Page 15 of Ladies in Hating
She threw up her hands. “Then why did you send me? You knew”—she paused and looked at the open door, then dropped her voice—“of her accusations against me.”
She had fairly sprinted to Yorke’s office after her first meeting with Georgiana Cleeve in the alley behind Belvoir’s, but he had not been concerned about legal action from Georgiana’s quarter.
Nor did he seem worried now. He flicked his fingers. “Her accusations do not signify.”
“They do to me!” Cat hissed. “If I were to publish with Laventille as well, I might be forced to encounter her—”
“Is that likely?”
“Evidently so, as I encountered her this morning!” Her voice had risen despite her best efforts. Out of an abundance of caution, she shut the door to Yorke’s office and then came to sit down across from him at the desk. She was quite certain that Elias Beckett in the front room had no idea of her secret identity, and she very much intended to keep it that way.
Yorke’s brows had risen slightly at her words. “Would encountering Miss Desrosiers pose some sort of problem?”
“Of course! She is—why, she’s—I simply—”
She couldn’t seem to finish her sentence. This new Lady Georgiana Cleeve was nothing like the retiring girl Cat had known back at Woodcote Hall. Georgiana had grown into an exquisite woman with ice in her veins and a sneer upon her mouth, and everything about her made Cat feel hot and unsettled.
The aristocratic tilt to her head as she’d looked down her nose at Cat. Her accusations, which had revealed how very fragile Cat’s self-confidence was. The tiny flicker of her gaze toward Cat’s mouth, so quick and heated that Cat had thought—
For just a moment, Cat had been almost certain—
She gritted her teeth. This was absurd. Lady Georgiana had never given any indication that her tastes ran toward the sapphic. Cat was obviously suffering from some sort of—of brain fever, brought on by false accusations and the resulting emotional turmoil.
Lady Georgiana was a threat to Cat’s career and a distraction to her mind, and Catwould notput herself in closer proximity to Her Ladyship than she absolutely had to be.
“She’s dreadful,” Cat said finally.
Yorke’s deep-set eyes rested upon her consideringly. “Do you know who Miss Desrosiers is? Her true identity?”
Cat blinked. “I—yes. I do. How did you—”
“It was a shocking scandal when she divulged her nom de plume. The daughter of an earl, a Gothic novelist? Thetonreacted as though she’d personally committed the grisly deeds in her books.” His tone went dry. “Very good for her sales though.”
Cat leaned back against the spindles of the wooden chair, trying to make sense of Yorke’s words. “I don’t understand. Shechoseto reveal herself? She made her true identity known to the public intentionally?”
Suddenly, several things that Georgiana had said made moresense.You must know—surely everyone in London knows who I am by now.
But Cat had not known. She’d had absolutely no idea.
“When?” she asked. “When did it happen?”
“In 1815, if I recall correctly. Several years before you became Lady Darling. But did you not just say you knew who she was?”
Cat bit her lip. “Not because I knew about the scandal.” She would never have heard the rumors back then, in the days before she’d taken up her own pen. Her social circle was as far as was possible from that of the Earl of Alverthorpe and his cronies. “I recognized her.”
“You knew her already? Lady Georgiana Cleeve?”
She looked at the door in anxious reflex at the sound of the woman’s true name. Did Yorke not realize that someone mighthear?
But then she gave herself a little mental shake. If Yorke’s recollection was correct—and she had no reason to doubt him—then Georgiana’s name was no secret. There was no reason to protect her.
It seemed suddenly absurd that she had wanted to, even for the briefest of moments. Her Ladyship was no friend of hers! Far from it. And yet Cat guarded her own privacy so closely for Jem’s sake that she would never have threatened someone else’s. Not even Lady Georgiana’s.
But—
“Why would she do it?” she asked.
She could not help but ask. The intentional disclosure of Georgiana’s identity was baffling in the extreme. Georgiana had had social standing, wealth, the privileged position of atondarling. And she had beenshy.She had not sought attention nor courted scandal. The intentional revelation of her secret identity was incomprehensible for the person Cat had known.
