Page 52 of Ladies in Hating
She steeled herself against the desire, against the warm sweetness of Cat’s body close to her own. “Yes,” she said, “all right. We can come back with the magistrate. Let me help you ascend.”
Cat let her. She pulled her skirts up even higher, knotting them above her knees while Georgiana sturdily averted her gaze and pretended to consider the mechanics of wall climbing.
She had perused the expanse of golden brick for several long moments when she paused and blinked to clear her vision.
One of the bricks had been shoved outward, just enough to make a convenient step for their boots.
What the devil—
Georgiana rubbed her hand across her eyes. She was certainthe stones had not been offset before. She’d been looking at the wall for the last several minutes, and the stretch above the bench had been smooth and flush and—
She shook her head. No. She must have missed it, somehow. That was the only possible explanation. She had plaster dust in her eyes, and there were roses obscuring the sandstone, and bricksdid not move on their own.
“What’s wrong?” Cat asked. Her mouth was close to Georgiana’s ear, and Georgiana tried to not leap off the bench in fright and mixed-up desire.
“Nothing,” she said hastily. “Put your foot there. I’ll help you over.”
Cat shoved the toe of her boot into the little gap where the brick had been, and Georgiana gripped her elbow and handed her up the rest of the way. Cat paused at the summit, one leg swung over each side and her hands fastened to the top of the wall in a white-knuckled grip.
“You can climb down if you like,” Georgiana said. “I’m tall enough to follow on my own, I think.” She would have to lean over and hand Bacon down, but that seemed relatively feasible.
“I’m sorry.” Cat’s voice was hoarse, and Georgiana tipped her head back in surprise to look at Cat’s face. “I don’t… believe I can.”
“You can’t climb down the other side? Just swing your leg over and…” She trailed off. Cat’s skin, normally gold even in the watery sunlight of December, had gone ashen. Her lips were bloodless and pressed together in a thin line.
She looked terrified. Georgiana had never seen her so—not when Graves had vanished or a timber had fallen down immediately beside them or bats had burst out from behind a bone-carved door.
“I believe I shall remain here.” Cat squeezed her eyes closed. “It’s pleasant. Breezy.”
“There is no breeze.”
“Perhaps that sound I’m hearing is all my blood rushing toward my toes.”
“Good Lord,” Georgiana said, and shoved the tip of her boot into the place where a brick definitely had not departed from the wall of its own accord. “Stay here, Bacon darling, I’ll return in a moment.” She folded her skirt and chemise neatly up to her hips and launched her free leg over the wall to straddle it, a mirror image of Cat’s own position. She hastily smoothed her skirts back down to cover her exposed stockings and wondered at her motivations as she did so. Cat’s eyes were still closed, for heaven’s sake, and also she’d very recently had her hands all over Georgiana’s backside.
“You and Bacon can go on without me,” Cat said. Her whole body was trembling slightly, and though her tone was light, her voice rasped at the edges. “Perhaps you might return some day with a ladder?”
Georgiana peered over the other side of the barrier. The ground, in truth, did look rather farther down once one was perched atop the wall.
She had not imagined, when she’d handed Cat up to surmount the wall, that Cat had no head for heights. There was something soinvulnerableabout Cat—her fierceness, her determination, all that irrepressible fire. It felt strange, just now, to think that she, Georgiana, was the steady one.
To believe, for just a moment, that Cat needed her.
She leaned forward and hooked her arm around Cat’s, interlocking their elbows. “There,” she murmured. “I have you. Open your eyes.”
“I believe they’re fixed this way.”
“Catriona Rose Lacey. Open your eyes.”
Cat’s lashes fluttered up, and her eyes—dark, bottomless, achingly familiar—fixed on Georgiana’s face. She closed her teeth over her bottom lip as if to hold in a gasp.
“Swing your leg over to the other side,” Georgiana said, low and firm. “I’ll lower you the rest of the way down.”
“I can’t do that. You’ll topple down with me.”
“I shan’t.”
“You’ll fall,” Cat said hoarsely. “I don’t want you to fall.”
