A pair of Gothic novelists trade rivalry for love in this swoony, steamy, sapphic Regency by USA Today bestselling author Alexandra Vasti.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Alexandra Vasti’s Ladies in Hating, which releases on September 23rd 2025.
Celebrated authoress Lady Georgiana Cleeve has achieved fame and fortune. Unfortunately, she’s also acquired an enemy: the enigmatic Lady Darling, whose spine-tingling plots appear to be pulled straight from Georgiana’s own manuscripts. What’s a stubborn, steely writer to do? Unmask her rival, of course.
But unmasking doesn’t go according to plan—because Lady Darling is actually Cat Lacey, the butler’s daughter and object of Georgiana’s very secret, very embarrassing teenage infatuation.
Cat Lacey has spent a decade clawing her family out of poverty. The last thing she needs is to be distracted by the stunning(ly pretentious) Lady Georgiana Cleeve. But Cat can’t seem to escape her infuriatingly beautiful rival—including at the eerie manor where they both plan to set their next books. The plot unexpectedly thickens, however, when the novelists find themselves trapped in the manor together. In between ghostly moans and spectral staff, Cat and Georgiana come face-to-face with real danger: the scorching passion that’s been haunting their rivalry all along.
Georgiana’s own foray into scandalous novels had begun a decade ago. At the time, her late father’s attentions had focused primarily upon her two older brothers. Georgiana had wanted it that way—it was preferable by far for the earl’s gaze not to linger too long upon one. But when she’d turned fifteen, her father had begun to talk about Georgiana’s launch into society: the debut that would lead to her marriage and make her someone else’s burden to bear.
And for perhaps the first time in her life, Georgiana had revolted. Her rebellion, as was her wont, had been executed very quietly and with as much secrecy as possible. Tucked away in her bedchamber, she had written six novels and then sold them all, for a sum that had seemed astounding at the time, and had turned out to be barely enough.
She would not be handed off like a possession. She would not let her personhood become subsumed by a man’s, all control of her own future denied to her. She would not do it.
But when the time had come for her to make her debut, she had not yet saved quite enough money to declare her independence. Instead, forced in front of the ton, she’d playacted the empty-headed fool so no one would ever suspect her secret. It had been then that she’d discovered her talent for creating characters went beyond the page. She had a knack for voices and accents; she had spent so long watching from the margins that she could take on another person’s mannerisms with the same ease that she changed her frock.
She had disguised herself as a charwoman when she had brought her manuscripts to Jean Laventille to print. When she’d researched incarceration for Septimus’s Tower, she’d convincingly played the role of newspaper journalist. And when she’d visited half a dozen family tombs in Derbyshire to write The Mesmerist, she’d adopted the guise of a fresh-faced country lass in search of the dastardly fellow who had abandoned her mother.
In her attempt to unmask Lady Darling, she’d been forced to resurrect her talent for disguise. She’d turned up incognito at Lady Darling’s own publisher, and the bank Belvoir’s used, and the newspaper that had most recently reviewed The Bride of Ottaviano—but all to no avail. The secret of the novelist’s identity was closely guarded.
A fact which Georgiana would be more sympathetic to if Lady Darling did not represent a threat to her career, her independence, and the continued security of her own blasted mother.
She’d finally made some progress when she struck up a conversation about Lady Darling with Belvoir’s assistant gardener. The boy— no more than eighteen— had seemed rather transfixed by Georgiana’s countenance. She was just starting to feel guilty about ensorcelling the poor lad when his gaze had dropped to her extremely modest bosom and his face had fallen.
She’d smiled even more resplendently then, done dramatic and unforgivable things with her eyelashes, and promptly scraped every morsel of information she could from the boy upon the subject of Lady Darling. After some dithering, he’d informed her that on the first Saturday of each month, someone appeared at the library’s back door to fetch the novelist’s correspondence. At dawn.
Georgiana’s commitment to the project was such that she now awaited both the sun and the mysterious caller deep within the predawn back alley.
It might be a maidservant or a woman of business, of course. But then again—dawn. It was a peculiar time to visit a library, to be sure.
