Page 31 of Ladies in Hating
Wasn’t it?
She heard a small sound, as of an old house settling, and then a second, in quick staccato time. A double beat, precisely like a heart.
A shudder passed over her, and she moistened her lips. “Bacon?”
He barked, one short sharp warning note. And then he resettled himself on the chair’s cushion, as though his guardian duties had been discharged.
Georgiana stared at the wall for a long moment and attempted to talk some sense into herself. The house was old, and in disrepair, and evidently designed to appear as unnerving as possible.
Ghosts did not exist, and dogs could not sense their presence. There was no need to act the fool any further today.
She made herself resume her recumbent pose in the bed. And then she tried—with less success—to make herself stop thinking about ghosts and Cat and the familiar haunting of her own past.
Georgiana did not see Cat at breakfast, and the disappointment that welled inside her at Cat’s absence was truly, spectacularly horrifying.
She had risen early to practice the way she would phrase heracceptance of the compromise Cat had proposed. She’d shaped her mouth around the syllables and memorized her lines just as she had when she’d been an eighteen-year-old debutante, desperately pretending to be someone she was not.
And then Cat wasn’t even there to bear witness to Georgiana’s monologue!
Of course she was not,Georgiana thought morosely. The womanwouldvanish when Georgiana was finally prepared.
Graves moved slowly about the breakfast room, which was dominated by a vast table featuring a lacquered pattern of white diamonds on a field of black. The porcelain shone a bright white against the black table, and might have been impressive had every bowl and plate not featured a webbing of cracks.
Georgiana fetched herself some eggs and poured coffee from a pot on the sideboard. The eggs were an unappetizing shade of pale brown, except where they were lightly flecked by white shell fragments. The coffee, unfortunately, was also pale brown, though it did not appear to have been adulterated with milk.
Everything was cold.
“I’m afraid I’m late for breakfast,” Georgiana said to Graves, infusing her voice with the confidential tenor of someone confessing a minor and sympathetic failing. “Had to take Bacon out this morning and got a trifle lost on the grounds.” At the sound of his name, Bacon raised his head from its position on her slipper and looked hopefully at the breakfast table.
Graves did not turn around. “What makes you think you are late?”
“Ah—” Georgiana looked down at the eggs and grimly loaded her fork. “Nothing at all.” She forced herself not to wince as she delivered the bite into her mouth, crunched unpleasantly, and took a large swallow of—liquid. She could not call it coffee.
“You ought not wander the grounds.”
Georgiana jumped. Somehow Graves had come very close without her noticing, and the woman’s monotone voice was nearly at her ear. “I’m sorry?”
“Especially at night,” Graves said. “Stay in the house.”
“Oh—no. Just in the morning.” She felt almost compelled to apologize. “For the dog, you know.”
“Stay close,” Graves said. Her face evinced no expression whatsoever. “She’s out there.”
Georgiana was forced to take another swallow of the liquid in order to restore herself before she could respond. “She?” she managed finally. “Do you—ah—mean Miss Lacey?”
Graves had begun her slow walk toward the door, but she paused at Georgiana’s question. “Miss Lacey is in the library.”
“Oh. So byshe,you meant…?”
But Graves had already begun to walk again, and she did not turn or answer.
She’s out there.
Good God.
Georgiana gazed down at her breakfast of brown on brown, then sighed and delivered the plate of eggs to Bacon.
After the dog had finished his breakfast—with far more enthusiasm than Georgiana thought reasonable—she set off to wander the house in search of the library. She had not seen it in her brief exploration of the north wing the day before, nor on her walk to and from her bedchamber in the south wing. She proceeded perpendicularly this time, Bacon at her heels, and peered into rooms as she crossed through the oratory and onward.
