Page 46 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

The estate in Wiltshire I bequeath to my daughter Luna Clarinda, to do with what she wishes. It has always been Luna’s house.

Georgiana did not return until late afternoon.

Her hands were shaking as she pushed open the gardener’s door. She felt—

Numb, mostly. As though she were moving through water, her ears muffled and lungs unable to find air.

She had not been able to feel things properly since the previous day—since Fawkes’s words in the oratory. There was no trace of Patience or the child he’d fathered. You were gone from Wiltshire as though you’d never been.

Her father had done that. Alistair Cleeve was the reason Jem had never had the chance to meet his own father. Alistair Cleeve was the reason the Laceys had lived in poverty—was the reason for so much of their pain.

It felt as though the old earl had reached out from the grave to close his fist about Georgiana’s heart. He would never stop—he would never fade completely from her memories. Always, as long as they were together, this would be between her and Cat—what Georgiana’s father had done.

Cat was waiting in the rose garden. She stood still and upright, her old familiar wool cloak wrapped around her shoulders, and her face turned up to the wintry sun.

There were roses everywhere—ivory and deep pink and crimson so dark it almost looked black.

Despite the season—despite the chill in the air—still they bloomed.

“I’m sorry I was not here in the morning,” Georgiana said. Years of practice—almost a decade—and she still did not quite have control of her voice.

Cat’s eyes flew open. “Georgiana.” She moved to cross the black-and-white terrace, her fingers brushing the heavy weight of vines along the wall. But she stopped just before she reached Georgiana. Her palm stayed against the brick.

Which was good. It was good for her to stay back, to pause, to wait.

That was what Georgiana had wanted. No matter how much it felt, just now, like ruination.

“I had meant to come earlier,” Georgiana said. She had wanted to come at dawn, but she’d made herself hold off. Made herself give Cat some more time. “But Martin Yorke came to Woodcote this morning.”

“Yorke? What did he want?”

“He was looking for us. For—any of us.” Us, murmured her heart.

Please. “Iris finished the translations yesterday of the papers we took from Rogers. She came by my apartment first, but when she found me gone, she went on to Yorke’s office and showed the papers to him.

And he rode in a post-chaise all night to deliver them. ”

“What do they say?”

Wordlessly, Georgiana withdrew the sheaf of papers that Yorke had given her and handed them to Cat.

Cat’s eyes moved across the words slowly at first, and then quicker and quicker. Her dark lashes fluttered against her cheeks. “I don’t understand. These are… love letters.” She paused. Looked up. “From Luna Renwick.”

“I know.”

Georgiana had read the words half a dozen times by now—the translations written out in Iris’s neat, deliberate hand.

She’d been almost frantic, her eyes flying over the words as she’d sat across from Yorke at Woodcote. And then she’d read them again, slowly and deliberately, first there in the sitting room, and then repeatedly in the Alverthorpe carriage as it carried her back to Cat.

They had known that Nathaniel Renwick had built the house for his wife, Ellen. But Luna—Renwick’s beloved eldest daughter—had built the rose garden for the love of her own life.

Sarah Sophia Penhollow.

There were seven letters, dated over three years—all from Luna to her beloved Sally. They were tender, passionate, sometimes exasperated, sometimes teasing. They had planned for Sally to move into Renwick House with the rest of the family when it was completed.

If you insist upon calling yourself a kept woman, Luna had written, then at least recollect that you are being kept by me. I am Nathaniel Renwick’s daughter, after all. We Renwicks are very good at treasuring what is ours.

But the letters had stopped abruptly in 1751, the year before construction finished at the house. The last letter had been brief—three sentences, without salutation or closing.

I placed your plaque in the garden today, along with the jewels I’d meant to give you. It is a poor gift, my heart, but it is what I have: Your roses will bloom and bloom and bloom again. My hands in the sun-warmed soil will long for you all the days of my life.

“Sally died,” Cat murmured. “That’s why the letters stopped.”

