Page 7 of Ladies in Hating
Surely not. The Alverthorpe earldom was blessed with riches in abundance. It had been the Lacey family whose straits had been desperate. Whose fragile security had been so easily toppled.
“Nothing,” Georgiana said. “I want nothing. I—”
“Do you mean to unmask me to the public, then? Have you some prejudice against the genre?” Her temper began to rise despite herself, her voice growing louder.
She would not letanyoneput Jem in danger. Not even herself.
“No!” Georgiana’s lashes fluttered, then stilled. “Of course not. I would never do that.”
“What then—”
“I am Geneva Desrosiers,” Georgiana said. “You must know that. Surely everyone in London knows who I am by now.”
Cat blinked. She stared up into Georgiana’s extraordinary face, which looked a trifle greenish now—though perhaps that was a trick of the light.
“You,” she managed, “are…” She blinked again, more rapidly, as if to resolve the Lady Georgiana of her memory with the one standing before her now, declaring outrageous things by the light of the newly risen sun. “Youare Geneva Desrosiers?”
Georgiana’s body had gone very still, her posture all frozen perfection. “Yes,” she said. “I am.”
Cat could not make sense of it.Georgiana Cleevewas the Gothic novelist Geneva Desrosiers? It seemed impossible.
No—itwasimpossible. Cat had been reading Geneva Desrosiers’s novels for nearly a decade. IfGeorgianawas Geneva Desrosiers, she must have begun writing before Cat and her family had even left Woodcote. She could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen.
“How?” Cat said. “How can you be?”
Georgiana’s face was so determinedly expressionless that Cat almost missed her shiver of emotion—would have missed it, in fact, if she hadn’t been staring at Georgiana in frank astonishment. Georgiana’s lips compressed, and her face registered the tiniest flash of—
What was it? Anger? Resentment?
“I don’t know why it should be so hard to believe,” Georgiana said stiffly. “You are a novelist yourself. I presume you are not surprised that a woman can write of the full spectrum of human experience and even beyond it. There is no reason for you to act shocked.”
“It’s notthat”—for God’s sake, she was the last person in the world to cast judgment upon what women could and could not do—“but…why? Why would you do it?”
Cat knew whyshehad done it.
Four years ago, when she had brought out her first book, her family had been balanced on a wire, one tiny disaster away from toppling off into poverty and desperation. She had done it for the money. She had done it so that Jem would never have to live a hair’s breadth from ruin again.
She thrust the memories away and waited for Georgiana’s answer.
It did not prove satisfying.
“My reasons are my own,” Georgiana said finally. The flash of indignation had gone from Georgiana’s expression, leaving behind an icy severity that Cat found almost intimidating.
Cat thrust up her chin, because sherefusedto be outmatched. “I don’t understand it. You have no need for money or fame. You are the daughter of an earl, for heaven’s sake.”
“Things have changed,” Georgiana said. Her voice was clipped.
“Those are not the sorts of things that change. Your birth, your position—”
“I assure you,” Georgiana said tersely, “they do.”
Cat found herself briefly at a loss for words.
This frosty, forbidding stranger was Lady Georgiana Cleeve? She could remember the girl inringlets,for heaven’s sake, curled up in a window seat with her book, positioned half behind the drapes.
But—well. She supposed it was true. Much could change in a decade. Cat knew that as well as anyone.
When she spoke again, her voice had softened with the blunted edge of her shock. “Lady Georgiana—Miss Desrosiers—what are you doing here at Belvoir’s? Why have you tracked me down?”
