully of Bacon’s strange fascination with the empty wall in her bedchamber, and the housekeeper’s words over breakfast.

She’s out there.

“Oh yes,” Cat said, and she looked up eagerly from the book. “Did you hear her last night? I did not, but Graves said it’s only a matter of time.”

“I don’t—what? Hear who? Graves?”

“The ghost,” Cat said, as though that were obvious.

“The ghost,” Georgiana repeated. “You believe it, then? That there is a ghost in this house?”

“Of course.” Cat’s face was fully animated now, her eyes mirror-bright and her mouth caught between speech and smiling.

Georgiana recalled that expression. A decade had not dulled the intoxicating effect of Cat’s enthusiasm.

“I have not seen the ghost yet, but I spoke to a half dozen people in Devizes who told me all about the hauntings, and Graves has indicated to me where in the library I might find the family histories in order to—” She paused, looking hard into Georgiana’s face. “Wait. Are you not here for the ghost?”

“The ghost was not top of mind, no.”

Cat blinked a few times. “Perhaps our interests are not so similar as our publishing history would suggest. You do believe that there is a ghost here at Renwick House, do you not?”

“Ah—no.”

“You’re joking.” Cat was still blinking more than was usual. “This must be one of the most infamous supernatural locations in England!”

“To be sure. But one must take into account the not-insignificant fact that ghosts are not real.”

“What?” Now Cat looked utterly dumbstruck. “You do not like bats and you don’t believe in ghosts? Are you not a Gothic novelist?”

“Of course I am. I am a writer of novels. Book-length works of fiction. ”

“Good Lord. Do your readers know of this—this—” Cat seemed at a loss for words for the first time in their acquaintance. “This trickery? This outright fraud ?”

Her tone was too threaded through with amusement for her remarks to be anything but jest, and so Georgiana said dryly, “The trickery of fiction? Yes, I believe they are aware of it.”

“Shocking,” Cat said. “An absolute scandal. You’re awfully lucky I haven’t a taste for blackmail.”

Georgiana remembered this too—how quick Cat was with banter, how easy with a quip.

Only Georgiana had never shared in it before, back when they’d been adolescents at Woodcote. She had never been part of that circle of camaraderie and laughter.

She did not know how to keep it going. She did not know what to say to keep Cat’s face lit with amusement.

Slowly, the warmth in Cat’s expression cooled as Georgiana did not respond. Georgiana could see the recollection as it dawned: that they had been in conflict, that Georgiana had accused Cat of theft.

Their moment of accord vanished like a snuffed flame.

“Never mind,” Cat said, and Georgiana felt a ludicrous swoop of disappointment.

“If you do not want the story of the ghost, then I shall make her the primary focus of my research. I will probably be here in the library for the next few days, reading through these family histories. And you’ll—what? Explore the grounds?”

“I plan to. I will—” She hesitated.

“Yes?”

“I’ll let you know if I see anything that cannot be explained by the laws of nature.”

At that, Cat’s smile reappeared, as though it could not be repressed for long—as though it were her most natural state. “Good. Over dinner?”

“Over dinner,” Georgiana repeated, and then left to fetch Bacon from the bookshelf full of birds.