Page 48 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)
A month ago, Lady Edith Cleeve had moved down from London permanently, splitting her time between the Alverthorpe residence and Renwick House in order to make herself available for the end of Noor’s confinement.
As it turned out, the baby had been extremely dilatory in her arrival, a delay which had given Edith the opportunity to move cautiously toward a full reconciliation with her sons.
Edith, Ambrose, Georgiana—they were all reserved, all painfully careful with one another.
But Percy had eased everything with his cheerful, bounding presence—and Noor with her honesty and dry humor—and now, too, the tiniest Cleeve would bring them closer still.
Ambrose stood up again, putting Cat in mind of a jack-in-the-box. “I should bring Noor some water. It’s been an hour. Would you like to hold the baby, Georgie?”
“Oh,” Georgiana said. “I—all right.”
Ambrose settled the swaddled baby in Georgiana’s arms and hurtled off in the direction of his wife.
“Perhaps he will fall unconscious on the way to the bedchamber,” Edith murmured. “One can only hope.”
Cat wasn’t quite listening. She grinned down at Georgiana’s miniature niece, whose cheeks were extraordinarily round. The baby’s fingers, curled over the top edge of the swaddling blanket, were inexpressibly tiny, and Cat could not help but marvel at each perfect fingernail.
“Isn’t she darling?” she murmured to Georgiana. “Congratulations, Auntie George.”
There was a peculiar little hiccup from Georgiana’s quarter, and Cat tore her eyes away from the baby to look at Georgiana.
She was sobbing silently, tears streaming down her cheeks and dripping into the high collar of her morning dress.
“Georgie,” Cat said in alarm. “Are you all right?” She tucked an arm rather helplessly around Georgiana’s side, and only later did she reflect on how easy it had become to perform such a gesture in front of Georgiana’s family. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing—nothing.”
“I would find that more persuasive if you were not in danger of flooding the sitting room.”
Georgiana laughed, then sobbed again. “I can’t—wipe my eyes. I don’t want to drop the baby. Can you fetch me a handkerchief or—”
Cat used the tips of her fingers instead, brushing the tears from Georgiana’s elegant cheekbones. “Tell me what’s the matter.”
“Nothing’s the matter. Oh God, I loathe weeping. It’s only that—” She turned and fixed Cat with a damp blue gaze. “It’s only that I had never imagined any of this. A niece. My family together. You.” Her voice cracked. “It took me by surprise, all of a sudden. How happy I am.”
“So am I,” Cat murmured. “Oh, Georgie mine. So am I.”
Eight months later
Cat had been back home from London for some time before she found Georgiana in the garden, armed with secateurs and doing something industrious to the new rose vines.
Or—no. As Cat came closer, she realized that Georgiana was poking lightly at the mortar between the sandstone bricks with the sharp tip of her scissors.
“Looking for jewels?” she murmured as she came up behind Georgiana.
Georgiana jumped. “Oh. No, I was only—” Her face had gone pink all over. “All right, yes. I refuse to start tearing down walls—not when we’ve finally finished putting them all back up. I was attempting to satisfy my curiosity without resorting to demolition.”
Cat laughed and wrapped her arms around Georgiana’s waist. In deference to the summer heat, Georgiana was dressed in thin crepe muslin, and Cat could feel the ridge of Georgiana’s pelvis, the tiny dip of Georgiana’s navel straight through the fabric.
She heard herself make a slightly inarticulate noise as she pressed her mouth to the back of Georgiana’s neck. “I missed you.”
“Mm.” Georgiana tipped her head, giving Cat space to taste the delicate expanse of heat-flushed skin, to breathe in her complex scent. “I missed you too.”
“It took me a quarter of an hour to find you.” She kissed Georgiana’s neck again and then breathed her next words into Georgiana’s ear. “Do you know what that means?”
Georgiana shivered. Her ribs moved beneath Cat’s hand as she took a quick, unsteady breath. “What does it mean?”
“It means”—God, she tasted so good, felt so lovely, and Cat had missed her so much—“I could have been doing this fifteen minutes ago.”
Georgiana’s arm made a graceful arc above her head as she reached up to put her fingers in Cat’s hair. “Or,” she murmured, “it means our house is too large.”
Against Georgiana’s skin, Cat breathed out a laugh. “I’m trying to be romantic. Do not wreck my plans with pragmatism.”
Georgiana laughed too, and turned, and put her arms about Cat’s body. “You’re trying to seduce me in our garden. I’m not certain that’s the same thing as romance.”
“Isn’t it? Dash it, I was so certain I had it right.”
