Page 23 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

If you happen to encounter a magistrate’s report that makes reference to my name, please rest assured that I had nothing to do with the corpse.

— from Cat to her solicitor

It took four hours to get back to Renwick House with the magistrate, and an effort so concerted on Georgiana’s part that Cat would have been impressed, if she hadn’t been quite so exasperated with Her Infuriating Ladyship.

They’d been dirty and bedraggled by the time they made their way to the road that led to Devizes, and tragically devoid of any coin whatsoever.

But when a wagon had trundled past them on the road, Georgiana had plastered on her One-of-the-Common-Folk accent, layered over with hints of I’m-Lost and I-Need-You.

It had proven shockingly effective to the wagon’s driver, a tufty-looking lad of about seventeen.

Of course it had. Georgiana looked like a slightly dusty angel, and Cat had never seen anything so deceptively innocent as her wide blue eyes and the tiny tremble about her lower lip.

Within moments, she, Georgiana, and Bacon had clambered up into the wagon, and Georgiana had not even looked askance at the pig taking up most of the bench.

In Devizes, Georgiana had paused to restore herself in the alley alongside a public house, and had emerged from the shadows looking somehow neat as a pin. Her hair was pulled crisply back from her face, and the dust was gone from her skin except in one tiny place she’d missed behind her ear.

Cat thought for far too long about what it would feel like to slide her thumb just there. To brush the dirt away and watch, if she could, the blood rush beneath Georgiana’s skin.

She did not do it.

Georgiana had led the way to the magistrate’s office and there transformed herself once again into Her Impeccable Ladyship, only with a soupcon of fragile innocence still somehow remaining.

She’d wrangled the man into taking them both back to Renwick House to fetch their belongings, and when she’d told him about the accident they’d witnessed, Cat could almost have been taken in by the tears that darkened her lashes and made her big, tragic blue eyes look even wider.

The magistrate certainly was. He’d patted Georgiana nervously on the hand, and then on the shoulder, and then he’d excused himself in a panic from the room as Georgiana’s tears had made little wet plops on the surface of his desk.

She’s good at this, Cat thought, and the realization only made her feel more off-balance.

Twice now—twice she had kissed Lady Georgiana Cleeve, and twice Georgiana had gone from sweet melting heat in her arms to frozen hauteur the moment they’d stopped kissing.

Cat had thought—

Hell. She had believed, this time, that something was different.

Georgiana had kissed her first—had held tight to her arm as though to keep her safe.

I should never have brought you here, Georgiana had said, and Cat had thought, I’m glad you did.

I could die happy, here in this rose garden, with my hands on your waist.

But whatever she’d thought, she’d been wrong. Georgiana had regretted it; the chill in her voice had made that clear.

And Cat refused to linger in the discomfort of Georgiana’s secondhand shame. She could not bear it.

Not again. And not with Georgiana.

They rode in silence all the way to Renwick House, and when they arrived, Georgiana led the way to the rose garden from the outside. Cat hung back a few feet and communed soulfully with Bacon, who seemed somewhat disconsolate over his separation from the pig.

It did not take long, from the exterior, for them to find the small door in the courtyard wall meant for the gardening staff. It was heavy and grown over from disuse, and Georgiana had smiled and fluttered apologetically at her inability to drag it open.

Which was an out-and-out lie, Cat was certain of it. She’d seen the woman pull an iron bench across the terrace. She’d felt the strength in those willowy arms as Georgiana had lowered her cautiously down the other side of the wall. She’d clutched at the taut athletic planes of Georgiana’s—

Sweet sainted Margaret!

Cat ground her teeth, fondled Bacon’s silly floppy ear, and then followed the magistrate and Georgiana inside the courtyard and over to the place where the wall had collapsed.

In the intervening hours, the remaining timbers holding up the end of the eastern wing had fallen the rest of the way to the ground. What had once been a wall with a tiny gap now yawned wide, open to the interior of Renwick House. The body remained precisely where they had left it.

Which, Cat supposed, was something of a relief. If the man had brought accomplices, as Georgiana had darkly predicted, they had not lingered with the corpse.

“God’s blood,” said the magistrate, who had begun to mop his face with his handkerchief, despite the fact that the afternoon had grown cloudy and chilled.

He wiped his forehead again, seemed to realize what he had said, and then turned an apologetic glance toward Cat and Georgiana. “Begging your pardon, my lady. Miss.”

