Page 21 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

Please do not fret over my irregular correspondence. My stay at Renwick House has been catastrophic doomed productive!

— from Cat Lacey to her brother, Jem

They were unmistakably, emphatically trapped in Renwick House.

They had tried every door. When they attempted to quit the house via the west wing, the exit was once again barred. They’d checked the windows as well, but the sashing was made of some sort of iron, and even if they’d shattered the panes, only Bacon would have fit through the ensuing opening.

At that point, by some silent agreement, they made their way toward the rose garden.

“This is surely the most reasonable way out,” Georgiana was saying, though whether to brace up her own spirits or Cat’s was difficult to say. “There must be some means of egress in the courtyard walls to provide the gardener with access to the grounds.”

“Yes,” Cat said, “though you are assuming that said means of egress will not be barred as well.”

“I don’t understand it.” Georgiana sounded breathless as she shoved her way through the gap in the ruined wall and into the courtyard outside. “Why would someone have obstructed all the doors? Could Graves have done it when she left?”

Cat propelled herself through the narrow opening as well, with rather more struggle and cursing than Her Slim-Hipped Ladyship. “What possible motivation could Graves have to entrap us here?”

“Perhaps she wanted us to stay put?” Georgiana said doubtfully. “To wait upon her return?”

Georgiana had emerged into the cold December sun, and Cat had to stop and deliberately recall how to breathe. The light lingered in the hollows of Georgiana’s cheekbones, traced the almost translucent curve of her ear.

It was insulting, really. She looked extraordinary by both the moon and the sun. What devil-deal had the woman struck, that all the light should worship her so?

Cat shook her head to clear it and joined Georgiana at the sandstone wall. “You must admit that it’s ominous. The screams. The barred doors all around.”

“It’s certainly not… usual.” Georgiana pushed her fingers under the vines, searching for signs of a hidden door. “But we are not truly trapped. If necessary, we can always go over the wall.”

Cat glanced at the wall, which ended somewhere north of the top of her head. “Can we?”

“There’s a bench. Bacon mounted it the last time we were in here. We could climb up onto it and then clamber over the top of the wall.”

“I admire your confidence in my athletics.”

“I would lift you up.” Georgiana was rather red, and she was frowning hard at the wall, as though she might carve out a door through the sheer force of her glower. “If you required it.”

“That’s most generous.”

Georgiana looked at her then, a quick torn-off scrap of a look from underneath her lashes. She seemed—uncertain somehow. As though she did not know how to interpret Cat’s teasing.

“I’m quite serious,” Cat said, and she reached out and brushed Georgiana’s elbow despite herself. “I know you would assist me, if I needed you. I will take your help, and gladly, if we are forced to scale the wall.”

Georgiana swallowed and looked away again, but not before Cat caught the tiny array of emotions that crossed her face—shock and gratitude and pleasure.

What had she expected? Mockery? Her offer of assistance thrown back in her face?

Cat’s heart squeezed a bit, as she looked at the stiff line of Georgiana’s neck and thought of Woodcote Hall. Perhaps Georgiana had expected to be scorned—and had offered her assistance anyway.

It was so easy to like this woman, the rose-colored flush of her cheeks and the thorns everywhere else. These tiny glimpses of her vulnerability.

“Perhaps we can encircle the garden first,” Cat said finally, when Georgiana did not turn back toward her. “Before we attempt to ascend. Look under the vines for some hidden exit.”

Georgiana looked at her again, a swift indirect flash of blue, like a hesitant glance at the sun. And then she nodded and moved to the wall.

Cat went the opposite way, slowly, nudging the trellised roses away from the sandstone brick.

The vines were still thick with flowers, and the ground was littered with fallen blooms that smelled rich and heady as she trod upon them.

The petals, blush and scarlet and burgundy, had gathered in swaths across the terrace, like snowbanks that scattered against the toes of her boots.

