Page 48 of Ladies in Hating
It was insulting, really. She looked extraordinary by both the moonandthe sun. What devil-deal had the woman struck, that all the light should worship her so?
Cat shook her head to clear it and joined Georgiana at the sandstone wall. “You must admit that it’s ominous. The screams. The barred doors all around.”
“It’s certainly not… usual.” Georgiana pushed her fingers under the vines, searching for signs of a hidden door. “But we are not truly trapped. If necessary, we can always go over the wall.”
Cat glanced at the wall, which ended somewhere north of the top of her head. “Can we?”
“There’s a bench. Bacon mounted it the last time we were in here. We could climb up onto it and then clamber over the top of the wall.”
“I admire your confidence in my athletics.”
“I would lift you up.” Georgiana was rather red, and she wasfrowning hard at the wall, as though she might carve out a door through the sheer force of her glower. “If you required it.”
“That’s most generous.”
Georgiana looked at her then, a quick torn-off scrap of a look from underneath her lashes. She seemed—uncertain somehow. As though she did not know how to interpret Cat’s teasing.
“I’m quite serious,” Cat said, and she reached out and brushed Georgiana’s elbow despite herself. “I know you would assist me, if I needed you. I will take your help, and gladly, if we are forced to scale the wall.”
Georgiana swallowed and looked away again, but not before Cat caught the tiny array of emotions that crossed her face—shock and gratitude and pleasure.
What had she expected? Mockery? Her offer of assistance thrown back in her face?
Cat’s heart squeezed a bit, as she looked at the stiff line of Georgiana’s neck and thought of Woodcote Hall. Perhaps Georgianahadexpected to be scorned—and had offered her assistance anyway.
It was so easy to like this woman, the rose-colored flush of her cheeks and the thorns everywhere else. These tiny glimpses of her vulnerability.
“Perhaps we can encircle the garden first,” Cat said finally, when Georgiana did not turn back toward her. “Before we attempt to ascend. Look under the vines for some hidden exit.”
Georgiana looked at her again, a swift indirect flash of blue, like a hesitant glance at the sun. And then she nodded and moved to the wall.
Cat went the opposite way, slowly, nudging the trellised roses away from the sandstone brick. The vines were still thickwith flowers, and the ground was littered with fallen blooms that smelled rich and heady as she trod upon them. The petals, blush and scarlet and burgundy, had gathered in swaths across the terrace, like snowbanks that scattered against the toes of her boots.
By the time she’d circumnavigated roughly a quarter of the courtyard, she’d reached the gap in the timbers they’d squeezed through to enter the garden.
Only—
Cat paused.Hadshe come back to where they’d entered? She clamped her eyes shut, opened them again, and looked hard at the thin crevice in the wall. The timbers were still there, and the same plaster peeling off in strips, only—
The gap was dark as pitch. She could not see the interior wing beyond. And it seemedsmaller,somehow, a space far too narrow for her body to squeeze through.
What the devil…
“Georgiana,” she called, quite before she realized she’d meant to. “Could you—come here for a moment?”
Only silence greeted her words. The hairs on the back of Cat’s neck lifted as she stared at the darkened gap and waited for Georgiana’s reply.
And then Bacon was barking distantly, and Georgiana was there in a whirl of downed petals, her fingers coming to rest at the small of Cat’s back.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
She was a little windblown, and her eyes were big and blue and worried, and Cat had to fight against the urge to lean into that cautious palm at her back.
“Is this not where we entered?” she asked, instead of curling into Georgiana. “I could have sworn it was, only… there’s no way we fit through that gap. Is there?”
Georgiana’s gaze shifted away from Cat’s face in one long, slow drag. But as she looked at the sliver of darkness between the timbers, her eyes flew wide. She swore succinctly and the hand at Cat’s back turned into a viselike grip upon Cat’s elbow, dragging her backward, away from the crumbling wall.
“What on earth,” Cat protested, but Georgiana did not stop towing her until they were a good dozen feet away from the rift in the wall.
