Page 9 of Ladies in Hating (Belvoir’s Library Trilogy #3)

Please find attached the new contractual terms proposed by Mr. Laventille, which may obviate your recent objections. Vast sums of money have that effect, I find.

— from Martin Yorke, solicitor, to Catriona Lacey

By evening, Cat had come no closer to making a decision about Jean Laventille, the pie shop, or Renwick House.

She had, unfortunately, sliced a deep cut across the base of her thumb when her mind had strayed—ever so briefly—to the recollection of Georgiana Cleeve’s disdainful face.

She resolved to put Her Ladyship out of her mind for the rest of the day, a resolution made promptly impossible by the fact that every time her thumb smarted, she was drawn back into the memory: Georgiana’s angular cheekbones, her moon-pale lashes, the spray of freckles all around her mouth.

It was infuriating.

As Cat settled herself into a threadbare armchair across from her brother, Jem glanced up from his book. His red hair was almost metallic, a glittering copper in the firelight. His lips pursed into a frown.

“What?” she said.

“I don’t know.” He frowned harder at her. “You look suspicious.”

She blinked. “How can I look suspicious? I am sitting down, empty-handed, by the fire.”

“I don’t know. Something about your wrists, perhaps. Why aren’t you covered in ink?”

“I am not generally covered in ink,” she protested.

Their cousin, Pauline Tuttle, who shared the small suite of rooms with them, came around the corner with something hot and brothy in a pair of mugs. “That,” she said, “is a flat-out lie. I say that with the experience of the woman who does your washing and mending.”

“I do the washing too!” Cat protested. “We take turns!”

“You do the washing poorly,” Jem said. “Do you not see the ink everywhere? Or do you simply not mind it?”

She glowered at her brother and Pauline both. Pauline laughed and passed her a mug, then settled her hip on the arm of the chair where Jem sat with his book.

Pauline—clever as the devil, whip-thin with a spray of dark curls—had come into their lives after Cat, Jem, and their father, Walter, had moved to London from Wiltshire.

When Walter Lacey had died, Pauline had dragged the grief-stricken Cat and Jem bodily toward subsistence.

She had forced meals upon them and—when Cat had needed more and more time to work—she had taken charge of Jem’s education herself.

Her late husband, a printer, had left Pauline enough to survive on alone, if she was prudent—but she had not been prudent.

She had been generous to a fault. She’d shared her meals with Cat and Jem, taught Jem Latin and how to darn his socks, and kept them together when Cat’s sorrow and uncertainty might have been enough to tow them under.

Sometimes, Cat’s gratitude toward her cousin was enough to stop her heart.

Jem was poking through the soup with his spoon. “Did you make this? Or did Kitty?”

“I made it,” Pauline answered and rapped him lightly on the head with her knuckles. “Eat.”

He looked suspiciously into the mug and did not move to take a bite. “What’s in it?”

“Cabbage,” Pauline said indignantly, “and carrots and mutton, and it’s perfectly good.”

Cat sniffed at her own mug. The cabbage was unmistakable. “Smells like laundry, a bit.”

“Oh, now you’re a laundry expert?”

Jem took a hearty bite, shuddered slightly, and then took another spoonful, rather smaller. “I know we trade off the household tasks, but have you ever considered the notion that we might play to our strengths? You can do the washing and mending, Polly, and Kitty the cooking.”

“And you’ll do what, wee man?” Pauline said tartly. “Sit by the fire and toast your book?”

“I am to go into the law,” Jem said severely. “I am studying.”

“About that,” Cat said, and then wanted to bite her tongue.

It was too late. Two heads popped up at her words—Pauline’s dark wild curls, Jem’s hair so bright it almost hurt Cat’s eyes.

“What is it?” Pauline asked. The playfulness had dropped away from her tone. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” she said, “no, not at all.” Curse her tongue, which persisted in moving more rapidly than her mind.

Her fingers tightened on her spoon, and then she did curse, because she’d forgotten about the wound on her thumb.

“Sorry?” Jem said. “Did you just say ‘fucking ladies’?”

Pauline snorted, and Cat elected to ignore her.

“No,” she said again, perhaps more firmly than was strictly required.

“Nothing is wrong. I went to Mr. Yorke’s office this morning, that’s all.

A business meeting. But I… noticed you weren’t there, Jem.

Not when I arrived nor when I left. It’s fine, of course.

I’m sure you were sleeping, or—or something else important, and I—”

Don’t push, she told herself. Damn it, Catriona.

He was fifteen. He was still six years from his majority, for heaven’s sake! Still a child.

But she and Pauline had taken him as far as they could in his education. There was no chance of university. They had neither the funds to pay for it nor the connections required to secure his entry. She wanted him to have the chance to learn, to grow…

To be safe.

She wanted him to have a gentleman’s education, and the security that went along with it, and his clerkship with Yorke was the best way for him to attain that high-gloss polish.

If Jem did well—if he proved himself—Yorke could sponsor his admission into the Rolls of the Courts.

But solicitors were allowed only two apprentices at a time, and the positions were highly competitive.

If Jem faltered, and if Yorke moved to replace him, Jem’s five-year apprenticeship would begin again, only with greater difficulty because of his first failure.

It was difficult to shove down the depths of her desperation when she thought about Jem and his career—harder still because he was clever and perceptive and too sensitive by half. He could read her worries in the clench of her hand on her spoon, and so she made herself relax her grip.

