Page 39 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

Augusta, who had spent a lifetime yearning, was rendered speechless not by the gift itself, but by the simple fact that it had been given to her.

— from ORPHAN OF MIDNIGHT by Geneva Desrosiers

“Georgie, my love,” Cat whispered. “I want to ask you something.”

Georgiana blinked open her eyes. She’d been awake—more or less—for a quarter of an hour, but she had not stirred even a hair’s breadth. The cot in Selina’s office wasn’t meant for two, and so Cat had slept mostly atop her, their bodies entangled, the top of her head against Georgiana’s lips, and—

Well. Georgiana hadn’t wanted to move, that was all. She suspected she could have died happily just like this, with one arm wrapped around Cat’s waist and her other hand in Cat’s hair.

“Yes?” Her voice was rough with sleep and, because proximity demanded it, she skated her palm along Cat’s bare backside.

“Last night. Did you really say you wanted to drown in my tits?”

Georgiana heard a strangled sound emerge from her throat. Her hand paused on its journey down the cleft of Cat’s buttocks.

“Or did I hallucinate that?” Cat’s voice was all mischief, devil creature that she was. “I must admit that I was somewhat overcome.”

“If I did, I shan’t admit it.”

Cat laughed and sat up. Her hair tumbled over one shoulder, dark curls grazing the dusky tip of her breast. “I cannot imagine a less likely phrase to come out of your mouth.” She laughed again, and Georgiana had to forcibly redirect her eyes from Cat’s bountiful décolletage. “Where did you even learn such a word?”

Georgiana sat as well and put her arm back about Cat’s waist. “You do recall where we are currently located? The heart of London’s largest collection of libidinous novels?”

“True.” Cat grinned. “How long do we have before Selina arrives and puts us out? You might show me some of your favorites.” She walked a path up Georgiana’s thigh with her first two fingers.

“I’m not—certain there’s time,” Georgiana said. She’d gone a trifle breathless already.

“No? You’ve that many to recommend?”

“I—that isn’t—” She caught Cat’s wicked hand in her own and then clapped their entangled fingers to her burning cheek, a motion vigorous enough to nearly upset the cot.

Somehow Cat turned her captured fingers into a caress. “I remember your books at Woodcote. Your neat little pencil script.” Her voice had sobered somewhat, shot through with tenderness. With—

Love. Georgiana tried not to let fear swamp her, tried to let the word make itself at home in her mind.

Her brain slowly caught up to Cat’s words. “My script? You knew my hand?”

“Mm. I used to enjoy finding the books that you’d annotated.

We had similar taste. There was one—” She paused, her mouth caught somewhere between amusement and affection.

“There was one book I found slipped in between the sentimental novels. A little rough-bound thing with marbled purple boards. A translation of—”

“Vénus dans la Clo?tre,” Georgiana got out. “I recall it.”

“Good heavens, you mustn’t speak in French like that in public, or I shall ravish you on the spot. Yes, the little book about the two nuns. I wondered if you’d read it. You didn’t make notes in that one.”

“I read it.” Were her cheeks to go any hotter, she would fear for the safety of the flammable objects in her vicinity. “Several times.”

Cat grinned. “So did I. The first few scenes of Fanny Hill, too.”

Yes. Georgiana recalled those books quite clearly. The notion of Cat poring over the pages—the scenes of female love and pleasure—was an image that she was not sure she was collected enough to contemplate.

“It was good, wasn’t it?” Cat said. Her vibrant face was soft in the shadowed dawn. “To have those books. To see other women like us.”

It had been. Georgiana had read Fanny Hill first, pulled from a high-up shelf in the library, nestled between two larger tomes. The pleasure shared by Fanny and Phoebe had been joyful and natural and, to a lonely seventeen-year-old with sapphic desires, an inexpressible relief.

She was normal. She did not need to be ashamed.

Cat’s mouth tilted, just a bit wry. “It was not only the erotic parts—not that I skimmed those bits, mind you. It was the conversations they had about love and power, the…” She paused, and her mouth tipped further. “Sometimes I wish—”

“What?” Georgiana prompted when Cat did not go on. “What do you wish?” If it was something within her power, then by God, she would not hesitate to bring it about.

“I wish I could write that way. I wish I did not have to fear that I’d be ostracized, that I would never publish another book if I wrote openly about female desire.

I try—I do try to put things in the novels, tiny hints about love and freedom, and I tell myself that people who feel as we do will recognize them.

But sometimes I feel so angry . Do you know what I mean?

” Her dark eyes settled on Georgiana’s face.

