Page 7 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

Augusta Quirkle was born into hoarfrost and blackness, and she met the world screaming.

— from the first page of ORPHAN OF MIDNIGHT by Geneva Desrosiers

The six-minute walk between Laventille’s office on Bond Street and her solicitor’s office two streets down was not enough time for Cat’s pulse to stop racing.

It was after dawn now. She was going to be late to the pie shop, and Mrs. Quincy was going to be puce with outrage.

She could not bring herself to care. She shoved open the door to Martin Yorke’s small office so hard that the bell above the door did not tinkle so much as bellow its announcement of her arrival.

Elias Beckett, one of Mr. Yorke’s clerks, lifted his head and peered at her.

“Good morning, Mr. Beckett,” she bit out.

“Er,” he said. “Good morning, Miss Lacey.” He hunched his shoulders slightly, as if to hide behind his desk.

She tried to modulate her tone. She was frightening clerks, for heaven’s sake. “Is Mr. Yorke here?”

“In his office, yes.”

She looked around at the front room. Beckett’s desk was patently occupied, but the other clerk’s desk stood empty, its surface covered with neat stacks of papers.

Don’t ask, she told herself. Don’t ask.

“And—Jem?” Damn it, Catriona. “Has he been in yet?”

“Not that I’ve seen this morning. I’ve only been here for an hour or so, though.”

Of course Beckett had arrived an hour before dawn. Cat bit down hard on her lower lip, stifled her anxious thoughts about her brother and his career, and made her way down the narrow hallway into Martin Yorke’s office.

Yorke was a tall, faintly cadaverous man in his middle sixties.

He’d been Cat’s solicitor and general man of business since the first Lady Darling novel in 1818, when she’d acquired a contract from her publisher in a fever of delighted celebration, then taken the thing home and realized she could not make heads nor tails of the legalistic language therein.

She had not known quite what to do. She’d feared that to sign the contract without understanding its contents would be to invite exploitation, but she had not known where to turn for advice.

Her father would have known. Walter Lacey had been that sort of man—would have inexplicably produced an acquaintance who printed law books or a judge whom he’d helped with some extraordinary favor involving Wiltshire bacon.

Even the doctor who’d attended Walter at his death had refused payment, citing some long history of friendship, his expression sad and fond at once.

She’d tasted grief as she’d looked down at the contract, fear like ashes in her mouth.

And then she had recalled Mr. Martin Yorke. He was a regular customer at the pie shop. His orders were highly specific and his arrival unfailingly punctual.

The recipient of the pies he acquired every Monday and Thursday was, she had learned, his large and somber wolfhound, Peg.

If the man could afford to buy high-quality lamb mince pies—no onions, no garlic, no salt—for his dog, she supposed he couldn’t be doing too badly as a solicitor. He was precise and respectful, and he never asked for the pies on credit.

And he coddled the dog. She had seen it. It seemed a good sign.

So she’d taken the first Lady Darling contract to his office.

He’d returned it the next day, marked all over in scribbled notations.

Then he’d insisted on going to Helen Vanhoven’s office together to present her with his changes, and somehow—quite without Cat’s realizing it—he’d managed to alter the terms of the contract to eliminate Cat’s personal liability and increase her profit share besides.

When she’d tried to express her bemused gratitude, he’d shaken his head. “Don’t thank me, girl. I charge ten percent.”

It had been more than worth the cost, these last years. He’d secured contract after contract, done personal battle with Helen Vanhoven on more than one memorable occasion, and, just this year, taken on fifteen-year-old Jem as his newest apprentice.

In fact, it was the financial machinations of Martin Yorke that had prompted her appointment with Mr. Laventille this morning and her infuriating confrontation— again —with Lady Georgiana Cleeve.

Cat cleared her throat as she pulled open the door to Yorke’s office.

He looked up and raised one ponderous eyebrow. “Do we have an appointment that I had forgotten?”

She scowled at him. “No. We have no appointment. I did, however, have an appointment with Mr. Jean Laventille this morning, per your recommendation.”

Yorke leaned back and tented his long fingers over his chest. “And?”

“And nothing! It was a complete disaster. Were you unaware that the man also publishes the Gothic novels of Geneva Desrosiers?”

“I was not unaware,” Yorke said blandly.

She threw up her hands. “Then why did you send me? You knew”—she paused and looked at the open door, then dropped her voice—“of her accusations against me.”