By the time she’d circumnavigated roughly a quarter of the courtyard, she’d reached the gap in the timbers they’d squeezed through to enter the garden.

Only—

Cat paused. Had she come back to where they’d entered? She clamped her eyes shut, opened them again, and looked hard at the thin crevice in the wall. The timbers were still there, and the same plaster peeling off in strips, only—

The gap was dark as pitch. She could not see the interior wing beyond. And it seemed smaller, somehow, a space far too narrow for her body to squeeze through.

What the devil…

“Georgiana,” she called, quite before she realized she’d meant to. “Could you—come here for a moment?”

Only silence greeted her words. The hairs on the back of Cat’s neck lifted as she stared at the darkened gap and waited for Georgiana’s reply.

And then Bacon was barking distantly, and Georgiana was there in a whirl of downed petals, her fingers coming to rest at the small of Cat’s back.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

She was a little windblown, and her eyes were big and blue and worried, and Cat had to fight against the urge to lean into that cautious palm at her back.

“Is this not where we entered?” she asked, instead of curling into Georgiana. “I could have sworn it was, only… there’s no way we fit through that gap. Is there?”

Georgiana’s gaze shifted away from Cat’s face in one long, slow drag.

But as she looked at the sliver of darkness between the timbers, her eyes flew wide.

She swore succinctly and the hand at Cat’s back turned into a viselike grip upon Cat’s elbow, dragging her backward, away from the crumbling wall.

“What on earth,” Cat protested, but Georgiana did not stop towing her until they were a good dozen feet away from the rift in the wall.

“One of the rotted timbers,” Georgiana explained when she finally slowed. “It must have shifted—it’s obstructing most of the passage back into the east wing. That’s why the gap looks so dark and small now. There’s a blasted tree trunk blocking our way.”

Cat moistened her lips. “How is that possible?”

Could there be someone inside the house? Could an intruder be the reason for the barred doors and the missing Graves?

Could a ghost topple timbers?

She did not have time to ask. Georgiana let loose a stream of anxious words, her fingers still wrapped around Cat’s arm, her expression tormented.

“The framing must have buckled. Perhaps we disturbed it when we passed through, but—God! If beams are collapsing without warning, this wing must be less structurally sound than I suspected.” Her free hand was at the base of her throat, and her thumb worried her collarbone.

“I’m so sorry, Catriona. I should never have brought you out here. You might have been killed.”

Cat told herself later that she had had no choice this time—not when Georgiana looked agonized and afraid. She put her hand atop Georgiana’s. “You did right to bring me here. I wanted to see the garden.”

Georgiana went still beneath the light pressure of Cat’s fingers. Her lashes fluttered, down and then back up, revealing the blue of her eyes, gone clear as water in the sunlight.

Down. She had looked down at Cat’s mouth.

Cat felt dizzy, suddenly. Breathe, she thought, and it came out a gasp, loud in the silence of the garden. Her fingers tightened over Georgiana’s, and beneath her fingertips she could feel the warmth of Georgiana’s flesh. The pulse that throbbed at her throat.

The rich scent of the roses was everywhere, and beneath it, the warm wood scent of Georgiana’s perfume, as rich and alive and complicated as the woman who stood, inches from Cat’s body, and did not move except for the way she trembled.

Slowly, slowly, Cat took her fingers away. Georgiana’s lips parted, almost helplessly, as though she meant to call Cat back. As though she meant to plead.

But she did not. Neither of them spoke, their gazes hot and locked upon one another. Georgiana was a column of gold, lit from behind by the sun, and—

No. Georgiana was the sun. And Cat was already burning.

Despite herself—despite all her well-intentioned resolve—Cat put her fingertips against the long fluttering length of Georgiana’s throat.

Georgiana’s skin flushed beneath Cat’s touch. Her breath came quickly, and each jerky movement made desire build in Cat’s lower belly. She felt hot. Dizzy. Mad with yearning as she watched Georgiana shiver and wet her lips.

She was doing this. She could make Georgiana come apart beneath her hands.

