Page 68 of Ladies in Hating
And then the door came open, and they leapt apart.
Selina frowned at them as she entered, trailed by the dark-haired, curvaceous woman Cat recalled from the shrubbery.
“At least lock the door, for heaven’s sake,” Selina said grumpily as she seated herself at the desk. “I begin to wonder if this office is possessed of aphrodisiacal properties.”
“Perhaps something to do with the reading material?” offeredIris innocently. “Good morning, Georgiana. Lady Darling, how pleasant to see you again.”
Cat glanced at Georgiana. She was an astounding shade of scarlet from her hairline all the way down to the tiny pearl buttons at her throat.
Cat redirected her gaze to Iris and Selina. “Good morning. My name—my real name—is Catriona Lacey.”
Iris stuck out her hand, which was covered in ink. “Iris Duggleby. I’ve heard a great deal about you from Georgiana. A very great deal.”
Georgiana made a strangled sound.
Cat bit her bottom lip to hold in a laugh and shook Iris’s hand. “All dreadful, I don’t doubt.”
“She’s certainly been… voluble.”
“I implore you,” Georgiana said, “do not go on.” From her reticule, she produced the papers that they had recovered from the corpse. “This is why we asked you to attend us, Iris. These are the papers we found at Renwick House, only we cannot make heads or tails of them. We hoped you might be able to help.”
Iris took the papers in greedy hands and began to lay them out across the surface of Selina’s desk. “It would be my enormous pleasure.”
As they watched, Iris lowered herself into a sort of stoop. She rearranged several of the pages, once, and then again. And then she plucked Selina’s quill from its place on the desk and began hastily scratching notations onto the sheet of foolscap nearest her left hand, right atop what appeared to be a record of recent library purchases.
Cat blinked.
“Iris, darling, tell us if you figure something out, all right?” Selina said. “Iris?”
There was no answer.
“Never mind,” Selina said, and crossed to the armchairs in front of the fire. “Come. Tell me all about your visit to Renwick House.”
They sat. Concisely and thoroughly, Georgiana related the events of their stay at the manor, ending with the discovery of the unintelligible writings upon the erstwhile porter’s corpse. She did not mention their night at the inn, although Cat noticed with some interest that her throat grew pink when she reached the rather abrupt end of her recital.
Selina did not seem to notice—or if she did, she did not remark upon it. “Horace Rogers,” she said musingly. “Of course I recall the fellow. But I cannot say what he did after he left Belvoir’s or why he would have been in Wiltshire. Perhaps once Iris finishes translating the papers?”
This last was said in a distinct tone of inquiry, and everyone paused to look over at Iris. She had her head bowed over the desk, the quill shoved into her hair, and she appeared to have taken scissors to the foolscap, which was littering the surface of the desk in roughly a hundred tiny strips.
“That… could take some time.” Georgiana looked amused for a moment, but then she sobered. “Might we ask the staff if any of them maintained a connection to the departed Rogers?”
“Certainly, if you like,” Selina said, “though I do suspect an interview with Mr. Yorke might prove more fruitful. Perhaps you are headed there next?”
There was a brief, blank silence.
“Mr. Yorke?” Cat said. “Mr. Martin Yorke, do you mean?”
“Yes, of course,” Selina said. Her dark brows, at odds with the thick blond hair piled on her head, were drawn together as she stared at Cat and Georgiana in turn. “Your solicitor.”
“Mysolicitor,” Georgiana said.
Cat turned rather jerkily to stare at Georgiana’s exquisite, puzzled face. “Mr. Martin Yorke is… your solicitor?”
“Yes, of course. He’s been my man of business for five or six years now. Do you know him?”
Selina looked between them in frank disbelief. “Are you in earnest? You two did not realize that you share a solicitor?”
“Oh my God,” Cat said. Revelations seemed to be crashing down upon her like a series of very large and forceful bricks. “DidYorketell you to go to Renwick House? Is that how you ended up there?”
