Page 35 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

Love no denial found, desire no stay.

— from Georgiana’s private copy of DON LEON

Georgiana was in search of tooth powder at dawn when a warm, naked body encircled her from behind. She heard herself emit a small squeak of surprise.

Cat breathed a laugh into her ear. “Did I startle you?”

Georgiana turned her head and found Cat’s hair with her mouth. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I woke and you were gone.” Cat tightened her arms and began to tow Georgiana deliberately back to the bed. “It was ghastly. Come back and minister to me in my hour of need.”

The bed was warm, and Georgiana let herself be pulled. They came down in a tumble of limbs and skin, and Cat pressed her face against Georgiana’s neck and breathed in. “What is it that you smell of? I have more than once lain awake pondering the question.”

Georgiana felt a little flush of pleasure, though surely Cat was only teasing.

“Irises. And geranium and cardamom and ambrette and… oh, some other things I’ve forgotten.

It’s a custom scent from Floris. My mother had it made for me before we left Woodcote Hall, and so I try not to use it too often. ”

Cat smothered a laugh against her skin. “You are the most expensive thing in this house.”

Georgiana darted a half-embarrassed glance at Cat, who knelt, straddling one of Georgiana’s thighs.

But Cat was grinning. “You’ve ruined me for any other scent, you know. A most diabolical scheme.”

Georgiana let her eyes roam Cat’s sleep-tousled form, all skin and dark hair and wide, irreverent mouth. Just for the pleasure of it, she ran a fingertip along Cat’s bare shoulder, where it was gilded by the morning light. “You look so lovely like this.”

“Without my clothes, do you mean?”

Georgiana laughed aloud. “I hadn’t meant that, no. But I shan’t pretend it isn’t so.”

Cat’s fingers tangled in the chemise that Georgiana had donned when she’d risen in search of the tooth powder. Her mouth coasted along Georgiana’s ear and then down her neck. “I can’t tell you how much it pleases me to make you laugh.”

Georgiana felt a shiver run through her body, and she gave a little reluctant moan as she pulled away. “I would like very much to spend all morning pleasing you. But I have to go home. To see to Bacon.”

Cat loosened her hold on Georgiana’s chemise.

“Yes, of course. I understand.” She sat back and wrapped the thin bedsheet around herself.

Her lips were tipped up into a smile, familiar and natural on her face.

“Maybe next time, you can bring Bacon with you. Pauline and Jem won’t mind.

Well, Pauline might, but I can overrule her.

Or perhaps”—her grin turned saucy and shy at once—“perhaps next time I can stay with you at your apartment. I should like to see your nightclothes again.”

“Oh,” Georgiana said. “I—”

She hadn’t imagined that, somehow. She hadn’t expected… anything. She had not allowed herself to picture morning after morning just like this, Cat waking soft and golden in the sun.

She wanted it. She wanted it so much.

Her heart clenched, and so did her hands at her sides. She couldn’t seem to finish her sentence.

Cat’s smile faltered, just a little, then came back wider than ever and, for the first time in Georgiana’s recollection, obviously forced. “Never mind. I should not have said that. You didn’t ask for”—she gestured, a little haphazardly, and her bedsheet slipped—“all of that.”

Georgiana bit her lip and made herself speak. “No. You don’t have to apologize. I—”

“Shall I go with you?” Cat said brightly. “To see to Bacon?”

Georgiana opened her mouth, then closed it again. Her nose burned; her eyes felt hot. How would she be able to stand the sight? Cat, there in the apartment in Bloomsbury, all spiced wine and generosity and joy.

How could she see Cat there and stop herself from wanting forever?

And she could not have forever. She had chosen her life purposefully: alone and independent, because to be alone was to keep the people she loved safe.

To be alone was to be safe. Was the only way not to be hurt.

As the silence stretched, Cat’s face went slowly pale in the soft dawn light. Her expressive mouth wobbled slightly, then compressed, hard and flat. “I see.”

Georgiana swallowed against the ache in her throat. She didn’t know what Cat saw. Part of her didn’t want to know. Didn’t want honesty.

But Cat’s only way was honesty, was raw truth forced into the space between them. Was courage that Georgiana couldn’t put her hands around, could never hope to grasp.

“You don’t want me to go with you,” Cat said. “You don’t want me in your house, in front of your mother. Because you’re ashamed.”

Georgiana’s heart beat hard against her ribs, and it hurt all the way through her. “No! God, no, that’s not it at all. You mustn’t think that.”

“Then what is it?”

