Page 27 of Ladies in Hating
“Where have you come from?” Cat murmured. “To whom do you belong?”
She was just on the point of standing to investigate her surroundings when a voice emerged from the gloom, diamond sharp and devastatingly familiar.
“Bacon!”
Cat’s head spun. She could not move. She was glued to the floor as solidly as though she were a stalagmite.
She had obviously run mad. First, she’d hallucinated a ghost, and now, her brain was telling her with absolute conviction that somewhere in her immediate vicinity Lady Georgiana Cleeve was shouting about breakfast meats.
“Bacon!” called the voice again. “Where are you? Dash it”—now the prim voice was a sour mutter—“where could you possibly have gone?”
Out of the shadows strode a tall elegant form, and the little dog seized the moment to leap off Cat’s lap and fling itself into the grasp of—indubitably—Lady Georgiana.
“There you are, you silly thing,” Georgiana said, her tone gone velvety with pleasure. “I was so worried.” And then she buried her face in the dog’s grimy white fur and sighed.
No,Cat thought, and only when Georgiana’s head snapped up did she realize she’d said it aloud.
Georgiana’s face performed a rapid transformation from lingering elation to stupefaction.
“No,” Cat heard herself say again. “That isnotyour dog.”
She refused to admit it. Her Ladyship was made of ice and hauteur. The Georgiana who had sneered down her nose in Laventille’s office—the Georgiana who had abandoned Cat in the rain at Saint Botolph’s—could notpossiblybe the same woman who had just happily smashed her face into the fur of a peculiar-looking canine.
Cat’s brain refused to resolve the two pictures. It was not possible.
Georgiana’s expression continued its remarkable metamorphosis. Her teeth clicked closed, and her eyes narrowed. “What—how are—” She wrenched her words to a stop, clutched the animal tighter in her arms, and then demanded, “Are you here to steal my dog?”
The remark was so patently ludicrous that Cat laughed.
To her consternation, Georgiana’s response to this inappropriate burst of amusement was neither continued accusation nor increasing outrage. Instead, a wash of pink started at the base of her ivory throat and spread slowly and luxuriously all the way up to her hairline. It was dim inside, but Cat could still see theexpansive flush all over Georgiana’s skin, a hot rush that camouflaged the ring of pale freckles around her mouth.
Cat made herself stop looking—it was notsweet,for heaven’s sake, and it certainly wasn’terotic—and scrambled to her feet. “I am not here to steal your dog.”
“No,” Georgiana said. Her lashes worked rapidly, and she looked everywhere except at Cat’s face. “No, of course not. It is only that…”
“It is only that from the moment you saw me, you could not help but accuse me of crime and skullduggery?”
“No. Well, yes, I suppose, but—” Georgiana paused, visibly composed her face, and then said distinctly, “What are you doing here, Catriona?”
Cat felt her chin jerk up without her conscious intention.I have every right to be here. I belong here, damn it, just as much as you.
She took a step forward and had to look up into Georgiana’s exquisite face. From this proximity, she could catch a hint of Georgiana’s scent—something warm and woody at once, some complicated mix of balsam and citrus and honey. She smelled expensive. Infuriating. Heavenly.
Cat thrust this errant thought from her mind and focused upon the issue at hand. “I have been invited to stay. The house is newly open to visitors.”
“Yes, Iknowit is newly open to visitors,” Georgiana said. “That is why I am here. I am—”
“Doing research for a book?”
“Yes!” At Georgiana’s vehement reply, the dog shot her a disgruntled look, then scrambled down to sniff at one of the small latticed doors that ringed the walls. Georgiana lowered her tone. “Precisely.”
“As am I.”
When Georgiana spoke, her voice came out clipped, all hard polish. “No.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said,No.I gave you Saint Botolph’s. You may have all of London, for heaven’s sake. How is it possible that you arehere?”