Georgiana laughed again, and pulled out of Cat’s embrace, but only to drag Cat to the bench they’d had installed just beneath Sarah Sophia’s plaque. It was a delicate marvel of copper and wrought iron, the back worked in a pattern of roses and moons.
It fit them both perfectly.
“How are the books?” Georgiana asked.
Their newest books were set to release one month apart: two lush, eerie, gorgeously illustrated novels about a pair of lady detectives in the moorlands. They’d planned and designed them together, along with Jean Laventille. Selina had ordered two hundred copies just for Belvoir’s.
“Absolutely gorgeous. I’ve brought a handful of samples of cloth back for you to fondle.”
Georgiana’s eyes were warm and soft on Cat’s face. “And Jem and Pauline? Are they still planning to come up in a fortnight?”
“Yes, for a month at least. Jem says Yorke has been working his fingers to the bone before he goes on holiday.” Cat thought of Jem’s disgruntled face and could not stop herself from smiling. “Secretly I think he is thrilled to be so relied upon.”
“To be sure.” Georgiana tipped her head so that her cheek touched Cat’s hair. “Fawkes dropped by yesterday with another dozen or so records that he wants Jem to look at. Three of his tenants are wrangling, as I understand it, over the proper legal ownership of crossbred dairy cows.”
Cat felt her smile widen. “Jem will love it.”
“He will.”
Cat turned a little more on the bench, and her mouth found Georgiana’s neck again, then the tender place beneath her ear. “And I love you.”
“Mm. I love you too.”
Georgiana’s voice sounded far too steady, a problem which Cat resolved to rectify immediately. She sucked at the fine skin of Georgiana’s throat, and Georgiana breathed out, not quite a moan.
Cat felt desire build in her own belly at the sound, whisper-soft and throaty.
She stroked Georgiana’s knee through her delicate frock and then sent her hand higher, to the crease of Georgiana’s hip.
God, her skin felt hot through the muslin, and she shifted her hips under Cat’s hand.
The scent of roses was everywhere, eddying through Cat’s body on a tide of want.
“Do you want to go inside?” she murmured into Georgiana’s ear.
Or tried to murmur. Her own voice wobbled as Georgiana’s fingers grazed the underside of her breast.
“Let’s stay here,” Georgiana whispered. “In the light.” She let her head tip back, her face tilted toward the sun. “I like being seduced in the garden.”
“Is that so?” Cat murmured, and then slid down, off the bench and in between Georgiana’s knees. “We shall see how you like—”
She broke off halfway through lifting Georgiana’s skirts, her hand frozen on Georgiana’s scandalously bare calf.
Georgiana peered down. “What is it? Have I shocked you with my lack of undergarments again?”
“Georgie.” Cat’s voice sounded very peculiar. “Will you come down here for a moment?”
“Ah—all right?” Georgiana wrestled her leg free and slid off the bench as well, coming to kneel beside Cat. “Did you borrow some new book from Belvoir’s while you were gone? Are we acting something out or—”
And then her mouth dropped open as she too glimpsed what Cat had seen.
Cat swallowed very hard. “Is that—”
“Oh my God,” Georgiana whispered. “It is. ”
Embedded into the black-and-white tiles at the base of the wall—in the space they’d cleared for their bench—lay a constellation of sparkling shapes.
“The jewels,” Cat whispered. “Luna’s jewels.”
Set into the ebony trefoils were large sapphires, so dark as to be nearly black. And nested in the tiny white tiles that surrounded them were dozens and dozens of diamonds.
Cat reached out and ran her fingers across the tiles. The jewels had been invisible from above—at any other time of day, any other angle of the sun, the facets of the gems would not have caught the light.
But she could see them now. She could feel their tiny geometries, rough and tangible beneath her fingertips.
They were real. Luna’s jewels were real.
Georgiana leapt to her feet. “We need—dear God, I don’t even know what we need! A mineralogist. An archeologist. Iris might know how to…” She looked down at Cat, and her face was flushed, her eyes crystal-bright in the afternoon sun. “I need to write to Iris. I need to write to Jem!”
“Go,” said Cat, laughing. “Go. Find a pen. I’ll be right behind you.”
Georgiana bent down and kissed her hard upon the mouth, then dashed off into the east wing.
Cat ran her fingers over the jewels one more time, very slowly, and then rose to her feet. She cupped one of the roses in her hand and brought it to her face, and her gaze fell upon the plaque, polished to brilliance.
“If you’re still here,” she murmured, “thank you for everything. We will do right by you. By both of you. I promise.”
She let go of the blossom. It hung, sturdy and solid, on the vine, and its roots reached down to the soil beneath her feet.
The wind rustled the leaves. The sun was warm on the tiles. The roses were tended, and the house—strange and unsettling as it might be—held love in all its rooms.