Page 54 of Ladies in Hating
It had proven shockingly effective to the wagon’s driver, a tufty-looking lad of about seventeen.
Of course it had. Georgiana looked like a slightly dusty angel, and Cat had never seen anything so deceptively innocent as herwide blue eyes and the tiny tremble about her lower lip. Within moments, she, Georgiana, and Bacon had clambered up into the wagon, and Georgiana had not even looked askance at the pig taking up most of the bench.
In Devizes, Georgiana had paused to restore herself in the alley alongside a public house, and had emerged from the shadows looking somehow neat as a pin. Her hair was pulled crisply back from her face, and the dust was gone from her skin except in one tiny place she’d missed behind her ear.
Cat thought for far too long about what it would feel like to slide her thumb just there. To brush the dirt away and watch, if she could, the blood rush beneath Georgiana’s skin.
She didnotdo it.
Georgiana had led the way to the magistrate’s office and there transformed herself once again into Her Impeccable Ladyship, only with a soupçon of fragile innocence still somehow remaining. She’d wrangled the man into taking them both back to Renwick House to fetch their belongings, and when she’d told him about the accident they’d witnessed, Cat could almost have been taken in by the tears that darkened her lashes and made her big, tragic blue eyes look even wider.
The magistrate certainly was. He’d patted Georgiana nervously on the hand, and then on the shoulder, and then he’d excused himself in a panic from the room as Georgiana’s tears had made little wet plops on the surface of his desk.
She’s good at this,Cat thought, and the realization only made her feel more off-balance.
Twice now—twice she had kissed Lady Georgiana Cleeve, and twice Georgiana had gone from sweet melting heat in her arms to frozen hauteur the moment they’d stopped kissing.
Cat had thought—
Hell. She had believed, this time, that something was different. Georgiana had kissedherfirst—had held tight to her arm as though to keep her safe.I should never have brought you here,Georgiana had said, and Cat had thought,I’m glad you did. I could die happy, here in this rose garden, with my hands on your waist.
But whatever she’d thought, she’d been wrong. Georgiana had regretted it; the chill in her voice had made that clear.
And Catrefusedto linger in the discomfort of Georgiana’s secondhand shame. She could not bear it.
Not again. And not with Georgiana.
They rode in silence all the way to Renwick House, and when they arrived, Georgiana led the way to the rose garden from the outside. Cat hung back a few feet and communed soulfully with Bacon, who seemed somewhat disconsolate over his separation from the pig.
It did not take long, from the exterior, for them to find the small door in the courtyard wall meant for the gardening staff. It was heavy and grown over from disuse, and Georgiana had smiled and fluttered apologetically at her inability to drag it open.
Which was an out-and-out lie, Cat was certain of it. She’d seen the woman pull an iron bench across the terrace. She’d felt the strength in those willowy arms as Georgiana had lowered her cautiously down the other side of the wall. She’d clutched at the taut athletic planes of Georgiana’s—
Sweet sainted Margaret!
Cat ground her teeth, fondled Bacon’s silly floppy ear, and then followed the magistrate and Georgiana inside the courtyard and over to the place where the wall had collapsed.
In the intervening hours, the remaining timbers holding up the end of the eastern wing had fallen the rest of the way to the ground. What had once been a wall with a tiny gap now yawnedwide, open to the interior of Renwick House. The body remained precisely where they had left it.
Which, Cat supposed, was something of a relief. If the man had brought accomplices, as Georgiana had darkly predicted, they had not lingered with the corpse.
“God’s blood,” said the magistrate, who had begun to mop his face with his handkerchief, despite the fact that the afternoon had grown cloudy and chilled. He wiped his forehead again, seemed to realize what he had said, and then turned an apologetic glance toward Cat and Georgiana. “Begging your pardon, my lady. Miss.”
“That’s all right,” Cat said reflexively, and then she realized that Georgiana had started toward the body on the ground. “Ah—”
“My lady!” The magistrate waved a hand in Georgiana’s general direction, but did not seem quite willing to put his fingers upon her expensive and deceptively frail-looking person. “You ought to keep well back from there.”
Georgiana hesitated, her eyes fixed upon the corpse, and so, naturally, Cat followed her gaze.
She winced at the sight. He’d been a large fellow, with a heavy reddish beard, and somehow in the secondary collapse of the wall, he’d been turned onto his side. His coat hung open, revealing his waistcoat and braces above where the timber concealed the rest of his form.
The magistrate seemed even more unwilling to look at the corpse than Cat felt. He raised his handkerchief to his face, which had taken on a greenish cast, and held it roughly at the level of his mouth.
Cat supposed there was not very much foul play in Devizes.
But Georgiana did not look daunted. She was staring hard at the corpse, and her face looked not innocent at this particular juncture so much as struck by a powerful curiosity.
Her eyes flicked to Cat and held for a long moment. And then—
