Page 4 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

Cat had been an enthusiast of the Gothic genre for years—she’d read probably a dozen of Geneva Desrosiers’s books back before she’d started to pen her own.

But since she’d taken up her quill, she simply had not had the time to read.

There was her frantic writing at night and her second job at a pie shop during the day—plus Jem’s tutoring, and the cares of the household, and the occasional demands of the body to eat and sleep.

She had not encountered Geneva Desrosiers’s most recent releases, and her publisher, a grim-faced woman named Helen Vanhoven, had not mentioned them.

Cat felt odd and sick as she took in Georgiana’s revelation.

Was—was this the reason for Cat’s sudden and inexplicable success as a novelist? That her books were similar to someone else’s?

She had wondered, sometimes, how it could be possible—that she, a woman of no formal education, of no special connection or genius, could have achieved so much unanticipated public regard.

She had wanted to believe that she was talented and amusing, but this sudden revelation caught at her deepest fears and tugged hard.

Perhaps it had been a fluke all along.

Perhaps her success—her security—could vanish the way it had come, as sudden as the dousing of a candle.

She felt laid open, hideously vulnerable. Her throat was tight.

“The protagonists,” Georgiana was saying, “can perhaps be explained by the time we spent at Woodcote Hall—together—but the rest…”

There had been the faintest hesitation before she said together, and she trailed off and bit her lip.

Of course she would hesitate, Cat thought grimly. They had not been together at Woodcote. Their lives had not been at all the same. Georgiana had been the youngest child, the recipient of every privilege.

Cat had been the butler’s daughter.

“Our protagonists?” Cat asked. “What do you mean?”

“Augusta Quirkle. She was in your 1821 novel—and mine—”

Cat was somehow once again taken aback. “Augusta Quirkle? You named your protagonist after one of the dairymaids?”

Georgiana licked her lips. “Evidently so did you.”

“I was one of the maids. I can’t believe you even remember her name—”

“Of course I do,” Georgiana said. “I remember everything. ”

And then—as though she had said something untoward, although Cat couldn’t imagine what it might be—Georgiana went pink to her hairline and clamped her mouth closed.

Cat shook her head. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me. Our books have some similarities, and so you tracked me down here to—what? Threaten to unmask me?”

“No! Of course not. I already told you, I would never do such a thing.”

“Then why ?”

Georgiana’s face tightened, the hint of vulnerability in her blush tamped ruthlessly down. “To tell you to stop.”

“Stop what? Stop writing?” Cat could not do that. Her writing was everything—her job at the pie shop made up a bare fraction of her income now. She needed her books. She needed the money for their house and their food and for Jem’s damned cursed fragile future.

“No,” Georgiana said. “To stop stealing my ideas.”

There was a moment of choked silence as Cat absorbed the words and the insult therein. “Stealing your ideas?” she repeated numbly. “You think that I have—that I have been—”

She could not even complete the sentence.

Georgiana Cleeve thought that she, Cat, had been stealing from her?

As though she could not come up with her own plots? As though she had not labored night after night, her head fuzzy with exhaustion and her lower lip chewed raw—as though she, a butler’s daughter, could not read and research and imagine something clever on her own?

And the fact that it had crossed her mind as well—the instantaneous flash of self-doubt, her constant, pernicious insecurity—caught like a wick inside her and started to burn.

She licked her lips. “Stealing your ideas,” she repeated flatly. “What a remarkably high opinion of yourself you seem to have, Lady Georgiana.”

Her Ladyship flinched ever so slightly, but set her jaw. “It is an objective truth that—”

“It is an objective truth,” Cat said, “that your Witch Castle book appeared after mine. If one of us is lacking in originality, Lady Georgiana, have you considered the fact that it might be yourself?”

Georgiana reared back as if stung. “I had never even heard of your book when I wrote The Witch Castle— ”

“And you cannot imagine that the same was true for me?” She felt hot and off-balance as she stared into Georgiana’s exquisite, infuriating face. “No. Of course not. Has your fame gone to your head, or have you always imagined yourself to be the center of the universe?”

Georgiana’s lips compressed into a thin line, and her eyes were a very clear light blue in the morning sun.

When she spoke, her voice was tight, her accent as polished and brittle as glass.

“Your novels contain similarities to mine that cannot be explained by mere coincidence. Whatever you are doing to make that happen, I require you to stop.”

“You require me?” Cat almost wanted to laugh. “I assure you, your ladyship, the days when you could require anything of me are long since passed.”

“Nevertheless—”

“No,” Cat said. “No.” She could be clipped too, and firm and poised and deliberate, even if her blood was pounding in her ears. “If similarities do exist—and you seem far more familiar with my novels than I am with yours—they are there by coincidence or by virtue of our shared pasts.”

“It is not possible—”

“No,” Cat said again, and— damn it. Her voice wobbled, just a touch, on the word.

What would happen to her, if Lady Georgiana took her accusations to the public? What danger could Georgiana’s aspersions pose to Cat’s career?

To Jem’s future?

Cat bit down hard on her lip. She would not let that happen.

“I have not read any of your books since well before I published The Witch in the Castle, ” she said, “and I do not intend to. If you are so concerned about your own uniqueness, perhaps you might spend your mornings in the production of original plots—not in hiding behind a shrub.”

“I am not—”

But Cat ignored her. “I have to go to work now. I assume you are vaguely familiar with the notion.” She jerked her head in a nod at Georgiana—she would rather chew off her arm than curtsy at this particular juncture—and then at Georgiana’s companion.

Her voice, thank God, came out clear and cold.

“I trust you will not trouble me on this matter again.”