Page 24 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

Red Damask

Rose du Saint-Sacrement

Double Scarlet

La Seduisante (Sally’s favorite—ha!)

— from the journals of Luna Renwick

Some hours later, Cat had discovered in her heart a newfound antipathy for the aristocracy, the month of December, and the entire category of meteorological phenomena.

After the magistrate had secured Cat, Georgiana, Bacon, and their belongings in the carriage, he’d done various official things involving the corpse and then brought their small party back to Devizes.

Cat had shown the unintelligible papers to Georgiana, who’d attempted to appropriate them with such high-handed resolve that Cat nearly let her, before she remembered to hold her ground.

Their brief hasty argument on the street outside the magistrate’s office had ended with Georgiana’s color high, the papers shoved back into Cat’s pocket, and a sudden rush of snowflakes falling thickly onto their hair and shoulders.

“Damn it,” Georgiana said, and Cat cursed the part of herself that found the oath on Georgiana’s lips so arousing. “What on earth—”

“It’s called snow, I think,” Cat said, and Georgiana leveled a glare at her.

Cat liked that too. Unfortunately.

“We could stay at Renwick House until the mail coach comes tomorrow,” Cat suggested.

“Absolutely not. Unless you’ve managed to translate those papers into something resembling I have no accomplices and absolutely was not here to murder any novelists. ”

Cat had not expected Georgiana to agree, but she bristled anyway. “I don’t desperately wish to spend a night slowly freezing to death—”

“We can take rooms at the inn for the night,” Georgiana said. “There is one in town. I saw it as we passed.”

Cat gritted her teeth. She had not planned to have to pay for her lodgings, and the food she’d procured throughout her stay at Renwick House had cut deeply into the supply of coin she’d brought with her for emergencies. “You may take a room at the inn, if you like. I will do for myself.”

Perhaps she could find a handy stable—she wasn’t un-fond of straw—

“I can pay for your room,” Georgiana said, “if that is your concern.” She was not quite looking at Cat. In fact, she seemed very interested in Bacon, who was nosing blissfully at her boots.

“I would rather eat my last pair of stockings than let you pay for my room.”

Georgiana’s lips compressed, and when she spoke, her voice sounded even more diamond-sharp than it usually did. “You’d rather freeze to death than allow me to help you?”

“I would rather freeze to death than accept your charity. Yes.”

Georgiana’s lips parted, closed, opened again. Her tongue pressed against the back of her teeth, and Cat tried to ignore the bolt of heat that shot through her at the sight of that tiny flash of pink. “We could share.”

Cat felt her knees wobble. Despite the snow, heat washed through her—her cheeks, the tips of her breasts, her belly. Lower.

We could share.

Words seemed difficult, suddenly. “We—” she repeated blankly. “That is. I—”

“Surely,” Georgiana snapped, “you would not rather freeze to death than share a chamber with me for a handful of hours.”

“I—can’t accept—”

“Do as you like.” Georgiana plucked Bacon up off the ground and settled him into the top of her travel bag. “I am renting the room either way. I shall tell them my maid may be following on.”

She swept off in the direction of the inn, and Cat stared after her spare, striding form for a long, dumbfounded moment.

Her maid? Did she mean Cat ?

Dreadful, infuriating, impossible creature that she was, no doubt she did.

Cat scooped up her snow-dusted belongings and scrambled after Georgiana. “If you tell the innkeeper I am your maid, I will make you eat your stockings.”

Georgiana did not turn back to look at her, but she’d gone pink again, a blush slowly staining her neck and chest.

“Did you say that on purpose?” Cat demanded. “To vex me?”

Georgiana did not reply, only moistened her lips, and Cat—

She swallowed as she watched Georgiana’s flush deepen. She wanted to put her mouth there—at the pulsebeat of Georgiana’s throat. She wanted to taste the heat of Georgiana’s skin.

She didn’t, of course. Bleeding hell, she was no glutton for punishment. She did not fancy a third rejection at Georgiana’s elegant hands.

But God, how she wanted those hands on her body again.

She realized, when they had made their way inside the inn, that she’d forgotten to keep arguing about the room.

It took them a few dizzy minutes to find the innkeeper.

The public room was busy with people, shouting customers and harried barmaids.

They finally located the innkeeper—a tall, handsome woman with a strong jaw and even stronger arms—in the kitchens, where she was vigorously washing glassware.

