Page 31 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

Dear Ambrose…

“Georgiana,” Cat said, “stop glaring at the pasties. You’re frightening them.”

Georgiana looked guiltily up from the small tower of pasties she was clutching.

She’d been counting them, that was all. Two mutton, two beef, two mince, two spiced apple, and would that be enough for all of them for dinner?

She did not wish to run out, which was a perfectly rational thing to want and unrelated to the way that her heart was beating in her chest like a bird.

They had wandered through the new Burlington Arcade after their visit to Belvoir’s, as they’d waited for dusk to fall and Jem to return home from Yorke’s office.

Cat had tried on a hat roughly the shape and color of raspberry fool, and had trailed her fingers longingly over a pair of silk stockings in a pattern of pink and white stripes.

When she’d bounded merrily off to chat about the latest in endpapers with the bookseller, Georgiana had circled back to the hosier and bought the stockings.

Except now she had a pair of stockings wrapped in tissue and stuffed into her pocket, and how in the world did one give a pair of stockings as a present?

It had been a mad notion. It would seem like an overture, and she hadn’t meant for it to be. It was only that she’d seen the way Cat’s busy fingers had smoothed the lace, the way her eyes had gone soft, and she wanted to give Cat—

Well. Everything, really. Stockings. The North Star. Her heart.

She wanted to buy Cat a new cloak to replace the worn one that wasn’t quite warm enough for the December air. She wanted to spend a whole day watching Cat read in front of a frost-fogged window with a cup of cider between her palms.

She wanted, very much, for Cat’s family to like her.

She balanced the pasties and followed Cat up the stairs. “I’m sorry. I was collecting my thoughts.”

“Your thoughts appear to have been of the direst sort.” Cat put her arm around Georgiana’s waist, tugged her close, and winked. “You needn’t fret. They shall adore you.”

There had been a time, Georgiana thought wryly, when she had been able to disguise her thoughts from the entire ton . Now, evidently, they were writ large upon her face for the world to see.

Or perhaps not the world. Perhaps just Catriona Rose Lacey.

Cat pushed the door open, and Georgiana tried not to bobble the pasties.

They were set upon instantly by a gangly redheaded lad with a pair of spectacles perched on the end of his nose. “Kitty, my God, something smells good. Did you get hired back at the pie shop or—oh!” His gray-green eyes had traveled from the tower of pasties up to Georgiana’s face. “Good evening.”

She recalled him, if somewhat differently, from Woodcote Hall. He’d been perhaps six when the Lacey family had left. He’d wanted to keep something from their rooms—a tiny toy dog, Georgiana thought, made of something black and bristly.

Her father had not let him.

Her heart clutched in her chest, and she had a sudden wild impulse to flee this house. What had she been thinking? How could she have supposed that they might accept her—might want her to be with Cat? Jem knew her. He would recall what her father had done.

Cat tugged some of the pasties out of Georgiana’s suddenly nerveless fingers. She was gripping them too hard; the crust at the edges had started to crumble.

“I did not return to the pie shop,” Cat said. “Here, hold on to some of these while I pour some cider into mugs.” She sailed toward the kitchen, then turned back over her shoulder to say, “You recall Lady Georgiana, don’t you, Jemmy?”

Jem fanned the pasties out like playing cards in his long, bony fingers.

“I can’t say that I do,” he said. A half-apologetic smile lurked on his face.

“Perhaps a bit. Did you do something different with your hair, then? Sort of—curls, or something?” He made a corkscrew gesture with one of the pasties.

Georgiana tried to laugh—perhaps it was a sob. “Yes. Very different then. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance again.”

He stuck out one of the pasties. “James Lacey, at your service.”

Very lightly, she touched the edge of one of her own pasties to his. “I am Georgiana Cleeve.”

The smile on his mouth grew more decided.

“And also Geneva Desrosiers, if I understand my sister correctly.” He ushered Georgiana over to a circle of chairs around the hearth.

“Sit down—Kitty, where are the plates? This thing is dripping very edibly, and if you do not hurry, I shall be forced to lick my forearm.”

A small woman with a head of wild dark curls emerged from the kitchen. “Restrain yourself, I implore you.” She shoved a stack of plates under Jem’s pasties, and cast a single sharp look in Georgiana’s direction. “Miss Desrosiers, welcome. Or do you prefer Lady Georgiana?”

“Georgiana is fine. Please.” Had that been too terse? She looked with faint desperation toward the place where Cat had vanished. Help.