“That’s all right,” Cat said reflexively, and then she realized that Georgiana had started toward the body on the ground. “Ah—”

“My lady!” The magistrate waved a hand in Georgiana’s general direction, but did not seem quite willing to put his fingers upon her expensive and deceptively frail-looking person. “You ought to keep well back from there.”

Georgiana hesitated, her eyes fixed upon the corpse, and so, naturally, Cat followed her gaze.

She winced at the sight. He’d been a large fellow, with a heavy reddish beard, and somehow in the secondary collapse of the wall, he’d been turned onto his side. His coat hung open, revealing his waistcoat and braces above where the timber concealed the rest of his form.

The magistrate seemed even more unwilling to look at the corpse than Cat felt. He raised his handkerchief to his face, which had taken on a greenish cast, and held it roughly at the level of his mouth.

Cat supposed there was not very much foul play in Devizes.

But Georgiana did not look daunted. She was staring hard at the corpse, and her face looked not innocent at this particular juncture so much as struck by a powerful curiosity.

Her eyes flicked to Cat and held for a long moment. And then—

Trust me? she mouthed.

The same words she’d said atop the wall. The same earnestness in her gaze, the same tiny glimmer of vulnerability that Cat knew was not feigned.

And, despite every single good intention she had moments ago resolved upon, Cat nodded.

Georgiana looked relieved for roughly the space of a heartbeat, and then she staggered near to Cat, rolled up her eyes, and swooned directly into Cat’s arms.

Cat nearly dropped her from the shock of it. Bacon launched into a volley of confused barks, and Cat locked her arms around Georgiana’s waist and shoulders, too flabbergasted even to relish the sensation of Georgiana pressed close to her. As gently as she could, she lowered them both to the ground.

“God’s wounds!” exclaimed the magistrate. “Is the lady well?”

Georgiana cracked one eye, met Cat’s gaze, made a series of faces in the direction of the magistrate, and then hastily resumed her swoon.

Her feigned swoon. By God, the woman was the devil incarnate.

“I think her ladyship has become overset,” Cat said to the magistrate, which was certainly one way to put it. “Perhaps you might fetch her some water from the trough?”

The magistrate mopped his face again. “It could happen to anyone, I’m sure.”

He muttered under his breath as he crossed the courtyard, and he was nearly out the door before Georgiana cracked open her eyes. “The trough?” she hissed. “Really?”

Cat stifled an insane desire to laugh. She still held Georgiana cradled in her lap, and, to her extreme dismay, found she could not quite make her hands let go of Georgiana’s waist. “You did not give me much in the way of advance notice. I used my initiative.”

Georgiana peered at the magistrate’s retreating back, then dropped her head back down and clamped her eyelids shut.

Some tendrils of her fine blond hair had worked free of their pins and spread, loose and soft, across Cat’s skirts.

“There wasn’t time,” she whispered. “I needed to distract him before he saw the papers.”

“The… papers?” Cat tried to focus more on Georgiana’s words and not the complicated scent of her, all amber and woods and lusciousness.

“Yes. The papers in the dead man’s jacket. Did you not notice them?”

“I was trying my very best not to look closely.”

“I could see them,” Georgiana explained, “but I could not make them out. I want to take them off the body, but I need you to distract the magistrate while I do.”

Cat felt her brows shoot up in surprise. “You want to rob a corpse?”

Georgiana’s eyes-closed scowl was a sight to behold. “I am certain that his presence here in Wiltshire has something to do with you or me. If he has a letter on his person—some clue as to his motivation or connections—we ought to know about it.”

“Yes,” Cat said, “it makes sense. But—” She paused and bit her lip, darting a glance in the direction of the magistrate, who had come back through the wall and was heading toward them. His handkerchief dripped scummy water with each step. “I’ll search the body. You distract the magistrate.”

Georgiana’s eyes came open. “Wait—”

“Play to our strengths,” Cat murmured and winked.

Georgiana’s mouth had just formed a little O—of surprise or protest, Cat was not sure—when Cat eased her up into a sitting position.

“There you are, my lady,” Cat announced. “You’ll be right as rain in a trice. Put your head between your knees, now—there’s a good girl.” She thrust Georgiana’s head between her knees, and watched with a very reasonable amount of amusement as Georgiana’s face went pink with outrage.

