Page 40 of Ladies in Hating
She had fallen asleep in the room three nights running. It was peculiar—the library was far too cold, and the armchair was not especially comfortable, and the dreams she had in the room were always ghostly and unsettling. But each night, she had been one moment poring over the book in her lap and the next strugglingback into wakefulness, her half-conscious brain full of queer lights and roses the size of teacups, bloodred in her palm.
This night, she seemed to have slept longer than usual. The moon was fully out, and the sky must have been especially clear, because she could see the reflection of stars flecked across the tiles beside the white coin of the moon.
The lights on the tile—the stars—flickered, shuddered, and then seemed to go out.
Cat squeezed her eyes tightly shut. When she reopened them, the reflection of the stars had returned, sprinkled like salt on the tiles.
She shivered and tried to shake off the vestiges of sleep.
She lifted the books in her lap and moved to return them to the shelves. A half dozen account books and the records of the architect’s design had been her most recent discoveries in the library. By now she knew a great deal about the original construction of the manor and had encountered reams of exasperated wrangling between the architect, James Wyatt, and the originator of the building, Nathaniel Renwick—inheritor of a vast fortune in industry and collector of rare art.
But she had found almost nothing about Nathaniel Renwick’s beloved wife, Ellen, or any of the other female Renwicks—and no mention, anywhere, of Sarah Sophia Penhollow.
Who had she been? Why was her name preserved in the rose garden—and why did the strange, isolated garden exist at all? In the correspondence and accounting regarding the house’s construction—and Cat thought she’d read every single word ever written on the subject by this point—there had been no mention at all of the garden.
Carefully, Cat replaced the account books and records where she had found them. She trailed her fingers across the crimsonbindings, faded and water-stained. It had been such a beautiful library once. Her imagination roamed across the shelves, around the circumference of the room. In her mind’s eye, she could see it as it had been in the height of its glory. The ceiling would have stretched above her whole and undamaged, lit by chandeliers. The rows and rows of books would have been not a waterlogged burden, but a universe.
She wished—
It was silly. Softhearted.
She felt for the house, that was all. The strangeness of it. She had felt odd and out of place for so much of her life—not quite the same as the people around her. It had been her father’s generous, unhesitating love and the spaces he’d kept safe for her that had enabled her to live her life as she chose. And she wished—
She wished she could give this queer, lovely house the same kind of patience. The same sort of unstinting care.
She hesitated as her fingers brushed across a small volume offset from the others on the shelf. It was shorter, pushed in and half-hidden, and its binding was not the now-familiar faded scarlet but a soft cream kidskin.
Her fingers hovered over the volume for a single breath and then, slowly, she slid it free from the shelf.
She opened the little book. It was easy to hold in one palm, scarcely larger than her hand. Its pages were covered in a large, generous script, and as she read it, gooseflesh rose across her skin. It wasn’t an account book—nor was it another novel.
It was a diary. She could make out the first page clearly, despite the unfamiliar hand and the faded black ink.
Property of Luna Renwick.
Luna. She had been the daughter of Nathaniel and Ellen—one of the first inhabitants of the house.
Cat felt a strange, charged thrill as she flipped through the little book, its entries haphazard and disordered. Some were long reflections and others brief notes—recipes, reminders, lists of books and garments to order from the dressmaker.
Weather uncooperative—again—Papa in fits over construction delay of so. transept.
Mama Christmas—lacquer box to go w. table? For Florimell—harp composition? Import composer directly?
Remind Mama for Tu. dinner—no smelts!!
And then, halfway through the little book, Cat’s eyes caught on a handful words:
Lancelot says we must order roses fr. Malmaison—Sally horrified by expense—ha!
Sally.
Cat’s heart squeezed in her chest, and she ran her fingers cautiously across the name, the boldSand loopingl’s.
Sally—and roses.
Could this Sally be her Sarah Sophia Penhollow?
It seemed plausible—even likely. If Luna Renwick had been the originator of the rose garden—the daughter, not the father—that would explain why Cat had seen no mention of it in Nathaniel Renwick’s correspondence.
