Page 6 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

But things had changed. Everything had changed. When she was eighteen, Georgiana’s careless handling of her correspondence had allowed her father to uncover Selina’s ownership of Belvoir’s Library. His attack on Selina had threatened not only the library but the safety of Selina’s family.

And in the end, Georgiana had stood in the library, her back to the shelves, and revealed her identity as a Gothic novelist.

Her chest felt tight. She could remember the old earl’s face taut with rage as he’d laughed in her face that day. See how well you’ll live with no money, he’d said. No ton, no friends. See what happens when you’re all alone.

She’d expected to be alone—had almost brought herself to accept it, despite her fear. But instead, her mother had come with her. Edith had chosen to start a new life at Georgiana’s side, even though Georgiana’s scandalous career had cost Edith her friends, her vast estate, her position in society.

Even though it had led to the loss of her sons.

Selina—Edith—her brothers—even Iris… Sometimes it seemed that everyone who got close to Georgiana was harmed, in some way, by virtue of standing at her side. But she was trying to do better. She was trying to protect her mother. No matter what it took.

Georgiana took a breath and tried to shake off the maudlin thoughts as she approached Laventille’s office. She had stared too long at page after page of her own neat hand, she supposed. That must be why her eyes burned so.

She pushed open the door and nodded to the porter. William, a tall, reserved fellow whose occasional speech revealed his Jamaican origins, cracked a hint of a smile in her direction.

She permitted herself a smile back and then took herself up the stairs, rapped smartly on the door to Laventille’s inner sanctum, and then pushed it open without waiting for a response.

Jean Laventille was a Trinidadian immigrant of French, Spanish, and West African extraction, a vociferous political radical whose outrage at the brutality of the British colonial government had induced him to sail to England and mount his protest from within the metropolitan capital.

He’d married a sinfully wealthy marquess’s daughter back in 1805 and had been jailed thrice for his political activities, a fact which had not seemed to deter him from his project in the slightest. He was vibrant and charming and utterly irrepressible, and Georgiana did not have the words for how much she liked him.

He was also, at this precise moment, seated at his desk and engaged in close conversation with Catriona Rose Lacey.

Georgiana froze in the doorway, quite unable to process the sight.

“Georgiana,” Laventille said volubly. He had a light warm accent, and—in the tradition of his Quaker faith—did not employ titles. “Come in. You’re right on time. My friend here was just finishing up. In fact, have you met—”

Georgiana didn’t hear the rest of his words. In fact, she could scarcely hear anything over the roaring in her ears.

Cat Lacey was here ?

It seemed evidence—no, proof— of the woman’s machinations. Lady Darling was not published by Jean Laventille. She had no reason to be here in his office, seated across from him at his desk, looking fresh-faced and startled and luscious as a peach.

Georgiana’s lips parted. She struggled for words. She… she…

She pressed her lips together and dug deep. She would not be speechless and boggled this time. She would not be outmatched simply by the woman’s presence, no matter what she had once felt toward her. She would not.

Somewhere inside herself, she found the cool veneer of aristocratic arrogance she’d learned from her father, and looked down her nose at Cat Lacey. “What are you doing here?”

Cat shoved back her chair and stood, but it did not matter. She was two or three inches shorter than Georgiana, and she still had to look up to meet Georgiana’s gaze. “I beg your pardon?”

“Georgiana?” Laventille interjected. “What on earth—”

“Do not try to play innocent,” Georgiana said to Cat. “It did not work upon me the last time we met, and it is even less likely to persuade here in my publisher’s office. Or do you mean to frame this as a coincidence as well?”

“I—” Cat’s thick dark lashes fluttered as she looked down and to the side, her gaze falling to the desk, the papers she’d left there, her own boots. “No, I—”

She was flustered, obviously, and Georgiana watched as she moistened her lips, a quick flash of pink tongue.

And then she seemed to pull herself together. Her chin went up, and her head tipped back in defiance. “I do not need to persuade you of anything. My business here is legitimate, and it is my own. You have no right to my private information.”

“And you have no right to help yourself to my plots— my research—but that does not seem to have stopped you, has it?” Georgiana took a step closer.

“I have helped myself to nothing,” Cat snapped. Her throat had flushed pink, and her lips were the color of wine. “I have earned everything I have. I have labored over every word in my manuscripts, and I have taken nothing from you.”

“You truly mean to tell me that your visit to my publisher’s office has nothing to do with my books?”

“You are mad in the head,” Cat said flatly, and—

God. Perhaps she was. She had to drag her gaze away from Cat’s lush, bewitching mouth, and she hoped quite desperately that Cat had not marked the waywardness of her gaze.

“My comings and goings,” Cat said, her voice tight, “have nothing whatsoever to do with you, your ladyship.”

“Then why would you come here, after the conversation we had outside Belvoir’s? Why would you invite a closer proximity between our work?”

The flush on Cat’s throat worked its way up to her cheeks. “I—forgot. That this was your publisher.”

Georgiana scoffed. Laventille’s name was on the frontispiece of every one of her books!

Cat seemed to bristle at the sound. “I assure you, Lady Georgiana, my every thought does not revolve around you and your career. Your fixation upon me is entirely one-sided.”

That blow landed—no doubt considerably harder than Cat could ever have intended. Georgiana felt her own face heat, a humiliating wash of decade-old memories.

But before she could formulate a reply, Laventille broke in.

Georgiana had quite forgotten he was there.

“This is without a doubt the best show I have seen since I moved to this godforsaken island two decades ago. But Georgiana, my dear, I feel it incumbent upon me to assure you that your, er, colleague here did not speak of you at all in our interview this morning. In fact, I had rather thought to introduce the two of you. I suspected you might have some small things in common, but—well. I take it an introduction would be superfluous at this juncture.”

Cat plucked up the papers that lay on the desk and shoved them haphazardly into her bag, which was as worn and slightly out-of-date as the rest of her garments. “Superfluous indeed. Mr. Laventille, it was a pleasure to speak with you. I suspect I shall not require your services after all.”

She stepped lightly around Georgiana, but the room was not large. Her skirts brushed against Georgiana’s own, and it felt—

It felt like the barest whisper of a caress.

Georgiana leapt backward, and Cat scowled at her, a quick dark-eyed flash of fury, before she vanished through the door.

There was a long moment of silence as Georgiana stared at the open doorway.

Finally, Laventille spoke. “Georgiana,” he said, “we have worked together for a decade now, have we not?”

“Almost,” she said. Her knees were shaking, she noted vaguely. And her hands. “Nine years, last June.”

“Indeed. Yes. For nine years now, I have known you to be a fiendishly capable and composed sort of person, a talented writer and a competent businesswoman.”

She finally managed to look away from the place where Cat Lacey had vanished to stare in surprise at her publisher. Tragically, he had not finished.

“Generally,” he went on, “you are possessed of both restraint and good sense. Today, however, I begin to worry that you are simply possessed. ”

Her mouth came open to protest. Nothing emerged.

Instead, she lurched on wobbly legs to the vacant chair in front of his desk, collapsed into it, and buried her face in her hands.