Kat, Incorrigible (29 page)

Stepmama opened her mouth. Then she shut it again. For the first time since I’d met her five years ago, she looked positively haggard.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t understand any of this!”

“You will not stand against me, then,” Sir Neville said.

Stepmama looked from Sir Neville to Mr. Collingwood
to Elissa. “I don’t understand!” she repeated.

“Indeed.” Sir Neville yawned. “As I said. Your stepmother desires you to accept my offer. Now—”

“No!” Stepmama said. Then she blinked, as if she’d startled herself as well as the rest of us.

“I beg your pardon?” Sir Neville said.

“I said no,” Stepmama repeated. She turned to face Elissa. “I will not make this choice for you.”

Sir Neville’s voice hardened. “Perhaps you do not yet understand the position your family is in. But if I might clarify the consequences for you—”

“Debtors’ prison,” Stepmama said. “Yes. I heard you. But I never believed the rumors about your first wife, and now your brother says they were true. I owe a duty to my stepdaughters no matter how ill they might behave.” She took a deep breath. “You must make your own decision, Elissa.”

“Thank you!” Angeline said. “You’ve done the right thing, ma’am.”

Stepmama ignored Angeline. She took Elissa’s hand and looked into her eyes. “Listen to me, child,” she said. “You must do what you truly think is best for your family, and not let any of us change your mind.”

“No!” I said. “Don’t listen to her, Elissa!”

“Oh,
damnation
,” Angeline said. “Elissa, don’t—”

“I shall,” Elissa said. She lifted her chin. Her pale face looked exalted, like a holy martyr. “I shall do what is best for my family.”

“Miss Stephenson, I beg you!” Mr. Collingwood said. He snatched her free hand. “If you care even the slightest bit for me—”

Elissa pulled away from Stepmama and rose to her feet. She gazed down at Mr. Collingwood’s tormented face and smoothed back the jet-black hair from his forehead. I could have sworn I saw a glowing halo rise around her as she spoke. “You must forgive me, my love, and learn to forget me, for my sake.”

“Oh, my Lord,” I said. “You’ve been waiting your whole life for this, haven’t you?”

“Can you doubt it?” said Angeline. “Look at the two of them! He’s as bad as she is.”

They both ignored us as if we hadn’t spoken.

“I would gladly sacrifice my life for your happiness,” Mr. Collingwood said.

“Do you think I could live with such a burden on my soul?” Elissa asked.

“I am going to be sick!” I announced.

“I am both honored and delighted by your decision,” said Sir Neville. “Miss Stephenson, if you would give me your hand …” He held out his arm, ignoring his brother, who knelt between them. “Shall we repair to the salon to announce our betrothal?”

“No!” I shouted.

The doors were closed and guarded. It didn’t matter. Like it or not, there was only one option left.

“Grab Elissa’s hand!” I said to Angeline, and I lunged
across the room. I shoved past Mr. Collingwood and grabbed Elissa’s arm.

“Kat, what on earth—?” she began.

“What is going on?” Stepmama demanded. “Katherine—”

“Got her,” Angeline said. “Now what?”

“Miss Stephenson!” said Mr. Collingwood, and grabbed for Elissa. “You must reconsider.”

“I think not,” Sir Neville said. “Whatever you may be planning, Miss Katherine—”

I tightened my grip on Elissa’s arm and clicked the mirror open.

“That’s Mama’s mirror!” Elissa gasped. “How did you get—ohhh!”

Her gasp turned into a scream as the world flipped inside out around us.

We landed in a tumble of arms and legs and moans of pain.

“Ouch!”

“Get off!”

“You’re sitting on my head!”

“Miss Stephenson, where are you?” Mr. Collingwood’s voice came out muffled by yards of muslin across his face. He spat it out and sat up, wild-eyed. “Miss Stephenson!”

Stepmama’s voice rose above all the rest in a shriek of pure outrage as she yanked the skirts of her dress back down over her legs. “Kat, what have you done this time?”

“It’s all right, ma’am,” I said, as I disentangled myself and shoved Angeline’s elbow off my throat. “You weren’t meant to come with us, but since you have, you might as well—”

“Did you truly mean to leave your own stepmother behind?” Sir Neville drawled behind me. “How deplorably inconsiderate of you, Miss Katherine. And how fortunate for me that I managed to see through your rather transparent ploy and take a firm hold of your sister myself. I should have hated to be left behind and miss this experience. I have heard of the Guardians’ Golden Hall many times, of course, but the reality …” He rose to his feet and scanned the room with cool authority. “Truly astounding. I shall enjoy exploring it further, with your sisterly assistance.”

“Where are we?” Elissa whispered.

I stood up. My knees were trembling. I had to hold out my arms for balance.
Curses
. I’d really thought I’d managed to find the perfect escape. Of course, it wouldn’t have solved our larger problems, but I’d thought I could at least keep Elissa safe and secluded until I had time to think of a real solution.

It looked like I didn’t have any more time after all.

“Clearly, Kat’s been playing with Mama’s belongings,” said Angeline. “That must be why she went through Mama’s cabinet back home.” Her voice was more level than I would have expected; perhaps her anger at Sir Neville was balancing out her outrage at me.

“You did what?” Stepmama’s bellow echoed around the Golden Hall, bouncing off the walls around us. “How dare you?!”

