Page 105 of Ladies in Hating
Which was good. It was good for her to stay back, to pause, to wait.
That was what Georgiana had wanted. No matter how much it felt, just now, like ruination.
“I had meant to come earlier,” Georgiana said. She had wanted to come at dawn, but she’d made herself hold off. Made herself give Cat some more time. “But Martin Yorke came to Woodcote this morning.”
“Yorke? What did he want?”
“He was looking for us. For—any of us.”Us,murmured her heart.Please.“Iris finished the translations yesterday of the paperswe took from Rogers. She came by my apartment first, but when she found me gone, she went on to Yorke’s office and showed the papers to him. And he rode in a post-chaise all night to deliver them.”
“What do they say?”
Wordlessly, Georgiana withdrew the sheaf of papers that Yorke had given her and handed them to Cat.
Cat’s eyes moved across the words slowly at first, and then quicker and quicker. Her dark lashes fluttered against her cheeks. “I don’t understand. These are… love letters.” She paused. Looked up. “From Luna Renwick.”
“I know.”
Georgiana had read the words half a dozen times by now—the translations written out in Iris’s neat, deliberate hand.
She’d been almost frantic, her eyes flying over the words as she’d sat across from Yorke at Woodcote. And then she’d read them again, slowly and deliberately, first there in the sitting room, and then repeatedly in the Alverthorpe carriage as it carried her back to Cat.
They had known that Nathaniel Renwick had built the house for his wife, Ellen. But Luna—Renwick’s beloved eldest daughter—had built the rose garden for the love of her own life.
Sarah Sophia Penhollow.
There were seven letters, dated over three years—all from Luna to her beloved Sally. They were tender, passionate, sometimes exasperated, sometimes teasing. They had planned for Sally to move into Renwick House with the rest of the family when it was completed.
If you insist upon calling yourself a kept woman,Luna had written,then at least recollect that you are being kept by me. I am Nathaniel Renwick’s daughter, after all. We Renwicks are very good at treasuring what is ours.
But the letters had stopped abruptly in 1751, the year before construction finished at the house. The last letter had been brief—three sentences, without salutation or closing.
I placed your plaque in the garden today, along with the jewels I’d meant to give you. It is a poor gift, my heart, but it is what I have: Your roses will bloom and bloom and bloom again. My hands in the sun-warmed soil will long for you all the days of my life.
“Sally died,” Cat murmured. “That’s why the letters stopped.”
“Luna wrote in code,” Georgiana said. Her voice rasped at the edges. “So that no one could intercept her love letters. But she dreamed of living here, with Sally, in the light.”
Cat’s thumb brushed across the stack of papers. She had tears on her cheeks. “I wonder if Sally ever replied. If Luna kept her letters somewhere.”
“I don’t know. Yorke said Luna lived another thirty years here at Renwick. She never married.”
That was the way of histories, particularly intimate ones. Always they were partial, fragmented, the narrative filled in at the edges.
For those people who had to hide the truth of their hearts from the world, the erasures were even larger. Even more like a wound.
“Perhaps someday you or Jem will find Sally’s letters on the estate,” Georgiana went on. “Or perhaps not. I wish…” She trailed off, drew a breath. Started again. “I like to believe that Sarah Sophia wrote back.”
“I believe it too.”
Cat’s lashes were still downcast, and Georgiana had to hurry on, before she tried to read something like hope in the handful of words. “Yorke wanted me to draw your attention to the last letter. The reference to jewels. Luna says she placed the jewels in thegarden. Yorke says to remind you that the garden too is Jem’s, along with all its contents. If the jewels exist—if they’ve been preserved here—they are Jem’s to do with as he wishes.”
Cat’s fingers moved along the crisp black ink, tracing circles and spirals across the words. “Jem says he doesn’t care about the money. He says he doesn’t need a fortune to go along with his house.” Her mouth tipped up on one side. “But I keep telling him that if he means to keep his nose from freezing this winter, he’ll need to fix the walls at least, and a fortuitous treasure wouldn’t go amiss.”
“He… means to fix the house, then?” Georgiana knew that Cat was laughing, just a little—that sweet laugh, like an invitation to join her.
But Georgiana could no more accept that invitation than she could take wing and fly.
“Yes.” Cat’s expression sobered, though happiness still lingered in the rose-red curve of her lips. “He means to bring it back to life. He’s made a contract with Fawkes—Jem wrote it up himself—with the terms of a loan, though Fawkes keeps trying to make it a gift. The duke has sent for several dozen workmen with job descriptions I’d never even heard of until yesterday, and—” She broke off. “Well. We will make it beautiful again. Strange and unsettling and peculiar as it always was, of course. But beautiful too. And safe.”
