Page 13 of Ladies in Hating
She was flustered, obviously, and Georgiana watched as she moistened her lips, a quick flash of pink tongue.
And then she seemed to pull herself together. Her chin went up, and her head tipped back in defiance. “I do not need to persuade you of anything. My business here is legitimate, and it is my own. You have no right to my private information.”
“Andyouhave no right to help yourself tomyplots—myresearch—but that does not seem to have stopped you, has it?” Georgiana took a step closer.
“I have helped myself to nothing,” Cat snapped. Her throat had flushed pink, and her lips were the color of wine. “I have earned everything I have. I have labored over every word in my manuscripts, and I have taken nothing from you.”
“You truly mean to tell me that your visit tomypublisher’s office has nothing to do with my books?”
“You are mad in the head,” Cat said flatly, and—
God. Perhaps she was. She had to drag her gaze away from Cat’s lush, bewitching mouth, and she hoped quite desperately that Cat had not marked the waywardness of her gaze.
“My comings and goings,” Cat said, her voice tight, “have nothing whatsoever to do with you, your ladyship.”
“Then why would you come here, after the conversation we had outside Belvoir’s? Why would you invite a closer proximity between our work?”
The flush on Cat’s throat worked its way up to her cheeks. “I—forgot. That this was your publisher.”
Georgiana scoffed. Laventille’s name was on the frontispiece of every one of her books!
Cat seemed to bristle at the sound. “I assure you, LadyGeorgiana, my every thought does not revolve around you and your career. Your fixation upon me is entirely one-sided.”
That blow landed—no doubt considerably harder than Cat could ever have intended. Georgiana felt her own face heat, a humiliating wash of decade-old memories.
But before she could formulate a reply, Laventille broke in. Georgiana had quite forgotten he was there. “This is without a doubt the best show I have seen since I moved to this godforsaken island two decades ago. But Georgiana, my dear, I feel it incumbent upon me to assure you that your, er, colleague here did not speak of you at all in our interview this morning. In fact, I had rather thought to introduce the two of you. I suspected you might have some small things in common, but—well. I take it an introduction would be superfluous at this juncture.”
Cat plucked up the papers that lay on the desk and shoved them haphazardly into her bag, which was as worn and slightly out-of-date as the rest of her garments. “Superfluous indeed. Mr. Laventille, it was a pleasure to speak with you. I suspect I shall not require your services after all.”
She stepped lightly around Georgiana, but the room was not large. Her skirts brushed against Georgiana’s own, and it felt—
It felt like the barest whisper of a caress.
Georgiana leapt backward, and Cat scowled at her, a quick dark-eyed flash of fury, before she vanished through the door.
There was a long moment of silence as Georgiana stared at the open doorway.
Finally, Laventille spoke. “Georgiana,” he said, “we have worked together for a decade now, have we not?”
“Almost,” she said. Her knees were shaking, she noted vaguely. And her hands. “Nine years, last June.”
“Indeed. Yes. For nine years now, I have known you to be afiendishly capable and composed sort of person, a talented writer and a competent businesswoman.”
She finally managed to look away from the place where Cat Lacey had vanished to stare in surprise at her publisher. Tragically, he had not finished.
“Generally,” he went on, “you are possessed of both restraint and good sense. Today, however, I begin to worry that you are simplypossessed.”
Her mouth came open to protest. Nothing emerged.
Instead, she lurched on wobbly legs to the vacant chair in front of his desk, collapsed into it, and buried her face in her hands.
Chapter 5
Augusta Quirkle was born into hoarfrost and blackness, and she met the world screaming.
—from the first page ofORPHAN OF MIDNIGHTby Geneva Desrosiers
The six-minute walk between Laventille’s office on Bond Street and her solicitor’s office two streets down was not enough time for Cat’s pulse to stop racing.
