Page 32 of Ladies in Hating
She passed a dilapidated sitting room, a truly terrifying portrait gallery, and what might have been an orangery, except allthe trees were dead, before she finally came upon the library. The door stood wide, and the room itself was nearly as large as the oratory, and—
Oh. Georgiana’s heart squeezed.
It had been a beautiful place. She could tell it had been, its past incarnation like a palimpsest visible beneath the current ruin.
The floor was tiled with huge black-and-white marble squares. There were shelves on shelves on shelves of books, and a balcony accessible by ladder that wrapped around the circumference of the room. The bindings had all matched, once—had probably been crimson. But the ceiling on the south side of the room had partially collapsed and was open to the elements. All the books on that side were water-damaged and sun-faded, and—
Goodness. There were birds roosting on the southern shelves, which were quite thoroughly decorated with the evidence of the birds’ long-term residence.
On the north side of the room, curled in a sun-dappled armchair, sat Cat. She was wrapped in a cloak against the wintry chill in the room and every scrap of her attention was directed toward the book in her lap.
Georgiana allowed herself a single moment to become accustomed to Cat’s potency. Cat was nibbling, as she tended to do, on the ruby-red curve of her lower lip. Her left forefinger slid languorously back and forth across the scrolled wooden arm of the chair.
Georgiana swallowed and then cleared her throat to get Cat’s attention.
Cat looked up, startled. She stiffened when she saw Georgiana and then, very slowly, set the book down and swung her feet to the floor.
She had her shoes off. Her left stocking had a hole at the toe.
“You cannot say,” Cat said deliberately, “that I have followed you this time. I was here first.”
From the stubborn lift of her chin and the sheer defiance of her tone, Georgiana rather suspected Cat had slept in the room in order to stake her claim.
“No,” Georgiana said.
Cat scowled at her. “Of course I was. How do you find it possible to argue about objective facts?”
“I don’t mean to argue with you—”
“You have not ceased arguing with me since the moment I encountered you hiding in a shrub!” Cat’s mouth had taken on the suggestion of a pout. “Did you not see me inside this room, manifestly here before you entered?”
“No,” Georgiana said again. Curse the woman, could she not sit still for Georgiana’s prepared remarks? “I meant—I knew you were in here. I came here intentionally. To find you.”
The pout deepened for a half a moment and then shivered away into a slightly mollified line. “Oh.”
“I…” Georgiana felt her throat tighten, and she steeled herself. “I think you are right. We can share the house. Share—our ideas. I do not think it out of the question.”
It was not impossible—merely difficult, for a thousand different reasons. It was terrible to be in such close proximity. Even now, as she waited for Cat’s response, her eyes skimmed the line of Cat’s jaw, the delicate skin beneath, the way the sunlight turned her dark hair into a tapestry of umber and russet and almost-gold.
She wanted Cat, and she could not want her, and the fact that Cat loathed her—was justified in her antipathy—only made it all worse. She wanted Cat to say no—to say the idea was a mistake. To go.
And she wanted Catnotto go, and the tension drew out long and slow between them.
“You do not think it out of the question?” Cat said finally.
“No,” Georgiana said. It was, perhaps, the third time she’d uttered the word, which suggested her general feeling of doom when she considered Cat Lacey. “I was too hasty yesterday. I was… overset. By all the bats.”
There was a brief moment in which Cat regarded her coolly. And then, as Georgiana watched, Cat’s mouth tilted up on one side.
There was amusement in her expression, but no mockery. If there was a joke, it was one that was meant to be shared.
Her smile had always been so. Her pleasure was open, generous,easy—as though it cost her nothing to smile like that. As though Georgiana might smile back the same way.
“All right,” Cat said. “No bats in your book, then. I’m taking them for myself.”
Cat’s voice was pitched low, throatier than Georgiana’s own, and dear God, Georgiana’s wits had been scattered to the wind by that smile, because she could hardly make sense of the fact that Cat had accepted her proposal. That both of them were going to remain.
She tripped over Bacon, which was the moment she realized she’d begun to back away. She regained her balance, apologized to the dog, and then looked back at Cat, who looked pleased and amused and still distressingly haloed by the sun.
