Page 5 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

Cat Lacey. Catriona Lacey. Catriona Rose Lacey of Woodcote Hall.

Georgiana watched helplessly as Cat Lacey vanished around the corner, her hood thrown over her head and her body vibrating with outrage.

Georgiana felt as though she’d been struck in the head with a post. Or, no—she felt as though she’d been rapped upon the nose with a rolled-up paper, like a naughty dog. She felt scolded. She felt chastened. She felt—she felt—

Oh God. Oh dear God. Lady Darling was Cat Lacey.

It both made sense and did not make sense.

It explained some coincidences, to be sure—Augusta Quirkle’s name, for one, but also the village of Little Pucklechurch in both of their electricity books, and their matching droopy-mustached parsons this year.

But their shared memories did not explain their near-identical titles nor their similar plots.

It did not explain bloody Alba Margherita, whom Georgiana had spent hours of time and pots of ink painfully renaming.

There had been no Alba Margherita at Woodcote Hall.

That was what she had meant to say to Lady Darling. She’d had an itemized list in her mind of parallels to prove that the woman was up to no good.

Except then Lady Darling had appeared, and Georgiana’s brain had been promptly and comprehensively ravished. She scarcely knew what she had said. She’d barely been able to get the words out past numb lips.

It was unsporting, that was what it was. The woman had no right to appear after a decade, lit from behind and glowing in the dawn like some incandescent and deliciously corporeal fantasy.

No. No. Cat Lacey was not a fantasy. Georgiana did not fantasize about her. She did not think of her, not anymore, not since she’d been fifteen and hopelessly infatuated, practically obsessed with—

Iris waved a hand directly in front of Georgiana’s nose.

Georgiana blinked. Dear Lord. She was still staring at the place where the woman’s feet had trod.

“Ah,” she managed, “yes?”

“I said, ‘Selina is here and wants to know if you’d like to come in for tea.’ Thrice.”

Tea sounded nice. Hot. Bracing. Perhaps it might restore some portion of her wits. “All right,” she said faintly.

“All right,” Iris echoed.

There was a brief pause.

“The, ah”—Iris’s voice was slightly smothered—“the door is this way. You shall probably have to turn around.”

Georgiana drew a single, moderated breath and ordered herself very firmly to calm down.

Selina stood just inside the threshold at the back entrance of Belvoir’s. It was still early, but the library was the duchess’s darling, as precious to her as a child, and so it was not surprising that she was here shortly after dawn.

Her expression was distinctly censorious as she took in Iris and Georgiana lurking in her back alley.

Georgiana hoped pathetically that the tea service might come with brandy.

Selina ushered them upstairs to her office, where a tray appeared—Georgiana was not sure how, Selina’s powers of command always seemed faintly supernatural—and the story of their morning affair was unraveled.

Mostly by Iris. Georgiana did not yet seem to have recovered the ability to speak.

“Wait,” Selina said. “I don’t understand. You knew Lady Darling—but you did not know that you knew her?”

“That’s more or less the way of it.”

Honestly, she had scarcely known Cat back at Woodcote Hall. They had not been friends. Georgiana could count on two hands the number of times they had spoken together—in fact, adolescent Georgiana had kept a private record of exactly that, occasionally decorated with very, very small hearts.

She felt her soul shrivel at the ten-year-old memory.

“And she was the daughter of the butler at your family’s estate?”

“Yes.” She had been. Before Georgiana’s father had thrown them out and Georgiana had done nothing to stop it.

Selina’s brows made a very skeptical line, and she waved a hand in Georgiana’s general direction. “So why is your face… like that?”

“Like what?” Georgiana managed.

“Carmine.”

“Is it because there is a perfectly rational explanation for your conspiracy?” Iris inquired. She patted Georgiana’s hand sympathetically. “Do not be embarrassed. I thought it suspicious as well.”

Georgiana removed her hand and allowed it to briefly cool the fire in her right cheek.

“No. No, dash it. This doesn’t explain things.

There are still too many coincidences.” Her brain seemed to be very slowly grinding back to life after its catastrophic failure in the alley. “Too many pieces do not fit.”

Selina leaned back in her chair. “What do you mean?”

