Page 107 of Ladies in Hating
And then somehow they were kissing again, and somehow Cat’s back was to the stone wall, and then Georgiana’s, a dizzy revolution of bodies. Roses hung in the air, and Georgiana felt herself go limp and liquid beneath the honeyed pressure of Cat’s mouth and hands.
Cat was the first to pull back. She held Luna’s papers in one hand, and she brandished them, her cheeks flushed red. “These are getting crushed.”
Her voice was throaty. Georgiana loved it. “They’re not the originals. Let them.”
Cat laughed, rich and sweet, and Georgiana felt as if she were floating. “You will come to your senses later and regret it. Come inside with me. I want—oh Georgie mine. I want you to stay here with me. Do you think you might?”
Georgiana opened her mouth to answer, but Cat barreled on. “I have not been able to get your words out of my mind, not since the moment you said them. ‘I want to wake beside you,’you said. ‘To wake, and not to go.’” Her dark eyes were all hope. “I want you to stay.”
“I want that too.” What a luxury it was to touch Cat like this—to feel the curve at the top of her buttocks, the elegant points of her spine. “There’s Bacon to consider—and my mother—”
“And Pauline,” Cat laughed, “and Jem—God, it’shishouse now, come to think. And we shall have to go to London far too often to meet with Laventille—”
“Not to mention Yorke—”
“But we will work it out,” Cat said. “We will make a life together.”
“Yes,” Georgiana said, and the joy inside her was a garden, was ten thousand roses, blossoming despite the cold. “We’ve already begun.”
Epilogue
To your first query, I did not mention Renwick because I had supposed James unaware of the precise nature of the bequest. Only Beckett was meant to know the will’s contents. And we all know how that turned out.
And to your second query—why I sent the two of you to Renwick at the same time—let me offer a question of my own. It worked, did it not?
—from Martin Yorke, solicitor and matchmaker, to Cat Lacey and Georgiana Cleeve
Two weeks later
Cat barreled around the corner and into the oratory just as the screaming ceased.
“What,” she gasped, “on earth is going on?”
Georgiana was holding a squirming Bacon to her chest.Pauline had her hands on her hips, her chin thrust up, and her curls standing out in all directions.
“That was a pig,” Pauline said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The screaming that you heard. That was the sound of a pig. Did you know that pigs scream? Because I did not, until approximately one hundred and twenty seconds ago.”
“Why is there a pig?” Cat looked around the oratory, which was in a remarkable state of disarray. She had learned far more in the preceding fortnight than she had ever imagined knowing about plaster and its various formulations. “Whereis the pig?”
Pauline pointed to one of the latticed doors. Cat groaned.
They had mapped all the passageways these last days. According to the building records that she had turned up in the library, they had originally been meant to serve as the basis of a mechanical transport system for household goods, to be relayed with belts and pulleys.
Unfortunately, no such mechanical system had ever been installed, and the passageways mostly served to entrap household pets and unwary plasterers.
And now, evidently, pigs.
“I think it must have wandered up from Devizes,” Georgiana said. She looked as fresh and elegant as a holly branch in her close-fitting emerald velvet frock. It was startlingly difficult to reconcile this vision of her—composed and neat as a pin—with the flushed and perspiring woman who had personally wrestled the ebony door they’d ordered into place in the newly refurbished hallway that led to the rose garden.
But not impossible. Cat knew all the versions of her now—each one real, each one beloved.
“Perhaps I can lure it out with a turnip,” Cat said. “Do pigs like turnips? Because Graves says we have purchased fifty-three pounds of turnips from a passing market cart this week.”
“I suppose it’s a good thing we have a pig now,” Georgiana said. “I think we shall require one, if we are meant to consume fifty-three pounds of turnips.”