The magistrate hurried toward them, his formerly neat clothing speckled all over with trough water.

“Here you are, your ladyship. Just the thing. Anyone would be overset by… by…” He trailed off, obviously loath to recall their minds to the corpse that was a handful of feet behind them.

Instead of continuing, he crouched and extended the handkerchief toward Georgiana, who disguised her obvious reluctance to seize it with a sort of full-body shudder.

Cat took the handkerchief and laid it across Georgiana’s brow, an action which rather electrified Her Fastidious Ladyship. Georgiana sat up suddenly enough that the handkerchief fell to the terrace with a wet plop beside Bacon, and then blinked up in the direction of the magistrate.

“If you might help me rise, sir?” she said pathetically. “I feel quite feeble.”

Cat strangled her mirth with some effort. Georgiana Cleeve had never been feeble a day in her life. “Perhaps you might assist her ladyship back to the carriage,” she managed. “I can retrieve her things from the manor.”

The magistrate nodded, caught Georgiana beneath her elbow, and helped her to her feet. But before he could escort her back out of the courtyard, he hesitated, half turning toward the corpse. “I suppose—I ought to see to this first—”

Bollocks, Cat thought, but before she could think of anything to say to dissuade him, Georgiana tottered against his sturdy body. Bacon set up another vociferous round of barking and began to bite at the magistrate’s boots.

The man made a sort of helpless squeak and flailed his hands as he tried to decide where on Georgiana’s person he might grasp to hold her up. “Egad.”

“I’m so sorry,” Georgiana murmured. Her eyelashes were casting breezes all across the courtyard through the vigor of her fluttering. “Simply the thought of it—oh, poor Rogers!”

Cat presumed Rogers was the corpse.

The magistrate grunted slightly as Georgiana sagged and nearly took both of them down to the ground. He clutched at her elbow and looked plaintively at Cat. “Perhaps you might take her ladyship’s arm?”

Georgiana seemed to realize she was overselling it. She sent a dismissive wave in Cat’s direction, found her footing, and wobbled toward the exterior door, clinging to the magistrate’s arm like a limpet. “I’m all right,” she said faintly. “Perhaps some fresh air will restore me.”

“I’ll see to her ladyship’s dog!” Cat called. “And her belongings!”

The moment the magistrate and Georgiana were out of sight, Cat knelt beside the body. Georgiana had been right—there were papers visible, now that the body had shifted in the second collapse.

Cat winced as she rifled through Rogers’s jacket, then recalled Georgiana’s description of his behavior toward the maids at Belvoir’s and felt rather less sorry for him.

Her sympathy vanished entirely when she discovered a pistol and a wicked-looking knife, both of which she shoved back into his pockets as hastily as possible.

After a thorough perusal of his jacket and a few hissed warnings to Bacon, who had decided to dine upon the man’s discarded hat, she had collected a handful of papers covered in a looping scrawl. She peered at them, then squinted and looked closer.

She could not make out a single word. Each sheet was filled with line after line of inked text—only the writing was completely unintelligible.

She could not recognize the language. In fact, as she looked closer, she realized she did not even recognize all of the letters.

Some of it was almost certainly Greek, but other symbols were completely unfamiliar to her.

Interspersed with the symbols she did not know, however, Cat could make out a handful that she did recognize: small stylized roses and, again and again, a thin crescent moon.

“Luna?” she whispered. “Luna Renwick?”

Something brushed against her from behind—a whisper of breeze, warm like a breath against the back of her neck.

She shuddered and leapt to her feet, spinning to look behind her.

There was nothing there. But Bacon had abandoned the hat and slunk to Cat’s feet, whimpering as he stared into the empty space behind her.

Cat set her teeth and shoved the papers into her pocket. “I’m trying,” she murmured. “I’m trying to help. I’m trying to set things right.”

There was no answer, of course. She put her fingers to the back of her neck and headed toward the place where the timbers had come down, killing Rogers and opening a wide passage into the house. But before she could pass through, she hesitated, feeling foolish and half-mad.

“If you did this,” she said, her voice low, “if you stopped him from hurting us… Thank you.”

Cat waited a long moment, but there was nothing, no sound or movement, only the scent of roses heavy in the air. And then she bit her lip, clicked her tongue at Bacon, and went into the house to fetch their belongings.