“Nothing!” Panic clutched at her insides, muddling her head. “You’re making too much of this, Catriona.”

She wanted to claw the words back into her mouth. They were horrible, and a lie, and Cat could plainly see Georgiana’s fear and retreat, even if she did not understand the cause.

Cat’s face was still too pale, her lips white, and Georgiana felt anguish splinter through her like ice. She was doing this. She was hurting Cat, precisely as she’d known she would.

She had heard Pauline the previous night. She’d come halfway back down the stairs, intending to gather coal and build up the fire. But then she’d frozen at the sound of Pauline’s voice.

She seems different from you. Cold.

And then, as if resigned: Oh, Kitty. Do not let her break your heart.

She’d slipped silently back up the stairs. Her skin had felt raw, her hands numb.

But she’d known that Pauline was not wrong.

Georgiana did not belong in this warm, affectionate family.

She had destroyed her own and—perhaps worst of all—had made no attempt to repair the breach.

She had made herself an island, and perhaps she was cold, and ruthless, and meant to be alone, because even now she did not know what she would have done differently.

But she’d told herself that it was all right. That she could spend the night with Cat. That she could bring Cat pleasure, and leave her safe and warm in the morning.

She’d been wrong. She ought to have known that her thorns would wound Cat as well—that her spiked edges were bound to draw blood. When Cat drew out a picture of the future—of nights and mornings together, of ease and desire and love—Georgiana could not imagine herself inside of it.

When Cat held out her hand, Georgiana did not know how to grasp it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and stood up from the bed. She wrestled her way back into her frock from the day before and tried not to look at Cat’s face. “I have to go.”

When Cat spoke, her voice was very quiet. “You promised,” she said. “You promised you would not do this to me again.”

Georgiana looked up from the little pearl buttons on her dress. Cat’s face was impossible to look at—all surprise and betrayal—so Georgiana turned away. Her gaze fell on the rumpled bed. The desk. The mirror.

Everywhere she turned seemed to augur disaster. If she fled now, she would commit precisely the act that Cat had feared. She would leave Cat here alone.

But if she stayed…

How easily she would ruin Cat. How easily she would ruin everything.

And because she was a coward, the choice was, after all, no choice. She set her hand to the door.

“It’s only—that Bacon needs me,” she said hoarsely, and thought: Forgive me. Please understand.

And when Cat nodded and did not speak, Georgiana pretended it was enough.

She pretended, very hard, all the way home, until her mother opened the door, and she knelt on the floor, and Bacon flung himself into her lap, and she realized abruptly that her face was wet with tears.

“Georgie?” her mother said. “What on earth—”

“Don’t.” Her voice cracked, like something coming apart. “Please don’t. I need to be alone.”

There was a long silence, and though her gaze was fixed on Bacon’s thick white coat, Georgiana could see that her mother’s pointed slippers did not move.

Eventually, Georgiana lifted her head.

Edith was standing beside the door. She was dressed for walking—she and Bacon must have just come back inside. Her hair was scraped back from her face, pinned ruthlessly into place so that none of the familiar fine blond strands escaped.

Her face was a careful closed blank, and her shoulders were pulled back so that her body made a slim, spare column from the top of her head down to her heels. She stood frozen, one gloved hand closed into a fist at her side.

“I am sorry,” she said finally. Her fingers tightened and then released, but the tense erect carriage of her body did not loosen. “I shan’t intrude upon your privacy.”

And then she turned away.

Georgiana heard her breath escape with a sound like a sob. How did she keep doing this? How was it possible that no matter how she turned and twisted, she hurt someone she loved?

She felt as carved-out and dangerous as a blade—impossible to get close to, impossible to hold.

“Wait. Please wait.”

That had been her voice—she had felt the words form in her mouth, in her lungs—but she did not recognize the hoarse sound.

Her mother turned back, her face unreadable.

“I don’t know what to do,” Georgiana said thickly. “And I’m afraid.”

As she watched, her mother’s fingers twitched toward her, as if to stroke her face. But her hand dropped to her side, and Georgiana felt a single slow stab of grief and loneliness.

But then Edith’s face grew stubborn and set. And then, delicately, she lowered herself to the floor and took Georgiana’s hand. Her voice, when she spoke, was the same as it always was: soft and firm and precise. “You don’t have to tell me. But I want you to know that you are not alone.”

Georgiana couldn’t bring herself to grip her mother’s fingers back, only watch as tears dripped from her jaw and landed on Bacon’s fur. He shoved his head into the hollow of her palm.