Page 29 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)
Of course I shall help. Surely, after all these years, that goes without saying?
— from Selina, Duchess of Stanhope, to Georgiana
Jem and Pauline peppered Cat with questions when she arrived back at their apartment two days earlier than planned.
She distracted them with descriptions of Renwick’s mysterious passages and bird-infested library, and rather thought she’d got away with the omission of the corpse until Pauline eyed her suspiciously over the top of Jem’s head.
Later, Pauline had mouthed silently, the truth .
Cat had pled a headache and fled to her chamber.
Perhaps she had not been as convincing as she ought.
Her mind had been not quite focused to the task, what with the way it kept furnishing visions of Georgiana in the bath.
And also against the wall. And then, sometimes, the shocked pleasure on Georgiana’s face when they’d arrived back in London and Cat had yanked the curtains down in the carriage so that she might kiss the life out of Georgiana before they were parted.
Georgiana seemed so surprised by each tiny touch, any gesture of familiarity or affection—as though when Cat reached toward her, she expected a slap and not a caress.
It would be so easy, Cat thought, as she stared up at the plaster-patched ceiling, to let Georgiana break her heart.
The following afternoon, they met at Belvoir’s with the indecipherable papers. Selina, the Duchess of Stanhope, deposited Cat and Georgiana in her office and then went back down to wait for their scholarly friend.
Cat could not stop herself from prowling the perimeter of the duchess’s office. She trailed her fingers over the rows of books, bound in the emerald-green cloth that was Belvoir’s signature.
She slipped an anonymous-looking volume off the shelf and leafed through it, then paused in astonishment. “What an extraordinary collection your friend keeps.” Her voice squeaked slightly, and she cleared her throat.
Evidently Georgiana had approached her from behind, because she laid a hand on Cat’s shoulder, and Cat nearly dropped the book in her haste to shove it back onto the shelf.
Georgiana laughed, just a little. “Many of the Venus catalog books have to be requested specifically. Selina does not keep them downstairs on the shelves. For obvious reasons.”
The Venus catalog, Cat knew, was the selection of books that was only available to women—the most provocative novels, the engravings on prophylactics and sexual mechanics. The Venus catalog was the duchess’s pet project and the reason she had purchased Belvoir’s in the first place.
Cat’s novels—and Georgiana’s, so far as she knew—were all available to the general public, in a section designed for the merely mildly scandalous, not the potentially illegal.
“Did she know about you from the first? The duchess?” Cat asked curiously.
“That I fancy ladies? We have spoken of it occasionally, in the years of our friendship. Her aunts are”—Georgiana’s face softened—“like us. I knew I never had to question Selina’s acceptance, and that meant a great deal.”
Cat’s heart squeezed. She settled her hand at Georgiana’s waist. They had not touched yet this morning—not even linked their arms on the street. Cat supposed that some part of her had feared Georgiana might grow stiff beneath her touch.
But she ought not have been afraid, it seemed. Georgiana turned into her, and her lips brushed, very softly, over Cat’s temple.
“I meant about your books,” Cat said, and she tilted her face up to press a kiss to Georgiana’s mouth. “But I can see why you thought the other, given our surroundings.”
“Oh,” Georgiana managed, and then kissed her back for a long moment before drawing away.
“No. Selina did not. No one did, then, except Laventille. I might have kept on that way, publishing under various pseudonyms and hoarding my guineas, except my father found out that Selina was behind Belvoir’s Library. And so—I revealed myself.”
“I don’t understand.”
Now Georgiana did go stiff, as she always did whenever her father was mentioned. She pulled into herself, almost imperceptibly, and Cat gripped tighter to her waist to anchor her to the present moment.
“He threatened to bring her up on charges,” Georgiana said shortly. “To tell everyone that she was a peddler of pornography. I knew that if I told him that I was one of the library’s authors, he would not want the Cleeve family name drawn into the trial.”
“So you revealed yourself to him? To save your friend?”
Georgiana’s lashes fluttered closed for a moment and then opened again. “You have the kindest instincts. The way you see things…” She breathed out, a sound too raw to be a laugh. “You’re incandescent. The whole world ought to be brightened by your light.”
Cat was so taken aback that she could do nothing but stare. Her heart kicked up, beating in giddy triple time, as Georgiana kept talking.
“No. I wish it had been so. I revealed myself because my father’s discovery of Selina was my fault to begin with.
He was suspicious of Belvoir’s, and I was too afraid to speak to Selina directly.
