Page 93 of Ladies in Hating
A housekeeper, her white hair tucked scrupulously beneath her cap, stood framed in the immense doorway. She took them in slowly, and Cat was suddenly and horribly conscious of their rumpled dresses, the travel-worn state of their coiffures.
She was the daughter of a butler. A scandalous novelist who kept her profession secret so that she did not taint her brother’s career. What was she doing, here at a duke’s front door?
“Yes?” The woman’s mouth was pinched into a frown, even when she spoke.
“Good morning,” Cat said. Her voice rasped; her words wanted to tumble over themselves. “We’re here to see the Duke of Fawkes.”
The woman’s frown deepened. “Is His Grace expecting you?”
“Ah”—by Saint Margaret’s teeth, she had not prepared for this question,whyhadn’t she prepared?—“no. But if you would not mind letting us call upon him, I’m certain he will want—”
“His Grace is not at home.”
Damn it, damn it. Cat’s anxiety threated to unmoor her.
How could she make this woman believe that the duke would welcome their call? It was obvious—patently obvious—that Cat did not belong here.
She’d spent five years trying to hide her terror from Jem. Five years trying to keep him safe. Pushing him into a vast, polished new world so that he would never have to know this exact sick mixture of fear and shame.
So he would never feel that he was not enough.
She forced down the panic that wanted to choke her. “Please. The truth is, I am here looking for my brother. His name is James Lacey. He’s fifteen years old. He has red hair and he—wears spectacles.”
Her voice broke on the words. All the horrible visions she’d tried to shut out seemed to rise in her mind at once.
“There is no boy of fifteen here.” The housekeeper moved to shut the door, and Cat put her hand out to stop it.
“Wait. Please wait, we—”
She didn’t know what to say. She did not know how to convey the depth of her devotion to her brother, her love and pride and want.
She wanted so much more for Jem than what they’d had.
But the sick fear that had lurked at the back of her mind since the moment she’d heard of the Duke of Fawkes could not be held back any longer.
Was this—all of this—her fault? Had she pushed Jem too hard? Had her desires for his career and his security led him to seek out some mysterious fortune, some unexpected stroke of providence?
Or—worse than that. She had tried to hide their poverty—their stomach-grinding want—from him. But she knew she had not always succeeded. She knew he had recognized her desperate clinging for what it was.
Had he gone to Fawkes forher?
“Please,” she said again. “Please let us in. We just need to speak to Fawkes for a few minutes. It won’t take long.”
The housekeeper’s voice was taut. “I’ll thank you, madam, to remove your hand from the door.”
Cat froze, her hand balanced against the wood and her mind thick and paralyzed.
But Georgiana moved instead. She dropped Cat’s hand and drew herself up. She seemed to grow taller, her spine lengthening; Cat could have balanced a plate on the straight line of her shoulder. “I am Lady Georgiana Cleeve,” she said, “of Woodcote Hall. I imagine you are familiar with my brother, the Earl of Alverthorpe.”
Her voice was all cut-glass precision. It was easy, looking at that upright carriage, the sharp elegance of her cheekbones, to forget that Georgiana too was tousled and weary from their hours in the post-chaise. She was all aristocrat, the earl’s sister from the top of her ice-blond head to the tips of her slippered toes.
For Cat. Every word that she said was for Cat.
Cat was not alone in this. She could recall that now, in the face of Georgiana’s stern, stolid presence, and gratitude rushed through her.
But to her shock, the housekeeper’s expression went even more darkly disapproving as she took in Georgiana’s introduction. “Lady Georgiana,” she repeated. “Yes. I’ve heard of you.”
There was a heartbeat of silence as the words settled between them. As Georgiana’s lips went white.
