Page 45 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

“There is no bloody treasure!” Fawkes roared, and everyone jumped. “As for you”—he jostled Beckett again—“I could have you transported for this.”

“I didn’t steal anything!” Beckett’s gaze darted nervously around the room as if for help and met not one sympathetic face. “I couldn’t find the treasure, and there wasn’t time anyway…”

“If I discover you on the premises again,” Fawkes said, and now his deep voice had gone silky and threatening, “I will not need to have you transported. I will keep you here, locked behind the doors of Renwick House, and I will let the Renwick ghost have its way with you.”

Beckett visibly blanched. He shrank back from Fawkes’s grip, and then—

Cat blinked. Had he bumped the door with his shoulder?

She did not think he had. But still, slowly and with a thin, grinding creak, the door behind his body yawned open like a great black mouth.

“Oh God,” Beckett moaned. “Oh please no—”

A strange sensation crept up the back of Cat’s neck, like a warm brush of air. Like a breath.

She shivered. Percy, across the room, had gone rather pale.

Ambrose stepped forward and wrapped his fingers around Beckett’s elbow.

“I trust that Fawkes’s warning will keep you away from Renwick House,” he said.

“But just in case, I am taking you before the magistrate.” When Beckett made a hoarse sound of protest, Ambrose shook his head.

“For trespassing. Not for thievery. You shan’t hang today, Beckett.

But I will make very certain that your face is known in these parts.

If you seek to return, I will be notified immediately. ”

“He’s an earl,” Percy put in. “Scarier than a ghost, sometimes.”

“Thank you, Percy.” Ambrose jerked his head toward the exit. “You first, Beckett. I don’t turn my back on weasels.”

With a single pathetic backward glance, Beckett preceded Ambrose out the door.

When they were gone, Cat, Georgiana, and Jem emerged from behind the statue of Saint Sebastian. Jem moved toward Fawkes, and then the duke too was in motion, striding closer to meet Jem halfway.

The resemblance between them was even stronger now that they were face-to-face. The ginger hair, of course—but the long lines of their noses too, and the shape of their fingernails, and the breadth of their palms.

With Beckett gone, all of Fawkes’s focus was fixed upon Jem, and the space between them almost crackled with tension.

“James,” Fawkes said. The command had dropped out of his voice, leaving behind a faint note of hesitation. Almost, Cat would have said, of fear. “You are… Patience’s son, then?”

Jem put his chin up. “I am James Lacey.”

Fawkes nodded. His gaze roamed over Jem’s face and, for the space of a breath, he looked almost stricken.

And then he put out his hand. “My name is Oliver. I am your brother.”

Very slowly, Jem reached out and gripped Fawkes’s palm.

Fawkes swallowed. “My… Our father looked for you for a long time. It was his greatest regret, I think. That he could not find you.”

“I don’t understand.” Jem’s face was very pale, and Cat’s heart twisted in her chest. She had known about this for two days now. But Jem had had only his suspicions—only his impossible hopes. “He—the duke… He knew about me?”

“He knew that your mother was with child when they parted. You have to understand, I did not know any of this myself—not until I was an adult and my father told me everything. My father and mother were married when he sired you. He—” Fawkes broke off and shook his head.

“I don’t pretend to know what was between them.

They were complicated people, my parents, and I loved them both.

But when my father learned of Patience’s condition, he offered her money.

It was the most, in his mind, that he could offer her.

But she refused it. Told him that she did not want his charity. ”

“I understand that,” Jem said. His chin was still high, his gaze just about level with Fawkes’s.

Fawkes gave him a searching look. “I suppose you do. After my mother died—six years ago now—our father looked for you again. But you and your mother had vanished utterly. There was no trace of Patience or the child he’d fathered. You were gone from Wiltshire as though you’d never been.”

“Six years ago,” Cat murmured. “We were in London by then.”

“Yes.” Fawkes’s gaze landed on her. His eyes were blue, not green like Jem’s—but just as careful and deliberate. “I understand that you left Woodcote Hall quietly.”

They had. Walter Lacey had made certain they had. To protect her and Jem—and to protect the man he’d loved.

Cat nodded. Her eyes burned.

Fawkes cleared his throat and went on. “It was Martin Yorke, finally, who turned you up. He confirmed your identity during his last visit.”