She had fairly sprinted to Yorke’s office after her first meeting with Georgiana Cleeve in the alley behind Belvoir’s, but he had not been concerned about legal action from Georgiana’s quarter.

Nor did he seem worried now. He flicked his fingers. “Her accusations do not signify.”

“They do to me!” Cat hissed. “If I were to publish with Laventille as well, I might be forced to encounter her—”

“Is that likely?”

“Evidently so, as I encountered her this morning!” Her voice had risen despite her best efforts.

Out of an abundance of caution, she shut the door to Yorke’s office and then came to sit down across from him at the desk.

She was quite certain that Elias Beckett in the front room had no idea of her secret identity, and she very much intended to keep it that way.

Yorke’s brows had risen slightly at her words. “Would encountering Miss Desrosiers pose some sort of problem?”

“Of course! She is—why, she’s—I simply—”

She couldn’t seem to finish her sentence. This new Lady Georgiana Cleeve was nothing like the retiring girl Cat had known back at Woodcote Hall. Georgiana had grown into an exquisite woman with ice in her veins and a sneer upon her mouth, and everything about her made Cat feel hot and unsettled.

The aristocratic tilt to her head as she’d looked down her nose at Cat. Her accusations, which had revealed how very fragile Cat’s self-confidence was. The tiny flicker of her gaze toward Cat’s mouth, so quick and heated that Cat had thought—

For just a moment, Cat had been almost certain—

She gritted her teeth. This was absurd. Lady Georgiana had never given any indication that her tastes ran toward the sapphic. Cat was obviously suffering from some sort of—of brain fever, brought on by false accusations and the resulting emotional turmoil.

Lady Georgiana was a threat to Cat’s career and a distraction to her mind, and Cat would not put herself in closer proximity to Her Ladyship than she absolutely had to be.

“She’s dreadful,” Cat said finally.

Yorke’s deep-set eyes rested upon her consideringly. “Do you know who Miss Desrosiers is? Her true identity?”

Cat blinked. “I—yes. I do. How did you—”

“It was a shocking scandal when she divulged her nom de plume. The daughter of an earl, a Gothic novelist? The ton reacted as though she’d personally committed the grisly deeds in her books.” His tone went dry. “Very good for her sales though.”

Cat leaned back against the spindles of the wooden chair, trying to make sense of Yorke’s words. “I don’t understand. She chose to reveal herself? She made her true identity known to the public intentionally?”

Suddenly, several things that Georgiana had said made more sense. You must know—surely everyone in London knows who I am by now.

But Cat had not known. She’d had absolutely no idea.

“When?” she asked. “When did it happen?”

“In 1815, if I recall correctly. Several years before you became Lady Darling. But did you not just say you knew who she was?”

Cat bit her lip. “Not because I knew about the scandal.” She would never have heard the rumors back then, in the days before she’d taken up her own pen. Her social circle was as far as was possible from that of the Earl of Alverthorpe and his cronies. “I recognized her.”

“You knew her already? Lady Georgiana Cleeve?”

She looked at the door in anxious reflex at the sound of the woman’s true name. Did Yorke not realize that someone might hear ?

But then she gave herself a little mental shake. If Yorke’s recollection was correct—and she had no reason to doubt him—then Georgiana’s name was no secret. There was no reason to protect her.

It seemed suddenly absurd that she had wanted to, even for the briefest of moments. Her Ladyship was no friend of hers! Far from it. And yet Cat guarded her own privacy so closely for Jem’s sake that she would never have threatened someone else’s. Not even Lady Georgiana’s.

But—

“Why would she do it?” she asked.

She could not help but ask. The intentional disclosure of Georgiana’s identity was baffling in the extreme.

Georgiana had had social standing, wealth, the privileged position of a ton darling.

And she had been shy. She had not sought attention nor courted scandal.

The intentional revelation of her secret identity was incomprehensible for the person Cat had known.

And, though she cursed herself for a fool, Cat wanted to know how it had happened.

“I suppose,” Yorke said slowly, “that is for her to say.” He gave a brief shake of his head. “But as you can see, you have nothing to fear from her.”

“I’m not sure that fear is precisely—”

But Yorke rolled right over her objections, as he always did when he felt Cat insufficiently pragmatic in terms of her finances.

“As I told you when we discussed the matter last week, Jean Laventille will offer you a considerably higher percentage on the sales of your books than that dragon Vanhoven. Ignore this rival of yours and focus on what really matters.”

Though she was still unsettled, Cat’s lips quirked despite herself. “Money, you mean?”