“Could everyone please concentrate?” I said. “You can all shout at me later, if you like, but—”

“Give me the mirror now,” Angeline said, “and we’ll pretend you never took it.”

“I can’t,” I said. “First of all, it’s not here with me—it’s back in Lady Graves’s library—but mainly, it won’t let me. It’s mine now.”

“It belonged to Mama.”

“I know. But when I found it—”

“You broke almost everything else in her cupboard. How can you claim one of the only things that’s left?”

“I know,” I said. “It was an accident. But—”

“You’ve been after her magic books ever since you first saw I had them,” said Angeline. “You’re trying to take away everything that was hers. How can you be so selfish?”

“I am not!” I said. “But she was my mother too, not just yours. You can’t pretend—”

“You never even met her!”

“You—”

“Be quiet!” Elissa shrieked. She leaped to her feet. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes sparked with rage. Mr. Collingwood gazed up at her in awe from the floor by her feet, and I had to admit, she did look exactly like an avenging goddess. “I cannot believe you two are squabbling right now!”

“It wasn’t me!” I said. “I was only trying to explain how—”

“Are you saying you don’t even mind that Kat stole Mama’s mirror?” Angeline demanded.

“I did not—”

“You must have known you were in the wrong. Other-wise you wouldn’t have kept it hidden from us!”

“You mean, the way you kept Mama’s magic books hidden from Elissa?” I said.

“This is all utterly fascinating,” Sir Neville said. “And you shall both have plenty of time to debate all these points further in the future … although not within hearing range of the rest of us, if at all possible. Once Miss Stephenson and I are married and the two of you safely ensconced at Collingwood Hall—”

“That is not going to happen,” I said.

“No?” Sir Neville raised one eyebrow. “May I ask exactly how you plan to prevent it, now that your sophisticated and complex strategy of running away has failed?”

“I did not—,” I began, and then I stopped. There was no point in denying it. This time, I really had just tried to run away.

This time …

I swung around. The Golden Hall was empty. The highwayman was nowhere to be seen. Mr. Gregson was gone.

But he had set a magical alarm to notify him whenever I arrived, hadn’t he? He’d said so the second time I came here. He must still be able to tell, or else he couldn’t have
arrived so quickly when I’d come with the highwayman.

So where was he this time? If he’d finally decided to be reasonable and give me uninterrupted time alone in the Golden Hall for exploration, I would simply have to throttle him.

The point was, I was on my own. I took a deep breath and tried to think. What did I know how to do? I could turn myself into someone else; well, that wouldn’t help right now, not in full view of everyone. I hadn’t learned a single other magic spell.

But Guardians didn’t require spoken spells. And I had performed magic several times now, magic powerful enough to shatter Angeline’s spells from Mama’s own magic book and even Mr. Gregson’s magic. All I had to do …

I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing the pressure to mount inside my head and into the air around me.

“NO!”
I bellowed.

The air did not implode around me. Instead, it gave a quiet
pop
and went limp. I stumbled.

“Very entertaining,” said Sir Neville. “If I had been foolish enough to try to cast a spell on you, I’m sure that would have deflated it nicely. Unfortunately, powerful though your spell-breaking abilities might be, they are not actually enough to change anyone’s natural, nonmagical mind about you or anything else in the world.” He laughed, then whispered something under his breath. I was just as glad not to be able to hear it.

“Oh,” I said. I swallowed hard.

The choking sensation was back in my throat. Along with it came that horrible new feeling I’d discovered:
helplessness
. Prickles raced along my skin, pushing me tight in upon myself. The smell of burning meat made me sick to my stomach. I wrapped my arms around my chest and let the misery overwhelm me.

What was the use of fighting anymore? Sir Neville was right. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t cast a single useful spell. I couldn’t even use my Guardian magic to break his spells if he didn’t bother to cast any—and why should he bother? He didn’t need to. He had the whole weight of Society behind him, promising scandal and poverty and disgrace to everyone I loved, and all I had was an old mirror. I was completely alone. I might as well give up now, before—

Wait
. The word felt almost like a tangible breath against my ear. I blinked and spun around, but I didn’t see anyone except my family, all staring at me in various attitudes of despair or outrage.
Wait for what?
I thought. I was on my own. Nobody else was coming to help.

That’s it.
I shook myself like a dog. The prickling, creeping, choking feelings clustered back around me, biting at my skin, but I ignored them. What I’d been thinking wasn’t true. That was the helplessness talking, in Sir Neville’s voice. And it was completely mad.

I had never been alone in my entire life. Perhaps Sir
Neville and his brother had grown up apart, like only children, but I certainly hadn’t.

And there was something else I would gamble on just as high as Charles had ever gambled on a round of cards: that prickling, choking sensation that surrounded me was no more natural than the color of fish-faced Mrs. Banfield’s hair. Sir Neville had attacked when I was off my guard.

I didn’t even have to try to summon up the pressure in my head this time. It came naturally.

“NO!”
I shouted again, and the air imploded around us.

Sir Neville blinked. “Well, that was certainly unusual.”

“Don’t cast another spell on me,” I said. “Because I won’t be fooled again, no matter how powerful a witch you might be. I am not a helpless person.”

I turned to my sisters. “Elissa,” I said, “Sir Neville’s first wife came from a family of witches. He locked her up, and she died.”

“It’s true,” Mr. Collingwood said from the floor below us. “He didn’t murder her, as everyone said, but she simply faded away.”