“Luna wrote in code,” Georgiana said. Her voice rasped at the edges. “So that no one could intercept her love letters. But she dreamed of living here, with Sally, in the light.”

Cat’s thumb brushed across the stack of papers. She had tears on her cheeks. “I wonder if Sally ever replied. If Luna kept her letters somewhere.”

“I don’t know. Yorke said Luna lived another thirty years here at Renwick. She never married.”

That was the way of histories, particularly intimate ones. Always they were partial, fragmented, the narrative filled in at the edges.

For those people who had to hide the truth of their hearts from the world, the erasures were even larger. Even more like a wound.

“Perhaps someday you or Jem will find Sally’s letters on the estate,” Georgiana went on. “Or perhaps not. I wish…” She trailed off, drew a breath. Started again. “I like to believe that Sarah Sophia wrote back.”

“I believe it too.”

Cat’s lashes were still downcast, and Georgiana had to hurry on, before she tried to read something like hope in the handful of words.

“Yorke wanted me to draw your attention to the last letter. The reference to jewels. Luna says she placed the jewels in the garden. Yorke says to remind you that the garden too is Jem’s, along with all its contents.

If the jewels exist—if they’ve been preserved here—they are Jem’s to do with as he wishes. ”

Cat’s fingers moved along the crisp black ink, tracing circles and spirals across the words.

“Jem says he doesn’t care about the money.

He says he doesn’t need a fortune to go along with his house.

” Her mouth tipped up on one side. “But I keep telling him that if he means to keep his nose from freezing this winter, he’ll need to fix the walls at least, and a fortuitous treasure wouldn’t go amiss. ”

“He… means to fix the house, then?” Georgiana knew that Cat was laughing, just a little—that sweet laugh, like an invitation to join her.

But Georgiana could no more accept that invitation than she could take wing and fly.

“Yes.” Cat’s expression sobered, though happiness still lingered in the rose-red curve of her lips.

“He means to bring it back to life. He’s made a contract with Fawkes—Jem wrote it up himself—with the terms of a loan, though Fawkes keeps trying to make it a gift.

The duke has sent for several dozen workmen with job descriptions I’d never even heard of until yesterday, and—” She broke off.

“Well. We will make it beautiful again. Strange and unsettling and peculiar as it always was, of course. But beautiful too. And safe.”

We, she kept saying. We will do it.

“Catriona,” Georgiana said hoarsely, and then stopped, quite unable to go on. She memorized Cat’s face. The tiny dip below her lip. The ringlets that curled up beside her ear. The curves and angles of her—so familiar, so long beloved.

“Georgie.” Cat’s palm came up and then down again, back to the letters. “Is there—”

“No. Wait. Let me say my piece first. I’m sorry, Catriona. I’m so sorry.”

Cat reared back in surprise. “You’re sorry? Why?”

“I’m sorry for all of it. For everything my father stole from you.

He robbed you of your home and your security.

He took away the man your father loved. If my father had not exiled the three of you from Wiltshire, Jem would have had the chance to know his father.

Both his fathers. Everything could have been so much easier for him—for all of you.

Fawkes would have paved the way. But my father razed all those hopes and did not even care what he had smashed.

And none of us did anything to stop him. ”

She stepped forward and gripped Cat’s fingers, felt the rough brush of paper beneath the softness of Cat’s skin, and oh, she had promised herself she would not do this. She’d promised herself she would not beg.

She’d lied.

“Please,” she said hoarsely. “Please forgive me. You promised that you would.”

“Georgiana—”

“No, please just—just wait.” She let go of Cat’s hand to swipe at her eyes. “I love you. I love your cleverness and your generosity and your joy. For half my life, when I have looked upon the stars in the sky, all I have seen is the shape of your smile.”

Cat was staring at her, lips parted, eyes as dark as nighttime.

“Whatever you choose,” Georgiana whispered, “I will respect your decision. I will never come here again, if you and Jem do not wish it. But—if you did wish it—I would lay the world at your feet.”

