Page 56 of Ladies in Hating
The man made a sort of helpless squeak and flailed his hands as he tried to decide where on Georgiana’s person he might grasp to hold her up. “Egad.”
“I’m so sorry,” Georgiana murmured. Her eyelashes were casting breezes all across the courtyard through the vigor of her fluttering. “Simply the thought of it—oh, poor Rogers!”
Cat presumed Rogers was the corpse.
The magistrate grunted slightly as Georgiana sagged and nearly took both of them down to the ground. He clutched at her elbow and looked plaintively at Cat. “Perhaps you might take her ladyship’s arm?”
Georgiana seemed to realize she was overselling it. She sent a dismissive wave in Cat’s direction, found her footing, and wobbled toward the exterior door, clinging to the magistrate’s arm like a limpet. “I’m all right,” she said faintly. “Perhaps some fresh air will restore me.”
“I’ll see to her ladyship’s dog!” Cat called. “And her belongings!”
The moment the magistrate and Georgiana were out of sight, Cat knelt beside the body. Georgiana had been right—there were papers visible, now that the body had shifted in the second collapse.
Cat winced as she rifled through Rogers’s jacket, then recalled Georgiana’s description of his behavior toward the maids at Belvoir’s and felt rather less sorry for him. Her sympathy vanished entirely when she discovered a pistol and a wicked-looking knife, both of which she shoved back into his pockets as hastily as possible.
After a thorough perusal of his jacket and a few hissed warnings to Bacon, who had decided to dine upon the man’s discarded hat, she had collected a handful of papers covered in a looping scrawl. She peered at them, then squinted and looked closer.
She could not make out a single word. Each sheet was filled with line after line of inked text—only the writing was completely unintelligible. She could not recognize the language. In fact, as she looked closer, she realized she did not even recognize all of theletters.Some of it was almost certainly Greek, but other symbols were completely unfamiliar to her.
Interspersed with the symbols she did not know, however, Cat could make out a handful that she did recognize: small stylized roses and, again and again, a thin crescent moon.
“Luna?” she whispered. “Luna Renwick?”
Something brushed against her from behind—a whisper of breeze, warm like a breath against the back of her neck.
She shuddered and leapt to her feet, spinning to look behind her.
There was nothing there. But Bacon had abandoned the hat and slunk to Cat’s feet, whimpering as he stared into the empty space behind her.
Cat set her teeth and shoved the papers into her pocket. “I’m trying,” she murmured. “I’m trying to help. I’m trying to set things right.”
There was no answer, of course. She put her fingers to the back of her neck and headed toward the place where the timbers had come down, killing Rogers and opening a wide passage into the house. But before she could pass through, she hesitated, feeling foolish and half-mad.
“If you did this,” she said, her voice low, “if you stopped him from hurting us… Thank you.”
Cat waited a long moment, but there was nothing, no sound or movement, only the scent of roses heavy in the air. And then she bit her lip, clicked her tongue at Bacon, and went into the house to fetch their belongings.
Chapter 19
Red Damask
Rose du Saint-Sacrement
Double Scarlet
La Seduisante (Sally’s favorite—ha!)
—from the journals of Luna Renwick
Some hours later, Cat had discovered in her heart a newfound antipathy for the aristocracy, the month of December, and the entire category of meteorological phenomena.
After the magistrate had secured Cat, Georgiana, Bacon, and their belongings in the carriage, he’d done various official things involving the corpse and then brought their small party back to Devizes. Cat had shown the unintelligible papers to Georgiana, who’d attempted to appropriate them with such high-handed resolve that Cat nearly let her, before she remembered to hold her ground.
Their brief hasty argument on the street outside the magistrate’s office had ended with Georgiana’s color high, the papersshoved back into Cat’s pocket, and a sudden rush of snowflakes falling thickly onto their hair and shoulders.
“Damn it,” Georgiana said, and Cat cursed the part of herself that found the oath on Georgiana’s lips so arousing. “What on earth—”
“It’s called snow, I think,” Cat said, and Georgiana leveled a glare at her.