“That I cannot set down the plain truth of whom I love or be seen for who I am. That I can walk out this door with your arm in mine and to the rest of the world, you would seem nothing more than a friend to me. Not my lover. Not—my beloved.”

Georgiana both knew and did not know what Cat meant. She had never wished for marriage, for a relationship sealed and approved by the Church of England. And in truth, the very notion of being beloved by someone—by Cat —had seemed preposterous. She had not even tried to imagine it. And yet—

“I know who you are,” she murmured. “I see every part of you. And your family. And… mine. They know what we are to one another. We can be honest with them.”

It was not insignificant, that truth. And yet, in the face of Cat’s wishes, her courage and her candor, it still did not seem to be enough.

“If you wanted to write such a book,” Georgiana went on, “I would support you. I would never leave your side.”

Cat’s dark eyes looked damp. She pressed a kiss to Georgiana’s bare shoulder.

“I shan’t. There’s Jemmy to consider, and Pauline, not to mention the necessity of food and shelter.

” She searched Georgiana’s face, and whatever she found there nestled into her smile, slow and sweet.

“But it means a great deal to me that you should say it.”

They were laughing—drunk, almost, on love given and returned—when they arrived at Cat’s apartment.

“I still think you are entirely wrongheaded on the subject of the Shelleys,” Georgiana said. Tiny bubbles of euphoria still seemed to be sparkling in her veins.

“You cannot mean it!” Cat pushed open the door. “In the case of Mary, I’ll admit that you may be correct, but never —” Her voice broke off abruptly as Pauline rushed forward to meet them, her eyes dark in a face gone bone-pale. “Polly? What’s wrong?”

“Thank God you’re back,” Pauline said. “It’s Jem. Do you know where he is?”

Georgiana felt her stomach pitch. Her eyes flew to Cat, and as she watched, Cat’s face went terribly stiff and unfamiliar.

“Jem?” Cat repeated, sounding half-dazed. “What do you mean? Has he not come home from Mr. Yorke’s?”

“I went round an hour ago. Jem wasn’t there. He”—Pauline’s face was agonized—“he did not come home last night.”

“He—what?” Cat looked like she’d been hit with a post. “He said that he’d be working late. Yesterday morning, when we were breaking our fast. Don’t you remember?”

“Yes,” Pauline said grimly. “I waited up for as long as I could, but he never returned. And when I awoke this morning, his bed had not been slept in. I have no idea where he’s gone.”

“He—” Cat shook her head. “Perhaps he stayed late at the office. Slept over. Could you ask—”

“There was no one at Mr. Yorke’s, Kitty. The doors were locked. I pushed a note under the door and came home.” Pauline’s fingers twitched, a helpless empty gesture. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

Cat swore and arrowed toward the stairs. She took them two at a time, and Georgiana and Pauline followed in her wake as she made her way to her brother’s closed door.

“Sorry about this, Jemmy,” Cat muttered, and pushed her way into his room.

The chamber was tiny—scarcely more than a bed and a small square table. The books—law and history and Latin—were set in neat piles along the wall, an extra pair of spectacles draped casually across the inkstand. It was neat and spare, startlingly so for an adolescent boy.

Georgiana thought of Ambrose’s and Percy’s haphazard chambers at Woodcote Hall, and felt a stab of fear and longing.

Wordlessly, Cat riffled through Jem’s belongings, his clothing and papers and even the spines of his books.

With each passing moment, her posture grew stiffer, her face more and more drawn.

“He’s never done this before,” she said finally.

Her voice was unsteady, and her eyes were fixed upon the bedclothes she was mussing and then remaking.

“He’s never left without telling us. I don’t even know where he would go. ”

Georgiana watched Cat and could not seem to move. Her heart was beating too hard; she felt helpless, her hands clumsy. Cat’s brother was gone, and she did not know how to help. She did not know where to begin.

“I think…” Pauline, framed by the doorway, trailed off, then began again. “I suspect that he went to Wiltshire.”

Cat’s head came up. “Wiltshire? Why?”

Pauline’s hand was locked on the door’s wooden frame. “I overheard him, when he spoke to you about his father. And then later, he asked me about the mail coach route to get there. And I”—she looked agonized—“I told him. I never would have guessed…”

Cat had one hand pressed to the base of her throat. “God. Wiltshire. It’s not much to go on, Polly, but it’s worth a try. Thank you.”

Georgiana scarcely heard. She felt turned to stone, numb and immobile.

Wiltshire. Jem had gone to Wiltshire.