Page 33 of Ladies in Hating
“Indeed,” Georgiana said. “Yes. I had thought… I had prepared some notion of shifts. That is—notshifts.Not—not undergarments. Times. Alternating periods of time.”
Heavenly Mary, she hadrehearsedthis, and it was still coming out disastrously. Now Cat looked vaguely concerned for her faculties.
She tried again. “I thought we might draw up a schedule for when we will inhabit the various parts of the house so that we need not interfere with one another. And then perhaps in the evenings, at dinner, we can—”
“You mean to come down to dinner then?” Cat said blandly.
Georgiana tried to ignore the heat in her face. “Yes. I thought perhaps over dinner we might discuss our intentions for our manuscripts, and which parts of the house’s history and setting we mean to use. As”—she moistened her lips—“as you said.”
“Mm,” Cat said, as if considering. Suddenly there was a different expression on her face, something Georgiana could not quite make out. Something arch and impudent, there in the shape of her wine-red mouth.
Georgiana’s lower belly turned over.
“Or,” Cat said finally, “we could do it now. Tell me about your book. And your… shifts.”
Georgiana clenched her teeth and grappled for composure. “Surely we don’t need to do it immediately—”
“Why not? It seems more logical to outline our intentions as early on in the process as possible, so that our books do not intersect once again.”
Unfortunately, itdidseem logical. Bacon, evidently in agreement with this plan, wandered away from Georgiana to investigate the birds, which greeted his arrival with a sort of noisy avian clamor.
“All right,” Georgiana said. “Fine. Yes. I am here at Renwick primarily for the setting. My manuscript is about a young architect who is hired to complete the construction of a cursed abbey.”
Cat regarded her for a moment without speaking.
Georgiana wanted to squirm under Cat’s dark gaze andabsolutely refused to do so. “If you say that you are writing an architect as well, I shall—”
“No,” Cat said, and the sudden bloom of her smile cut off the rest of Georgiana’s sentence. “No, not at all. I like it, though.”
Honestly, the pleasure that Georgiana felt at that scrap of praise from Cat’s mouth was dreadful. Hideous. She blushed harder and cursed herself. “What is yours about?”
“I don’t entirely know just yet. Not architects, though.” Cat strolled over to the nearest set of shelves and trailed her fingers along the faded bindings. “I had thought to write about a family cursed not to die; I meant to model their home after Renwick House. But now”—she slipped a book from the shelf and let it open in her hand—“I find myself increasingly interested in the Renwick ghost.”
“The ghost?”
Despite herself, Georgiana was reminded forcefully of Bacon’s strange fascination with the empty wall in her bedchamber, and the housekeeper’s words over breakfast.
She’s out there.
“Oh yes,” Cat said, and she looked up eagerly from the book. “Did you hear her last night? I did not, but Graves said it’s only a matter of time.”
“I don’t—what? Hear who? Graves?”
“The ghost,” Cat said, as though that were obvious.
“The ghost,” Georgiana repeated. “You believe it, then? That there is a ghost in this house?”
“Of course.” Cat’s face was fully animated now, her eyes mirror-bright and her mouth caught between speech and smiling. Georgiana recalled that expression. A decade had not dulled the intoxicating effect of Cat’s enthusiasm. “I have not seen the ghostyet, but I spoke to a half dozen people in Devizes who told me all about the hauntings, and Graves has indicated to me where in the library I might find the family histories in order to—” She paused, looking hard into Georgiana’s face. “Wait. Are younothere for the ghost?”
“The ghost was not top of mind, no.”
Cat blinked a few times. “Perhaps our interests are not so similar as our publishing history would suggest. You do believe that there is a ghost here at Renwick House, do you not?”
“Ah—no.”
“You’re joking.” Cat was still blinking more than was usual. “This must be one of the most infamous supernatural locations in England!”
“To be sure. But one must take into account the not-insignificant fact that ghosts are not real.”