“I wasn’t sleeping,” he said. He set the mug down on the floor. “I was working. For Mr. Yorke.”

“No,” she said hastily, “I’m sure you were. That is, it would have been perfectly fine if you had been sleeping. It was barely dawn.”

“ You weren’t sleeping.” His eyes were light, green haloed by gray. Nothing like her own.

“I—” She moistened her lips. “No.”

“You needn’t check up on me.” He sat straighter in his chair, and the book he’d been reading slipped from his lap to land on the floor. “Mr. Yorke is happy with my work.”

“I wasn’t checking up on you—”

“I was doing a project for him. A task that he assigned.”

“I didn’t—I wasn’t there about you, Jemmy. Only I saw Elias Beckett there already, and I couldn’t help but worry—” She was talking too much. She did that, she knew she did, and still it was difficult to stop. She wrapped her fist around her thumb, and it hurt, and she didn’t let go.

“You don’t need to worry.” Jem’s voice was taut.

“I know. I know. I—”

“And shouldn’t you have been at the pie shop at dawn?”

“Well, yes,” Cat began, and then hesitated.

She had not told them about Lady Georgiana.

She had not wanted them to worry—even as she herself had played out a hundred scenarios in her mind involving Geneva Desrosiers, public accusations of plagiarism, and the abrupt demise of her own career. “That is,” she amended, “no.”

“Which is it?”

“It’s—it’s—”

Pauline rose to collect their mugs, cutting off Cat’s fragmented babble. “You know,” she said as she bundled the mugs and spoons beneath her arm, “we would find you less suspicious if you would stop acting so suspicious. Jem’s right. What were you doing at Yorke’s office at dawn?”

Cat tried to arrange her face in an expression of innocence. By the crisp arch of Pauline’s left brow, she was not especially successful. “I had a meeting with Yorke. About my finances.”

“At the same time you were meant to be at the pie shop?” Jem asked skeptically.

Damn it, perhaps her brother ought to train as a trial attorney. “I am considering an alteration. To—ah—the terms of my employment.”

Now Pauline’s right brow joined the left, and she halted in her tracks on her way to the tiny kitchen. “You are thinking of quitting the pie shop?”

Cat bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to imply that—she’d meant only the contract with Laventille. She hadn’t meant to speak to Jem and Pauline of the pie shop until she was certain in her course. Until she stopped feeling so afraid.

Would she ever stop feeling so afraid?

“Yes?” she said cautiously.

Pauline’s mouth curled at the corners, and as Cat glanced at Jem to determine his reaction, she saw that he too was smiling, bright and blinding.

“Kitty!” he said. “I’m so glad for you. You can sleep now, for heaven’s sake.”

There was something sweet in his voice, like a child with a present. As though her ease were a gift to him.

And perhaps it was. No doubt he could scarcely remember a time when she had not seethed with anxiety and desperation.

“That’s good news,” Pauline said, and though her voice was not so purely gleeful as Jem’s, she was happy too. Cat could tell it. “I’ve been begging you to quit that shop for months now. We don’t need the money.”

“I shall miss the pies, though,” Jem said. “Even though you mostly brought home the burnt ones.”

Guilt stabbed at her—the contradictory guilt one could only feel toward family. She worked too much, worried too much; she knew she ought to be happier for their sakes. And yet at the same time, all her work and worry were for them. To keep all of them safe.

She pressed the tip of her finger against the cut at the base of her thumb. “I was thinking of taking a trip,” she said. “For the purposes of research. Out to Wiltshire for a few days, a week at most. Do you think—”

Pauline did not let her finish. “Yes. Of course, yes. Go. We’ll manage here somehow, without your oversight and terrible washing.”

Jem emitted a dramatic adolescent sigh. “I really will miss the pies. Do you think you can carry a few off with you on your last day?”

“Perhaps while Cat’s gone, you can learn to make your own,” Pauline said dryly.

“Perhaps I shall, at that.” Jem leaned forward to pluck up his book from the floor. “I wonder if Mr. Yorke has a book on pastry in his office.”

Cat looked at her brother for a long moment as Pauline disappeared into the kitchen. His head was already bent back down over the book, and he chewed aimlessly on the end of a pencil.

He worked so hard, and she hated and loved his drive in equal measure. She was so proud of him—and in the same breath, she regretted that he could not simply laugh and play the way he had when he’d been small.

Back when they’d still lived at Woodcote.

Before the events that had brought them to the edge of subsistence. Before she’d fought and struggled and clawed their way back out.

She tightened her fingers around the arm of her chair.

She could not let Lady Georgiana threaten her career.

Even if the woman did not make her accusations public, readers might begin to notice the similarities that Georgiana had pointed out.

And though Cat had not seen signs that her sales had flagged with the publication of their similar novels, she could not be certain her luck would continue.

If a private visit to Renwick House would provide original fodder for a new book, then she had no choice but to go there.

Even if it meant quitting the pie shop.

Her fingers twitched on the chair. She would do it. She had to do it. She would write to Yorke, and secure a contract with Laventille, and make her way to the Renwick estate, and she would do it all without once thinking of—

“Ouch,” she muttered. “Shit.”

She’d squeezed the arm of the chair so hard that her thumb was bleeding again.

Jem looked up from his book. “Something wrong?”

She shoved her hand beneath her skirts and made herself smile innocently. “Not a single thing.”