“I don’t want the world,” Cat whispered. “I only want you.”

Georgiana felt her teeth click closed. Part of her wanted to stumble back. Part of her—all of her—wanted—

“Say it again,” she said, and it was half a command and half a plea. “Catriona—”

“I want you.” Cat gripped Georgiana’s shoulders as if to shake her. “There is nothing to forgive.”

“I did not—”

“No. Stop it. Did you not hear your own words? In all that list of things your father stole from me, did you not consider what he took from you? Your sense of safety. Your belief in your own worth. God, Georgiana, when I think of him, I become so angry I could flatten this garden, but none of that anger is directed at you. You are not your father. His crimes are not yours.”

Georgiana took a quick sharp breath through her nose, and the scent of roses seemed to ground her, tethering her to the earth when her mind wanted to reel away. “Are you—certain?”

“Georgie mine.” Cat’s voice went low and soft and persuasive. Her hand came around to cup the nape of Georgiana’s neck. “All those things he took from me—surely you cannot think I would be foolish enough to let him take this too?”

They were closer—Cat’s fingers held her fast—Georgiana had only to dip her head for her mouth to find Cat’s. She kissed Cat, hard and desperate, her palms shaped to Cat’s waist, until Cat finally pulled away.

“You mad, foolish creature.” Cat’s voice was a gasp. Her mouth was ruby brilliant. “I thought you were leaving. I thought you came to tell me that you meant to go.”

“Never,” Georgiana vowed. “Never.”

And this time, when their mouths met, their kiss was a homecoming.

When they broke apart some minutes later, Cat pushed back the hair that had fallen across Georgiana’s face. “I love you. And I don’t mind saying it again and again until my words fix themselves in your heart. I love you, Georgiana Cleeve.”

“It is not my heart that is the problem.” Georgiana felt Cat’s fingers brush her ear as she tucked back the lock of hair, and somehow it made her want to cry. “My heart is yours. It is my head, I fear, that gets wrapped round in knots sometimes.”

“Then I will be here to untangle you. However many times it takes. I will not leave your side, and if you fall—” Cat’s lips curled up.

“No. I was going to say that if you fall, I will take you in my arms and carry you, but I’ve changed my mind.

You shan’t fall. I will hold you too close to let you. ”

Georgiana touched Cat’s cheeks with trembling fingers. Traced the curves of her lips, the upper and then the lower. “I believe you.”

“Good.”

And then somehow they were kissing again, and somehow Cat’s back was to the stone wall, and then Georgiana’s, a dizzy revolution of bodies. Roses hung in the air, and Georgiana felt herself go limp and liquid beneath the honeyed pressure of Cat’s mouth and hands.

Cat was the first to pull back. She held Luna’s papers in one hand, and she brandished them, her cheeks flushed red. “These are getting crushed.”

Her voice was throaty. Georgiana loved it. “They’re not the originals. Let them.”

Cat laughed, rich and sweet, and Georgiana felt as if she were floating. “You will come to your senses later and regret it. Come inside with me. I want—oh Georgie mine. I want you to stay here with me. Do you think you might?”

Georgiana opened her mouth to answer, but Cat barreled on. “I have not been able to get your words out of my mind, not since the moment you said them. ‘I want to wake beside you,’ you said. ‘To wake, and not to go.’” Her dark eyes were all hope. “I want you to stay.”

“I want that too.” What a luxury it was to touch Cat like this—to feel the curve at the top of her buttocks, the elegant points of her spine. “There’s Bacon to consider—and my mother—”

“And Pauline,” Cat laughed, “and Jem—God, it’s his house now, come to think. And we shall have to go to London far too often to meet with Laventille—”

“Not to mention Yorke—”

“But we will work it out,” Cat said. “We will make a life together.”

“Yes,” Georgiana said, and the joy inside her was a garden, was ten thousand roses, blossoming despite the cold. “We’ve already begun.”