Page 41 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

Love renders me capable of any enterprise.

— from VéNUS DANS LE CLO?TRE

As she waited outside the door to Fawkes’s estate, Cat clutched at Georgiana’s hand. She knew she was holding on too hard, but she could not make herself stop.

Georgiana had wrapped her arms around Cat in the post-chaise, her chin on Cat’s tilted head, and during their mad overnight journey, Cat had tried to soak up some of her strength.

She knew that Georgiana was worried about Jem—and hesitant, too, to travel so close to Woodcote Hall—but Georgiana had kept her spine straight and her jaw set.

She had offered nothing but steady fortitude.

Worry kept crashing over Cat in swamping waves. Jem lost on the way to the estate. Jem in an overturned carriage. Jem pickpocketed on the mail coach, out of money and alone on the side of the road.

Jem, rejected by the Duke of Fawkes, abandoned by his own family.

By his blood relations. Never by Cat.

But there had been comfort, too, slipping in between her fears. It was easier, all of it, with Georgiana at her side. Even in the early morning frost, Georgiana’s hand was warm in her own.

The Fawkes estate was not quite as palatial as Woodcote Hall, but it was still a grand sandstone mansion, tucked at the end of a long gravel drive. Georgiana had paid the post-chaise to wait for them. Thus far, no one had answered their knock.

Cat had just lifted her free hand to rap a second time when the door came open.

A housekeeper, her white hair tucked scrupulously beneath her cap, stood framed in the immense doorway. She took them in slowly, and Cat was suddenly and horribly conscious of their rumpled dresses, the travel-worn state of their coiffures.

She was the daughter of a butler. A scandalous novelist who kept her profession secret so that she did not taint her brother’s career. What was she doing, here at a duke’s front door?

“Yes?” The woman’s mouth was pinched into a frown, even when she spoke.

“Good morning,” Cat said. Her voice rasped; her words wanted to tumble over themselves. “We’re here to see the Duke of Fawkes.”

The woman’s frown deepened. “Is His Grace expecting you?”

“Ah”—by Saint Margaret’s teeth, she had not prepared for this question, why hadn’t she prepared?—“no. But if you would not mind letting us call upon him, I’m certain he will want—”

“His Grace is not at home.”

Damn it, damn it. Cat’s anxiety threated to unmoor her.

How could she make this woman believe that the duke would welcome their call? It was obvious—patently obvious—that Cat did not belong here.

She’d spent five years trying to hide her terror from Jem. Five years trying to keep him safe. Pushing him into a vast, polished new world so that he would never have to know this exact sick mixture of fear and shame.

So he would never feel that he was not enough.

She forced down the panic that wanted to choke her. “Please. The truth is, I am here looking for my brother. His name is James Lacey. He’s fifteen years old. He has red hair and he—wears spectacles.”

Her voice broke on the words. All the horrible visions she’d tried to shut out seemed to rise in her mind at once.

“There is no boy of fifteen here.” The housekeeper moved to shut the door, and Cat put her hand out to stop it.

“Wait. Please wait, we—”

She didn’t know what to say. She did not know how to convey the depth of her devotion to her brother, her love and pride and want.

She wanted so much more for Jem than what they’d had.

But the sick fear that had lurked at the back of her mind since the moment she’d heard of the Duke of Fawkes could not be held back any longer.

Was this—all of this—her fault? Had she pushed Jem too hard? Had her desires for his career and his security led him to seek out some mysterious fortune, some unexpected stroke of providence?

Or—worse than that. She had tried to hide their poverty—their stomach-grinding want—from him. But she knew she had not always succeeded. She knew he had recognized her desperate clinging for what it was.

Had he gone to Fawkes for her ?

“Please,” she said again. “Please let us in. We just need to speak to Fawkes for a few minutes. It won’t take long.”

The housekeeper’s voice was taut. “I’ll thank you, madam, to remove your hand from the door.”

Cat froze, her hand balanced against the wood and her mind thick and paralyzed.

But Georgiana moved instead. She dropped Cat’s hand and drew herself up.

She seemed to grow taller, her spine lengthening; Cat could have balanced a plate on the straight line of her shoulder.

“I am Lady Georgiana Cleeve,” she said, “of Woodcote Hall. I imagine you are familiar with my brother, the Earl of Alverthorpe.”

Her voice was all cut-glass precision. It was easy, looking at that upright carriage, the sharp elegance of her cheekbones, to forget that Georgiana too was tousled and weary from their hours in the post-chaise.

She was all aristocrat, the earl’s sister from the top of her ice-blond head to the tips of her slippered toes.

For Cat. Every word that she said was for Cat.

Cat was not alone in this. She could recall that now, in the face of Georgiana’s stern, stolid presence, and gratitude rushed through her.

But to her shock, the housekeeper’s expression went even more darkly disapproving as she took in Georgiana’s introduction. “Lady Georgiana,” she repeated. “Yes. I’ve heard of you.”

There was a heartbeat of silence as the words settled between them. As Georgiana’s lips went white.

“Oh,” she said. “In that case, you will not mind if I leave a card for His Grace—”

“I’ve heard of you,” the housekeeper said again. “I remember the day your father disinherited you. If you are not welcome at Woodcote Hall, my lady ”—there was something spiteful in the phrase—“you certainly are not welcome here.”

Georgiana’s lips parted, then clamped closed. Her throat worked as she swallowed. “I see,” she said hoarsely.

And then the housekeeper shut the door.

Cat turned numbly to Georgiana. Georgiana’s face reflected back the emotions that churned inside her—fear and guilt and shame and regret.

Jemmy, Cat thought. I don’t know what else to try.

But before Cat could give voice to the black current of defeat rising inside her, Georgiana reached out and dragged her into an embrace.

Helplessly, Cat went. She pressed her face into Georgiana’s shoulder and let herself lean, just for a moment, into Georgiana’s strength. Let herself feel the ceaseless, stalwart rhythm of Georgiana’s heart.

“What do we do?” she managed finally. Her voice was clogged with tears.

She’d left the shoulder of Georgiana’s dress speckled with damp.

“We can’t gain an audience with Fawkes. We cannot even determine if Jem’s been here at all.

Should we… search the roads, perhaps? Wait outside the servants’ entrance for someone we can question?

” Stubbornness, she realized, was not so far off from courage.

She felt it strengthen her voice. “We could ask after Jem at the closest coaching inn or—hell, Georgie. We could break a window outside Fawkes’s parlor and sneak inside, if we need to. If we have no other recourse.”

Georgiana’s arms tightened around her, a quick hard clutch, and then released. “I know what to do.”

Cat drew back enough to peer into Georgiana’s face. Her eyes were still hazed with tears, and she tried to blink them away. “What?”

Georgiana’s jaw tightened. For the space of a breath, Cat watched Georgiana’s pulse throb frantically at the base of her throat.

But when she spoke, her voice did not falter. “I’m taking you to Woodcote. We’re going to ask Ambrose for help.”