Page 40 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

He was fifteen. He was alone. He had no family in Wiltshire, no resources to call upon if he were in need. And the last time she and Cat had been in Wiltshire, they’d been trapped in a house with an armed villain who’d attempted to imprison them.

Was it possible that whoever had tried to harm them might come for Jem as well?

Cat angled toward her. In the small chamber, she scarcely had to reach out to put her hand on Georgiana’s arm. “Do you think we ought to…” She hesitated, her chin tilted up as she looked into Georgiana’s face. “Georgie?”

Georgiana heard her own blood beating in her ears. It hurt—everything hurt, even the light pressure of Cat’s fingers through her sleeve. “This is my fault,” she said hoarsely.

“What?”

“I did this. I encouraged him. When he spoke of the duke, I…” She couldn’t seem to pull in enough air. Why couldn’t she breathe? “ I told him it was possible. You tried to make him see reason, but I thought I knew better.”

She was responsible for Jem’s disappearance. If he had come to harm, she was the cause.

She thought of his laughter-pinkened cheeks. The way he’d tipped his pasty to hers in greeting. Their family, tucked together beside the fire, safe and happy.

How could she, even for a moment, have believed that she might belong?

She was bad for them. Poison. She had always known that. She had only let herself forget, somehow, towed down by the gravity of her futile hopes.

“Georgie.” Cat’s voice was low and urgent. “Look at me. Look at me.”

Georgiana looked. Her eyes were dry and burning, and her gaze snagged on the anguished white lines around Cat’s mouth.

“Don’t do this.” A muscle flexed in Cat’s cheek. “Don’t you dare do this to me. This is not your fault.”

Georgiana’s chest hurt. “It is. I should have stayed away. I should never have let myself get close to you. I—”

“Stop it,” Cat said and dashed furiously at her cheeks. “Stop it, damn you. I need your help. Do you hear me, Georgiana? I need you. Do not let me down.”

The room seemed unsteady, the afternoon light from the tiny window wavering at the edges of Georgiana’s vision.

I need you. Do not let me down.

Could that be right? Was it possible that she—

She squeezed her eyes closed against the pain of the light.

When had she gone wrong? Was it when she’d spoken to Jem—when she’d tried clumsily to intervene? Or was it now? Was this the ruin that she feared, and she poised to fling herself into it?

She opened her eyes. Cat was still there, her gaze steady and her hand resting on Georgiana’s arm. She had not moved.

It was so hard for Georgiana to drag herself free from the sticky mire of her thoughts. From the maze her mind wanted to travel, the same course again and again. I am poison to those I love. I cannot let myself wish for more.

See what happens when you’re all alone.

But she was not alone. Cat was here. And Georgiana had promised.

She had to clamp her fingers over Cat’s before she could speak, and still it was a struggle to push the words from her mouth. “I will not let you down. If you want me at your side, I will stay with you. I swear it.”

Cat sucked in a breath. She turned over her hand and tangled their fingers, her eyes never leaving Georgiana’s face.

There was a commotion on the stairs, and Georgiana startled, spinning toward the doorway.

Pauline had vanished—Georgiana did not know precisely when—and now she was hurtling back up the stairs, a tall, rawboned, intensely familiar figure at her side.

Martin Yorke.

“Kitty,” Pauline said, “Mr. Yorke found my note. I think you’d better hear what he has to say.”

“Cat. Lady Georgiana.” He nodded at them hastily in turn. “I see you’ve reacquainted yourselves.”

The simmering suspicions Georgiana had harbored since Selina’s revelations flared intensely to life. Her voice, when she spoke, came out sharp enough to cut. “Yorke. What the devil is going on? What are you doing here?”

But Yorke only waved his hand. “Not now. I’ll explain later. We need to talk about James.” He flipped open his brief bag and riffled through its overstuffed compartment.

Only when Cat’s fingers tightened on Georgiana’s arm did Georgiana realize they had not drawn away from each other. “Do you know where he is?” Cat demanded breathlessly of Yorke. “Tell me he’s on some errand for you.”

