Page 39 of Ladies in Hating
Georgiana swallowed, trying to cool the hot tension in her body. “You haven’t encountered the name, then? In your research?”
“No,” Cat murmured. Her fingers slid along the letters once more, her thumb running along the edge of the plaque as if to seek out something hidden. “But I know to look for it now. I’ll find her.”
Her hand dropped away from the plaque—there was nothing above or beneath it—and she turned to face Georgiana.
They were closer than Georgiana had known. Now that Cat’s attention was focused upon her, it was clear that they were close enough to touch.
“Thank you,” Cat said soberly. “You did not need to tell me about this place. You could have kept it for yourself. I would never have known.”
Georgiana felt stiff and awkward and still too warm. “I would not have done that.”
“No. I suppose not.”
And then Cat reached out and touched Georgiana’s face, and Georgiana stopped breathing.
Cat’s thumb coasted across the top of Georgiana’s cheekbone. “You have plaster dust,” she murmured, “just here.”
Georgiana sucked in a quick unsteady breath and stared down at Cat. They were even nearer now; Georgiana did not know how they had come to be so. Cat’s wine-red mouth was caught in an expression of concentration, her eyes focused on her task, and she was streaked with dust as well—on her cheek, in her hair.
Georgiana wanted to thrust her hands into that dark, silky weight. She wanted to hold on.
Cat breathed out a laugh. “Hell,” she said, “never mind. I’m making it worse, I think.” The tips of her first two fingers trailed down the side of Georgiana’s jaw, the barest contact between them. She started to step back, to pull away.
Georgiana reached up and caught Cat’s wrist between her fingers. Lightly. Enough to hold her still.
Cat’s dark lashes flew up. Her gaze, which had been fixed on Georgiana’s cheek, tangled with Georgiana’s own. She drew in a single, audible breath.
Georgiana held her there, gripped her wrist and felt Cat’s pulse throb beneath her thumb.
She was not holding on hard. She was not caging Cat there—it would be easy for her to pull away.
But she didn’t. Cat’s eyes flicked across Georgiana’s face, fell to her mouth, then came up again. There was a question in her expression, in the way her lips had parted on a breath and had not pressed together again.
Georgiana’s pulse beat hard in her ears. She wanted to answer that query with her mouth, with her hands. She wanted to push Cat back against the wall—no, she wanted Cat to pushheragainst the wall, and she wanted to fill her hands with every curve of Cat’s body. She wanted to grip, to taste, toknow.
She almost did it. The moment spooled out long and slow, and the scent of roses was all in her nose and in her mind, and her chest clutched with the force of her wanting.
And then a bird cried out, low and harsh, and Bacon barked back, and Georgiana dropped Cat’s wrist as though she had been burned by the touch of Cat’s skin.
“I should go,” she said. Her voice sounded far away in her own ears. She had the dizzy feeling that came with precipices, with great heights—as though she had looked down and seen the ground fall away beneath her feet. “You may have the garden.”
Cat was still staring at her, her eyes dark and unfathomable. Slowly—so slowly—the corner of her mouth curled up. “May I, then? How generous.”
Was she… joking?
It had been so long that Georgiana scarcely recalled what it felt like to be teased. She did not know what to say.
“Yes,” she managed, and then she bent down, plucked Bacon off the stone bench he had discovered beneath a mound of green-black leaves, and fled the garden.
Chapter 13
She knew not how to curb the fierce and maddening fever that raged within.
—from Georgiana’s private copy ofGLENARVONby Lady Caroline Lamb
It was only after the peculiar dancing lights appeared that Cat realized she had fallen asleep in the Renwick library again.
Three days after Georgiana had taken her to the garden—after her discovery of Sarah Sophia Penhollow’s name on a plaque—Cat found herself curled beneath her familiar worn cloak on her favorite armchair in the library, the room deep in shadow except for the south end, where moonlight gleamed off the tiles.