Beside her, Iris’s teeth had begun to chatter. “Are you entirely certain this is n-necessary?”
Georgiana quashed another flare of guilt. “I’m not certain at all. I told you when you first asked that I could handle this situation alone. You do not need to be here.”
“N-not my accompaniment, you ninny. I should certainly like to witness the great unmasking. I meant all this sneaking about in the shadows. Could you not send her a note? Or have your publisher send her a note?”
“No,” Georgiana said again. “I don’t need . . .”
She hesitated. It would sound foolish, she knew, how ferociously she clung to her independence.
But she could not reason her way out of her feelings. She had brought others into her secrets before and had hurt them through her cowardice. She would not do so again.
“I have to do it myself,” she said finally. “I want to speak to her directly. I—”
There was a hint of movement in the shadows at the end of the alley, and Georgiana’s whole body came to attention in an instant.
“Shh,” she whispered. “There she is.”
She pulled Iris back to the relative seclusion of a relocated potted shrub—a small piece of assistance from the obliging gardener—and waited as the cloaked figure crept cautiously down the alley toward them. In the gray suggestion of dawn, Georgiana could discern very little about the person, whose hood was pulled down low. It did seem to be a woman, based on the generous shape of her figure beneath her cloak. But her face was utterly obscured.
As they watched, the woman came to the back door of Belvoir’s and knocked softly, a little one-two-one pattern. The door came open immediately.
Iris nudged Georgiana with a surprisingly sharp elbow. “Ought you—” she whispered.
Georgiana shushed her friend with a finger to her lips and a quick jerk of her head. Wait.
Was it Lady Darling? Or merely an associate of hers? Georgiana did not know. If they revealed themselves too soon, the woman might deny everything. But if they could make out her conversation—hear how the person at the door addressed her—perhaps they might have tangible evidence with which to confront her.
Unfortunately, over the next several minutes, no revelations presented themselves. Though the woman had lowered her hood, she’d turned her back on Georgiana and Iris in the shrubbery. The brief conversation between the unknown woman and the Belvoir’s employee was held in whispers low enough that Georgiana could not make out any intelligible phrases.
As she watched the mysterious visitor converse with whoever was inside the library, the first few discernible rays of wintry
sun illuminated the alley. The woman’s cloak wasn’t black—it was more of a worn, well-washed gray. The hem, Georgiana could see, had been picked and rerolled to repair it; it was just slightly too short.
Perhaps this wasn’t Lady Darling. Surely Lady Darling would have enough money from the sales of her gallingly excellent books to afford a new cloak.
The door closed. Her conversation seemingly finished, the woman stepped back. She raised her hands to draw her hood over her hair, but just before she did, the light shifted, and a sunbeam caught upon her face.
Georgiana froze.
The woman’s hair was dark. Her mouth was a decadent curve, as red as wine and twice as intoxicating. Her nose was long and her chin was sharp, and Georgiana knew that if she were close enough to see, the woman’s eyes would be deep enough to drown in.
If she smiled, her face would light the alley. Georgiana remembered.
The woman secured her hood and turned her back to them again. Her hips swayed as she walked away—her figure had changed, she had changed. God, somehow she was even more now, more extravagant, more irresistible—
“Georgie,” Iris whispered. “If you want to go, go now, or else she’s going to get away!”
Georgiana realized she had stopped breathing. She sucked in a frantic gulp of air and plastered herself against the wall, deeper into the shadows. “No,” she gasped. “No, never mind. I’ve made a mistake.”
“What on earth—are you all right?”
Iris’s voice was low, just above a breath, but somehow, it did not matter.
Somehow, the woman heard.
She spun toward them. Her hood fell back, revealing that mobile face, that opulent mouth. “Who’s there?”
Georgiana did not move. She could not. Her legs were blocks of ice. Her throat had closed.
Catriona Rose Lacey—for it was she, there was no doubt of it, even from a distance of five feet and nine years—shoved her hand into her reticule. “Reveal yourself! I have a pistol, and I’m not afraid to use it.”