I wrote her an anonymous letter, and then my father intercepted it.
It was my cowardice that endangered her in the first place. ”
Was that truly how she saw herself? God, she had been—what—eighteen? And desperately alone.
“Georgie,” Cat murmured, “don’t say that. I recall your father. He was not an easy man to cross.”
Georgiana’s face only shuttered further, and Cat lifted her hand to press her thumb into the downturned corner of Georgiana’s mouth.
And then the door came open, and they leapt apart.
Selina frowned at them as she entered, trailed by the dark-haired, curvaceous woman Cat recalled from the shrubbery.
“At least lock the door, for heaven’s sake,” Selina said grumpily as she seated herself at the desk. “I begin to wonder if this office is possessed of aphrodisiacal properties.”
“Perhaps something to do with the reading material?” offered Iris innocently. “Good morning, Georgiana. Lady Darling, how pleasant to see you again.”
Cat glanced at Georgiana. She was an astounding shade of scarlet from her hairline all the way down to the tiny pearl buttons at her throat.
Cat redirected her gaze to Iris and Selina. “Good morning. My name—my real name—is Catriona Lacey.”
Iris stuck out her hand, which was covered in ink. “Iris Duggleby. I’ve heard a great deal about you from Georgiana. A very great deal.”
Georgiana made a strangled sound.
Cat bit her bottom lip to hold in a laugh and shook Iris’s hand. “All dreadful, I don’t doubt.”
“She’s certainly been… voluble.”
“I implore you,” Georgiana said, “do not go on.” From her reticule, she produced the papers that they had recovered from the corpse.
“This is why we asked you to attend us, Iris. These are the papers we found at Renwick House, only we cannot make heads or tails of them. We hoped you might be able to help.”
Iris took the papers in greedy hands and began to lay them out across the surface of Selina’s desk. “It would be my enormous pleasure.”
As they watched, Iris lowered herself into a sort of stoop.
She rearranged several of the pages, once, and then again.
And then she plucked Selina’s quill from its place on the desk and began hastily scratching notations onto the sheet of foolscap nearest her left hand, right atop what appeared to be a record of recent library purchases.
Cat blinked.
“Iris, darling, tell us if you figure something out, all right?” Selina said. “Iris?”
There was no answer.
“Never mind,” Selina said, and crossed to the armchairs in front of the fire. “Come. Tell me all about your visit to Renwick House.”
They sat. Concisely and thoroughly, Georgiana related the events of their stay at the manor, ending with the discovery of the unintelligible writings upon the erstwhile porter’s corpse.
She did not mention their night at the inn, although Cat noticed with some interest that her throat grew pink when she reached the rather abrupt end of her recital.
Selina did not seem to notice—or if she did, she did not remark upon it. “Horace Rogers,” she said musingly. “Of course I recall the fellow. But I cannot say what he did after he left Belvoir’s or why he would have been in Wiltshire. Perhaps once Iris finishes translating the papers?”
This last was said in a distinct tone of inquiry, and everyone paused to look over at Iris. She had her head bowed over the desk, the quill shoved into her hair, and she appeared to have taken scissors to the foolscap, which was littering the surface of the desk in roughly a hundred tiny strips.
“That… could take some time.” Georgiana looked amused for a moment, but then she sobered. “Might we ask the staff if any of them maintained a connection to the departed Rogers?”
“Certainly, if you like,” Selina said, “though I do suspect an interview with Mr. Yorke might prove more fruitful. Perhaps you are headed there next?”
There was a brief, blank silence.
“Mr. Yorke?” Cat said. “Mr. Martin Yorke, do you mean?”
“Yes, of course,” Selina said. Her dark brows, at odds with the thick blond hair piled on her head, were drawn together as she stared at Cat and Georgiana in turn. “Your solicitor.”
“ My solicitor,” Georgiana said.
Cat turned rather jerkily to stare at Georgiana’s exquisite, puzzled face. “Mr. Martin Yorke is… your solicitor?”
“Yes, of course. He’s been my man of business for five or six years now. Do you know him?”
Selina looked between them in frank disbelief. “Are you in earnest? You two did not realize that you share a solicitor?”
“Oh my God,” Cat said. Revelations seemed to be crashing down upon her like a series of very large and forceful bricks. “Did Yorke tell you to go to Renwick House? Is that how you ended up there?”
Georgiana was staring back at her, eyes wide and very blue. “He—he did not instruct me to go. But he was the one who told me it was open for visitors. He said he was—”