Kat, Incorrigible (5 page)

Angeline found me in my attic an hour later. I’d been ordered up there by Stepmama the very moment she’d regained her breath, so I’d missed the rest of the entertainment. I would wager anything that Elissa hadn’t been dismissed like a child. At least I still had Mama’s diaries with me. I read more of them on my bed while I ate one of the apples I’d packed in my bag for last night’s journey.

Spells for love … spells for whispering secrets across
a great distance—not much use, since I hadn’t managed to run farther away from home than our own boring front garden. What I could have used was a spell for eavesdropping on secrets from far away so that I could hear the conversations downstairs.

When the trapdoor swung open, I wasn’t surprised to see Angeline’s glossy, dark head rise from the opening.

I closed the book and set it on my lap. “Well?” I said. “Did you say yes? That was the whole point of your spell, wasn’t it?”

Angeline glared at me. “That was the single most embarrassing moment of my entire life,” she said. “What a relief it is to know that you, at least, found it amusing.” She clambered up onto the wooden floor and swung the trapdoor shut. “Give me one of those apples,” she said as she crossed to the bed. “I need something to restore myself.”

I passed her an apple and a hunk of cheese. “At least you’ve been kissed now,” I said. “Even Elissa can’t say that much.”

“You think not?” Angeline arched her eyebrows at me and bit into her apple as she sank onto the bed.

“Really?” I stared at her, lowering my apple. “No. She wouldn’t! Who was it? When? On the hand or on the mouth?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” Angeline smirked. “I’ll tell you when you’re old enough.”

“Hmm,” I said. “I wonder how old Stepmama would
have to be before she was ready to find out how Mr. Carlyle really found us.”

Angeline put down her apple and narrowed her eyes. “That is not going to happen.”

“No?” I narrowed my eyes back at her and tried to arch just one eyebrow. It didn’t work. So I just had to make my voice as cool as hers had been. “Wouldn’t you like to know that for certain?”

“Is this blackmail?” Angeline sighed. “Come now, Kat. We both know you aren’t going to tell Stepmama anything. She’d tell Papa, and then …”

We both winced at the same time. It was too terrible to even contemplate. Stepmama would fill the house with her outrage and horror at the discovery—and her vindication. It was exactly what she’d been waiting to see ever since she’d first stepped into the house five years ago and seen the three of us standing in front of Mama’s miniature portrait, still on shocking public display.

And the way Papa’s face would sag in defeat as he listened to her … I couldn’t bear the thought of it.

“Of course I won’t tell her,” I said. “I’m not a fool.”

“No? You do act like one sometimes.”

“Cow.”

“Ninny.”

“I don’t have to tell Stepmama,” I said. “I know someone else who doesn’t know the truth. Elissa.”

Angeline’s dark eyes flashed. “You wouldn’t!”

“I would,” I said. “I really would, and you know it. Just

think how shocked she would be. How many weeks she’d spend lecturing you if she found out.”

“You little traitor!”

“I’m not the one who’s a traitor,” I said. “I’m not the one shutting you out. Ever since you entered Society last year, you and Elissa have both been treating me like a child.”

Angeline sneered. “You are a child.”

I grabbed hold of my temper before I could throw my apple core at her. If Stepmama heard us fighting, I’d never get my way. Instead I said, “I’m not too young to understand that you laid a spell on Frederick Carlyle to make him love you and walk all the way across the country against his will, just to find you.”

She flushed. “It wasn’t against his will.”

“How do you know? He doesn’t even have a real will of his own anymore, does he? All he wants now is you, and he never even met you until today.”

“That isn’t …” She scowled down at her half-eaten apple. “You make it sound as if it’s a terrible thing.”

“Well …” I thought about it. “It is, isn’t it? I mean, it would be one thing if you only put yourself in his way and let him fall in love with you naturally, but to make him fall in love … well, that’s like cheating at cards, isn’t it? It’s dishonorable. Even Charles wouldn’t do that.”

“It might help if Charles did cheat,” Angeline said. “Then he might not lose so often.” But I could tell by the look on her face that I’d won. “I didn’t mean it to happen that way,” she said. “I cast a spell to bring my true love to
me. I thought he’d arrive riding a great black stallion, or driving a fine carriage through the village, and he would see me quite by accident and fall in love. I didn’t expect him to be already so”—she gestured helplessly with her apple—“so stupidly besotted. And I certainly didn’t expect him to be one of Papa’s students, for heaven’s sake!”

“Well, you can’t get rid of him now,” I said. “He’s already brought his first quarter’s payment, and Stepmama knows it too.”

“Oh, Lord. She’ll never let him go!”

Suddenly we were laughing together, for the first time in ages—the first time since she’d started going to balls with Elissa and gossiping in secret, when everything had changed between us. Angeline reached across the bed and grasped my hand. “Kat, you little wretch. What on earth am I going to do about him?”

“You could always marry him,” I said doubtfully. “If the spell was meant to summon your true love …”

“There was some mistake,” said Angeline. “There had to be. I’m not even surprised—it was the first spell I ever made up by myself, so it’s no wonder it brought me the wrong man. This one isn’t even old enough to get married.”

“He’s older than you are.”

“He can’t be more than twenty! His family would have a fit. They’d say I’d bewitched him.”

“You did.”

“Not intentionally. Why would I? He’s completely witless!

All you have to do is talk to him for two seconds to realize that.”

I said, “Maybe once you take away the spell …”

“I don’t know how to take it away!”