Jem was stiff and still across from Fawkes. His gaze flicked toward Cat, and the expression on his beloved face was all uncertainty.

Can this be real? he seemed to be asking. And: What happens to us now? To you and me? To our family?

Cat took a step toward him, and then another and another, until she was close enough to reach out and grip his hands. “Nothing has to change,” she whispered fiercely, “unless you wish it. You are still my brother. You are still James Lacey.”

His fingers felt cold in her hands, and he gripped back, his eyes on hers.

“I love you,” she murmured, soft enough for his ears alone. “And Father loved you. You were ours in every way that mattered. But for your family to expand—to grow—that’s a gift, Jemmy. You needn’t fear it.”

“This house,” Fawkes said, “is yours, James. My father left it to you, just as Beckett said. But I”—he looked pained—“I’ve visited here half a dozen times since my father’s death.

There’s no money in the house, not anywhere that I could see.

I think he meant it as a gift, but I fear it is in such a state of disrepair that it will be nothing more than a burden to you. A millstone about your neck.”

For the first time since they’d arrived at the house, the revelation of it all struck Cat with the force of a blow.

Renwick House—strange and crumbling and so special to her—was Jem’s. It could belong to Jem now.

“No,” Jem said, very softly.

Fawkes was still talking, a thread of anxiety creeping into his voice. “You can sell it, if you like. The property, at least, should be worth a great deal.”

Cat felt a queer pang at the duke’s words. It was just a house, after all. And yet she could not help but think that it deserved better, somehow, than to be a means to an end, a deed transferred.

Even broken things deserved to be cared for.

But it was not her house. It was not her decision. She caught her breath and waited for Jem’s next words.

“No,” he said again, and relief was a thrill up Cat’s spine. He looked around the oratory—the strange doors, the altar, the arrow-pierced Saint Sebastian statue, bats still fluttering about its midsection. “No. I think I should like to keep it.”

Cat breathed out, a shaky sigh.

Fawkes’s throat worked very briefly before he spoke. “It’s only twenty miles or so to our country estate. You could—stay there.” His gaze went to Cat. “Both of you. You would always be welcome there. I would like very much to come to know you.”

Somehow, there were tears sliding down Cat’s face, catching on the corners of her mouth.

Jem put his arm around her. He was so much taller than she was, and she scarcely knew when it had happened.

His chin cleared the top of her head as he turned back to Fawkes.

“Tonight, I’d like to stay here. I’d like to spend some time at Renwick with my sister, before—” He paused.

There was worry in his face, but hope, too, cautious and growing.

“Before we come to your estate. But we will come, Oliver. I swear it.”

Fawkes placed a broad hand on Jem’s shoulder and squeezed once, hard, before he let go.

Percy, who’d been silently stroking Bacon’s ears during the conversation, looked faintly alarmed. “Are you quite certain you want to stay here? You did hear Fawkes going on about the ghost and the demon?” He tilted his head. “Or perhaps the ghost is the demon? The details were a bit muddled.”

Jem laughed, just a little, and some of the tension seemed to break.

“We’ll be all right,” Cat said. “This is not my first introduction to the ghost. I suspect…” She hesitated, but then plunged on. If they thought her mad, so be it. “I have long suspected that she is on our side. Georgie—”

She’d turned back to Georgiana, meaning to invite her to stay the night with them. But the words trailed off as she caught sight of Georgiana—pale and bone-weary, her shoulders pinned back as though bracing for a blow.

“Are you all right?” Cat said. She lifted one hand toward Georgiana and then paused, hesitating. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Georgiana said, and Cat did not know which question she meant to answer. “I’m…” Her gaze danced away from Cat’s, back, then away again to fix on Percy. “We should go. Mother and Noor will be wondering what’s happened.”

The hell with hesitation. “You can stay,” Cat said. “You may stay here with us.”

“Not—not now,” Georgiana said, and her voice sounded odd, not quite cool and composed, but not quite fractured either.

“You will want your privacy tonight. I will—” Her hand crept up to her breastbone and fastened in a fist, as if holding herself together by force of will.

“I will come back in the morning. I will speak to you then.”

She did not wait for an answer. She turned away, and Percy followed, and Cat watched the place where Georgiana had been for long moments after she vanished.