“Not for me. But I suspect I know where he’s gone. Only I do not know why.”

Georgiana felt her temper harden, cold as frostbite in her chest. “Why should we believe anything you tell us?”

“Because I have proof.” Yorke shoved his way into the chamber and spread a heavily annotated sheet of foolscap across Jem’s small desk. “Finally I have proof. James Lacey is the natural son of the sixth Duke of Fawkes.”

Georgiana felt suddenly and abruptly lightheaded.

“He’s… what?” Cat blinked. Blinked again. “I beg your pardon?”

“This is what I’ve been working on the last few weeks. When the new Fawkes—the seventh—inherited, he hired me to put his affairs in order. One of those affairs was an unentailed property that his father had bestowed upon his natural child.”

Cat moistened her lips. “I don’t understand. Fawkes’s natural son is Jem ? How do you know? Why didn’t the duke claim Jem while he lived, if he meant for Jem to inherit some portion of his estate?”

“I’m getting to that. Fawkes’s will named as the inheritor of this piece of property the firstborn child of Patience Iverill.”

Cat’s brows drew together. “Iverill… That’s not… Jem’s mother’s surname was Muncroft.”

“I am aware of that. Iverill, however, was the name of the inn where Patience Lacey, née Muncroft, worked when the sixth duke met her and sired his son upon her. The Iverill Inn burned down in 1807, Patience married your father, and the inn’s owners—Mr. and Mrs. Iverill—moved to Cornwall.

Whether the old duke forgot Patience’s surname or never properly knew it is left to us to wonder.

” His expression had gone slightly smug.

“But I interviewed eleven different people who recalled Patience’s brief liaison with the duke. The timing fits with Jem’s birth.”

“You mean”—Georgiana’s voice came out rough, and she had to clear her throat—“you mean that this property…”

“Yes. This portion of the Fawkes estate and whatever it contains belong to James, by right of birth and inheritance. Only”—Yorke’s mouth tightened, as if holding back an oath—“I do not know how he knew.”

Cat’s eyes looked dark, and her voice shook. “I don’t understand.”

“I had not yet told him. I wanted to wait until I was certain—until everything was assured beyond the power of circumstance to disrupt.” For the first time, Yorke looked hesitant, his face twisted with worry.

“I wanted to be sure that it could not be taken away from him. Until two days ago, I had not yet discussed my findings with the new duke. There’s no reason Jem should know anything about the will—about Fawkes at all.

But when I arrived at the office this morning, it was dark and locked, and all the notes I kept in my office about the case were gone. ”

“And so was Jem,” Cat said hoarsely.

“And so was Jem.”

“We have to go.” Cat’s fingers clung hard to Georgiana’s. “We have to go to Wiltshire. He might have tried to go himself—to talk to the new duke. His”—her throat worked—“his half brother.”

“I will remain here,” Yorke said. “I don’t know where the devil my other clerk’s gone off to, but I need his help. Beckett’s worked closely with me these last weeks. He may be able to reconstruct some of my notes, in case I need them for the courts.”

“Thank you,” Cat said. “Thank you, Martin.” Her voice was soft and urgent, and then she turned to Georgiana. “Will you come with me? To Wiltshire?”

Georgiana tried to summon words, even as fear closed her throat.

The Fawkes’s country house was half a mile from Woodcote Hall. From her brothers. If Georgiana went to his door, the new Duke of Fawkes might recognize her—might connect her to Percy and Ambrose.

But she thrust those thoughts aside. She made herself shut out everything except Cat’s face, grim and stubborn and wrenchingly beautiful.

Georgiana’s reluctance to meet again with Ambrose and Percy—her desperate desire to protect them and her secret, shameful fear of their rejection—none of it mattered now.

Cat needed her, and Georgiana was not going to let her down.

And perhaps, if Fawkes knew who Georgiana was—

Perhaps, somehow, she could help set things right.

“I’m going with you,” she said. “As fast as we can.”