“Georgiana. I am Catriona’s cousin, Pauline Tuttle.”

Georgiana gestured with the pasty, which seemed rather less charming than it had when Jem had done it. “Miss Tuttle. Er. Mrs. Tuttle?”

“Pauline will do.”

The woman’s face was serious and appraising, and Georgiana was put forcefully in mind of the weeks that she had spent accusing Cat of some kind of bizarre literary espionage. Was it too much to hope that Pauline had not been made aware of those facts?

Before Georgiana managed to think of some pleasant and appropriate rejoinder, Cat emerged from the kitchen bearing two bottles of cider and a stack of mugs held steady by her chin. She grinned around her burden, and Georgiana rushed to assist her.

They passed the cider and mugs and plates and pasties, and they sat in a circle of four mismatched chairs around the fire. It was warm in the room; the windows grew a thin film of steam. Jem’s cheeks went pink when he laughed, and Cat made him laugh easily and often.

Georgiana sat back in her chair and did not speak overmuch. She was content to watch them—watch Cat most of all. All the bright colors of Cat’s laugh, her voice, the shape and shade of her mouth, seemed softer and more lustrous here in the light of the people she loved.

Georgiana had never felt like that in her life. At home—at Woodcote—her greatest desire had been that no one should notice her. And though she’d been popular among the ton as a debutante, all of it had been a lie—a front designed to keep the reality of herself hidden.

She thought—

She wondered, more often than she ever would have admitted aloud, about her own family. About Ambrose and Percy. Ambrose was married now—married, and she knew nothing more of his life than what she’d read in the papers. What was his wife like? Had it been a love match, or something more practical?

Was he still the same? Did he still stand in front of the mirror and practice his words before he had to speak in front of crowds?

Was Percy well, in his rectory in Wiltshire? Did he still wear his stockings too baggy because he did not fancy the feel of silk against his skin?

Were they happy?

She did not know. And she would not know—not if she meant to keep her life apart from theirs.

And suddenly, as she watched Cat among her family—as Pauline deftly scooped up Jem’s spectacles before he stepped on them, as Jem reached out and pointed triumphantly at a spattering of ink on Cat’s sleeve—Georgiana wondered if she held too tightly to her fears.

What would happen, if she wrote to Ambrose? A note of felicitations only—no request, no kind of demand.

He might not write back. Perhaps it was too late—perhaps their family was a thing too broken to be mended.

But then again, he might.

The conversation wound around from books—Jem was fond of history; Pauline, surprisingly, enjoyed romance—to a lengthy argument over the qualities of a superior piecrust and then on to Renwick House.

Jem asked Georgiana about Sir Francis Bacon, and as she always and absurdly kept a miniature of her dog on her person, she showed him.

Cat’s sheer delight at that fact was almost enough to outweigh the heat in Georgiana’s cheeks as she stuffed the locket back into her reticule.

They did not speak at all of Yorke or Jem’s position in his office until after Pauline rose and waved off their attempts to help her with the washing-up.

It did not seem a deliberate omission, quite—and yet Georgiana could tell that Cat seemed hesitant, loath to plunge into the revelations of the afternoon.

Jem rose and stretched his arms above his head, a long elbow-y adolescent curve. “I’m off. I have to make notes on eleven land deed records before dawn, and at least half of them are in the most illegible hand I’ve ever seen.”

“Wait,” Cat said. “Hold a moment. Have you—are you going into the office in the morning?”

Jem lowered himself back into his chair. His expression, loose and relaxed all night, went a little closed. “I don’t understand why you would ask me that. I have never missed a single day, you know that—”

“No,” Cat said, “that’s not what I meant. Dash it.” She shoved her fingers into her tousled hair and looked faintly agonized. “I only meant—we have some questions for Mr. Yorke, that’s all. We had thought to meet with him.”

Georgiana watched Jem stare penetratingly at Cat.

There was some underlying conflict at play here, that much was clear.

And just as clear was the fact that, for some reason, Cat had elected not to tell Jem of their suspicions— Georgiana’s suspicions—about Martin Yorke and the peculiar goings-on at Renwick House.

Finally, Jem’s gaze softened, and he sat back in his chair. “Well, you won’t be able to see him tomorrow, in any case. He left town a few days ago, with no decided timeline on his return.”

Georgiana leaned forward. “He left town? Do you know where he went?”

Jem’s red hair glinted in the firelight. “He did not precisely say, but…”

“But?” Cat prompted.

“But I have reason to believe that he went to Wiltshire.”