She brought her fingers up to cradle Georgiana’s jaw, then brushed her thumb across Georgiana’s lips, first the lower, then the upper.

“I think about these freckles,” she said, very softly, “all the time.”

“Catriona…”

Her voice—God, there was something about that elegant voice gone thready that made Cat’s skin feel shivery and sensitive. She wanted to press herself against Georgiana’s body, wanted to drag her teeth along Georgiana’s skin.

Slow, she told herself. Patient.

She tried to listen. Her other hand was at Georgiana’s waist, and Georgiana was touching her too, the hand that had held Cat’s elbow skimming very lightly along Cat’s back, flirting with the curve of Cat’s hip.

Cat let her hand slide from Georgiana’s mouth around to the back of her neck. “I dream about you,” she murmured.

Georgiana’s eyes fluttered closed. Their mouths came very close, almost touching, separated by a breath.

“Your scent,” Cat said. “Your voice.”

The tiniest sound slipped from Georgiana’s lips—a whimper barely louder than a breath. Lust clutched at Cat, a heavy ache between her legs.

“I want to kiss you,” she said, and thought, Let me. Please.

But Georgiana moved first. She palmed Cat’s lower back and yanked her closer, their mouths meeting in a rough and desperate clash.

Relief and hunger warred inside Cat as she leaned into the kiss, as she met Georgiana’s tongue with her own.

She moaned a little, her hands sliding along Georgiana’s body, finding the blades of her shoulders, the muscular swell of her arse.

Georgiana’s mouth was hot and hungry, and the way she clutched at Cat’s body felt wild, somehow. Frantic.

Cat broke their kiss and pressed her open mouth to Georgiana’s neck, to the place where her dress fastened at her throat. God—she wanted more and more. She wanted to yank down the violet wool right now, wanted to suck marks into Georgiana’s skin—

And then a crash rocked the garden, a percussive boom louder than a gunshot and somehow very near. A fine white powder burst into the air around them.

Georgiana moved before Cat could react. She dragged Cat away from the noise and the dust that followed, then shoved her own body between Cat and whatever had…

Fallen? Exploded?

“What—” Cat managed. She was dazed, unmoored by the twin explosions of their kiss and whatever had caused the garden to shake.

“The timber,” Georgiana said. “The one that shifted inside the house. It—fell, I think.”

Cat swiped plaster off her face and peered around Georgiana’s body.

Georgiana was right. The plume of white powder had clearly shot outward from where the gap in the wall had been.

It was heaviest there, still slowly settling, in the exact place where they had passed from the house into the garden.

Where they had stood only moments ago, before Georgiana had pulled Cat back.

Georgiana scooped a shivering Bacon into her arms while Cat stared at the slowly descending blizzard of white debris.

“Dear God,” Georgiana said thickly. “Thank God we did not try to return that way. Thank heaven that timber blocked us. We might have—you could have been—”

Cat stopped the flow of words with a hand on Georgiana’s shoulder. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s thanks to you we weren’t harmed.”

Georgiana’s eyes fastened on hers. Her fingers shifted to cover Cat’s. “I didn’t—”

But before she could finish her sentence, Bacon wrested his way out of her arms, scampered down to the ground, and made an abortive charge in the direction of the settling flakes of plaster.

Georgiana cursed again and flung herself after him. The little dog stopped mid-charge, however, and his bark turned into a confused whine.

Georgiana nearly tripped over him in her hurry. She bent to pick him up again and then froze halfway down. Her lips parted. Her eyes went round as coins.

Cat followed Georgiana’s gaze to the former gap in the wall, which had slowly resolved into focus as the plaster dust had come to rest. Her heart seemed to lift into her throat, and she choked on the sensation as she made sense of what Bacon and Georgiana too had seen.

Half concealed beneath the fallen timber lay the body of a man.

Large. Coated in powder the color of ash. And extremely—decidedly—indubitably—

Dead.