“Some of the names of people and places in my books were drawn from my past, I admit. But others came from my own research—my recent research. The ruined monastery that Lady Darling describes in Wightwick Priory is exactly like the one I traveled to Little Baddow to write about in Orphan of Midnight. I spent sixteen hours interviewing a Florentine chemist to write the electricity book—”

“That’s not so long,” put in Iris. “I spent that much time just last week attempting to translate four words in Etruscan.”

Selina placed her fingers delicately over her mouth, which Georgiana knew perfectly well meant she was hiding a laugh.

“Thank you, Iris,” Georgiana managed.

“Perspective,” Iris said innocently, “is always helpful.”

“Indeed. Well. From the perspective of several years of following Lady Darling’s career, I am convinced that there is something more beneath the surface than mere coincidence.”

Could this be some bizarre form of revenge for what Georgiana’s father had done to the Lacey family? It seemed circuitous at best—but then again, a long-held and twisting revenge plot was nothing if not Gothic.

Selina lowered her hand and, to Georgiana’s surprise, gave a little thoughtful tilt of her head.

“I have to admit,” she said, “it does seem odd to me that her novels should so regularly publish within weeks of yours and with topics so like one another. I had some sense of it, of course, when I prepared the Belvoir’s catalog.

But the sheer number of coincidences was not apparent to me until you pointed them out. ”

Georgiana had the briefest of moments to feel gratified—there was something peculiar going on, she had known it—before Selina’s stern glare promptly deflated her.

“That said,” Selina added, “I should prefer that you do not use my library as the site for your intrigues in the future.”

“Ah—yes, of course—”

“Or if you must,” Selina added, “do not do it without me.”

Georgiana didn’t quite know what to say to that. She lifted her teacup to her mouth, took a long swallow, and attempted to regain her composure.

“Tell me,” Selina said when Georgiana had lowered her cup, “what do you plan to do next?”

Georgiana set the cup down into the saucer so firmly that it clinked, a faux pas that would have raised her mother’s eyebrows. “I’m not entirely certain.”

She straightened her teaspoon with one tiny nudge as she thought about the conversation she’d had with Cat in the alley. She did not know if her words had had any effect whatsoever—heavens, if anyone had come out of that contest the victor, it had certainly not been she.

But if she could not provoke Cat Lacey into stopping whatever intrigue she was engaged in, then perhaps…

Perhaps Georgiana could beat her.

She shoved back from the table so abruptly that her chair wobbled behind her. “I am going home.”

Both Selina and Iris looked a trifle dazed by this sudden change of course.

“That was quick,” Selina said.

Georgiana waved a hand. “I’m not giving up. I am redirecting my energies. I am going to write a novel.”

Iris raised a brow. “Is that… a new plan? Because I was under the impression—”

Georgiana frowned at her. “A new novel. Quickly. I will take my manuscript to Jean Laventille before Lady Darling can possibly bring hers to her printer, and I will publish first this time.”

Cat had accused her of lacking originality. Had suggested that she, Georgiana, might be the one whose work was imitative.

But she knew—of course she knew, they both must know—that it was not so.

Cat’s newest novel had just been brought out, and she did not typically publish more than twice a year. If Georgiana could get her own manuscript to the printer quickly—if she could get her manuscript out first, beat Lady Darling to the press by weeks or months…

No one could accuse her of imitation then.

“That seems eminently reasonable,” said Selina. “Shockingly little in the way of skullduggery.”

Iris nodded and set her own teacup back into its saucer. “It does seem so. However”—she peered up at Georgiana—“if you do mean for us to confront her a second time, perhaps you’ll allow me to do the talking? And, er, come armed?”

A second time?

Georgiana’s heart did something troubling—stumbled like a horse that had missed a step.

No. No, and again no, and also absolutely not. One close encounter with the adult incarnation of Cat Lacey was enough for a lifetime.

When she finally managed to reply, Georgiana made her voice very crisp, despite the antics of her heartbeat. “That will not be necessary. I do not intend to ever see her again.”

It took Georgiana just over three weeks to turn her inchoate mass of notes into a novel. She was fairly certain it was either brilliant or the worst thing she’d ever written in her life, but either way, the thing was done.

She felt faintly triumphant—and a bit bleary, and extremely ink-scented—as she stepped down from the hack in front of Laventille’s office on Bond Street just after dawn.

There had been a time—seven years past, but she could still remember it as vividly as if it had been only moments ago—when she would never have let herself be seen there. A time when her father’s power had seemed almost unbreakable. When she had feared she might never get away.