She did not pause to greet them as they made their way through the mad swirl of the obviously shorthanded kitchen.

“I beg your pardon,” Georgiana said. “I should like to secure a room for myself and my companion.” She glanced from Cat to Bacon, and then smiled winsomely at the innkeeper. “Both my companions, I should say.”

The flush had faded from her face, Cat observed, and so she looked merely exquisite and not also infinitely edible.

The innkeeper flicked her quick gaze across Georgiana, then returned to her scrubbing. “No dogs.”

“Oh.” Georgiana blinked down at Bacon, who had grown damp from snow and was shivering visibly half-inside her travel bag. “He’s very well trained, I assure you.”

“He can be as well trained as he likes, so long as he stays in the mews.”

Georgiana’s sweet smile remained pinned on her face until she turned to Cat, at which point it promptly vanished. “Take him,” she hissed, and thrust Bacon and her bag into Cat’s arms. “Wait in the public room.”

And without another word, she turned her back on Cat and lowered her voice to speak to the innkeeper.

Cat hitched the pitiful dog to her chest and stalked out to the common room as she’d been bade. “Stubborn,” she muttered, “high-handed, infuriating aristocrat. ”

It felt good to say the word as though it were an oath.

It felt less good to mutter it repeatedly as the snow in her hair melted and dripped onto her shoulders, where it ran in rivulets down to meet the damp patch on her bodice left by the dog.

Even a cup of hot mulled punch and a meat pie brought over by an apologetic barmaid did little to soothe Cat’s growing temper as she waited for Georgiana to return. She fed scraps of meat from the pie to Bacon and worked herself into an increasing lather with each passing minute.

She would have been happy to work with whatever ploy Georgiana had in mind, if only Georgiana would explain herself. Did she mean to try to sneak the dog up to the chamber? Was this another roundabout scheme?

Cat had no bloody idea. And when the barmaid returned and murmured, “I’m to take you up to your chamber, miss,” she felt more exasperated and bewildered.

She tucked Bacon deeper into the traveling bag out of an abundance of caution and followed the barmaid up the stairs.

Inside the small, neat chamber, Cat let Bacon free to explore. He sniffed every corner, discovered nothing of interest, and then curled up beneath a trim cedar wardrobe and went to sleep.

Cat waited for Georgiana to arrive.

She waited and waited, and held her chilled hands against the stove, and then finally yanked at the ties of her damp cloak.

Where the devil was Georgiana? Did she mean to leave Cat alone all night?

And since when had the absence of Georgiana become something that made Cat feel unmoored?

She had peeled off her cloak and arranged it by the stove when the door came open. Cat’s heart leapt—curse the stupid organ—but it was not Georgiana, only a stout groom carting a hip tub and a handful of maids with cans of steaming water.

A bath. Somehow Georgiana had arranged for a room and a bath, and Cat had absolutely no idea when or if the woman planned to join her.

Not in the bath, of course. Surely Georgiana had not intended that .

Unless… had she?

Cat pondered approximately a thousand humid and lascivious notions of just what she might do with Georgiana and a steaming bath while she waited to see if Georgiana would return.

She watched condensation bead along the sides of the copper tub and then slip back down into the bath, and finally decided that she would be a fool to waste the hot water.

Georgiana obviously had not intended the bath for them both.

Of course she had not. Cat was the one who kept entertaining such idiotic hopes.

She gave up and set her fingers to the wet hooks at the side of her frock. She’d just begun to work the fastenings free when the door opened and Georgiana stepped into the room.

Cat froze, her fingers locked in the seam of her dress.

Georgiana was flushed, the freckles around her mouth almost obscured. The top few buttons of her frock were undone, and her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows. She looked disheveled and the faintest bit embarrassed, and when she met Cat’s eyes, she froze with her back to the door.

She licked her lips, and Cat’s mouth went dry at the sight.

Georgiana spoke first, her voice a trifle choked. “I’m sorry. I had not expected that you would be…” She trailed off, and her color deepened.

“You did not expect—what? To find me here?” Cat felt ludicrously, bizarrely hurt. Of course she had known that Georgiana had not meant the bath as an overture and yet—

God! At what point would her stupid heart stop inventing fantasies about Georgiana? About the two of them together, and what they could be?

“I thought you would be finished. With the bath.”