“Oh,” I said. I bit my lip, but I couldn’t keep the laughter from leaking out. “Can you imagine what mealtimes will be like? Stepmama can’t stop both of you eating together. He’ll propose to you three times a day!”

“Papa probably won’t even notice,” Angeline said. “Anyway, it will wear off eventually. It has to. And in the meantime …” She sighed. “In the meantime, Papa can earn a bit more money than usual, and Mr. Carlyle will have a very good tutor.”

“But what are you going to do?” I asked. “If you won’t marry Mr. Carlyle—”

“I wouldn’t marry a fool like Frederick Carlyle even if he had ten thousand pounds a year,” Angeline said. “It’s completely out of the question.”

“Well, then, what will you do instead?”

“I’m certainly not going to sit here waiting for Stepmama to fix on an eligible suitor for me, I can tell you that much.” Angeline snorted. “Elissa may sigh all she likes about family loyalty, but I won’t let it take me that far.”

“Elissa.” Finally we’d come to what I’d meant to ask all along. “What wouldn’t you two tell me last night? What’s wrong with Sir Neville?”

Angeline sat back. I could see her face shuttering against me—the “secrets” look I’d learned to hate. “Would
you expect anything to be right about a man picked out by Stepmama?”

“You know more than that,” I said. “You’re just not telling me.”

“Well, there’s the fact he’s twenty years older than her, for a start.”

“You said Frederick Carlyle was too young.”

“There’s a difference between a handsome man of five-and-twenty—or even thirty—and one who’s old enough to be your father,” Angeline said tartly.

“So that’s all it is? Sir Neville is too old for her? That’s what I tried to say last night, but you both—”

“That’s not bad enough to stop the marriage,” Angeline said.

I studied her face. Her expression was as bland as the watered wine Stepmama gave me at dinner … but I knew her too well to be fooled. I picked up Mama’s magic books.

“It won’t wash,” I said. “If you don’t think I’m old enough to understand, that’s your decision, but if you don’t tell me the truth, you’ll have to listen to Elissa being horrified by your behavior for the next three weeks at least.” I raised my voice to imitate Elissa’s soft, lilting tones. “‘I just don’t
understand
, Angeline. How could such a thing ever
occur
to you? How could you possibly
dream
of such a wickedly improper, immoral—’”

“Enough!” Angeline threw her apple onto the bed. “Fine. I’ll tell you exactly what I don’t like about Sir Neville. But if
I tell you, you can’t let anyone else find out that you know, and you absolutely
may not
think up some mad scheme to interfere. Elissa has made her decision, she is determined to follow Stepmama’s orders, and there is nothing
you
can possibly do to stop her.”

“Fine,” I said. “But you needn’t tell me that Elissa’s as stubborn as a mule. She’s my sister too.”

“I know. That’s exactly what worries me.” Angeline took a deep breath. “Very well,” she said. “Sir Neville Collingwood was married once before, as you know. And …” She closed her eyes, frowning in concentration as if she was trying to think of exactly the right words.

“And?” I said. “What happened to his wife?”

Angeline opened her eyes and looked straight at me. “He murdered her.”

“He what?” I stared at her across the bed. the apple
suddenly felt very cold and clammy in my hand.

“You heard me.” Angeline set her jaw. “Elissa won’t admit it, and Stepmama says it’s all pure, unfounded gossip and speculation that young ladies should be ashamed to repeat, but it’s the truth. Mrs. Watkins’s niece works in the village where it happened, and she told me all about it two months ago.”

She leaned closer to me, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Sir Neville Collingwood was so jealous of his first wife that he locked her up as a prisoner in a tower room, and she died of grief. Now that he’s looking for another victim, we’re all supposed to hope and pray that his eye falls on Elissa, so Charles can be rescued from his own folly
and the rest of us can escape social ruin.” She pointed her finger at me like a weapon, her voice rising. “But I will be
damned
if I sit by and let her marry him!”

“What can we do?” I tossed my apple aside, half-eaten. I had lost my appetite. “Why didn’t you say any of this last night? Why did you chime along with Elissa when she said what a wonderful thing her marriage would be for all of us? How could you—”

“What good would it have done?” Angeline said. “You know Elissa. I tried everything I could three days ago, when I first found out. I told her we don’t need the money that badly. Good God, let Charles go to debtors’ prison for a month or two and actually feel the results of his idiocy! Let the whole family be ruined in Society and none of us ever make eligible marriages. Let us be whispered about and pointed at in the streets, if it comes to that! I’d rather we all become outcasts from good Society than sell her into slavery.”

I winced. “You didn’t say all that to Elissa.”

“I did.”

“Whispering in the streets? Social outcasts?”

“I was angry!” Angeline scowled. “But of course it didn’t work.”

“Well, of course not,” I said. “Elissa would die of humiliation if even one person pointed at her in a public street. I think she’d
rather
die than have that happen.”

“Well, I wouldn’t. But of course she got completely up-in-the-air about it all and said if I had any hint of
propriety I would never say such wicked things or put my faith in wild rumors that sound like dreadful gothic novels.”

“That is unfair,” I said. “Elissa’s the one who reads gothic novels.”

“She adores them,” Angeline said. “And I’m starting to think she has a fancy to become a gothic heroine. You should have seen how noble she looked as she was saying it. I’m sure she was already picturing herself in her shroud, looking beautiful and being wept over by all the peasantry.”