Kat, Incorrigible

by Stephanie Burgis

  “Of course not!” he said. He didn’t have the right kind of skin to blush. But he looked positively ill with horror at the thought. “I would never! I have the uttermost respect for Miss Angeline, I swear it. I only … it’s just …” He blinked soulfully at me. “I only wanted to be near her for a little longer. Just to know that she was close.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” I said, as sweepingly as Angeline herself ever could. “She is in an absolutely foul mood right now. If she had any idea that you were out here …”

  But I could see my words weren’t getting through.

  It was all too much. My head was ringing with exhaustion and frustration and the wine I’d drunk at dinner and the fear I’d felt ever since he’d brought the news from home. I could feel the golden mirror burning against my leg through the reticule, making everything worse. I looked him directly in the eye and spoke as clearly as I could. My voice came out in a throbbing, muffled shriek.

  “Stop it!” I said. “You don’t really love her anyway. Don’t be ridiculous!”

  There was a muffled pop in the air around us, like an explosion. The candles in their wall sconces flickered, sending shadows flying through the air. We both stumbled back. I spun around, holding my reticule like a weapon. If Lady Fotherington had just appeared in midair behind me—

  But the long corridor was empty except for us.

  I turned back to Mr. Carlyle. He looked as if he’d seen a ghost. His eyes were wide and shocked, and he was breathing hard.

  I said, “Are you all right? I don’t know what—”

  “Where am I?” Mr. Carlyle said. He blinked at me. “And who are you?”

  In the end, I had to knock on Angeline’s door. I couldn’t think of what else to do.

  She appeared a minute later, wrapped up in her dressing gown and with her dark hair already plaited in a braid for the night. “I might have known it was you, Kat. What do you want now?” Then she saw Mr. Carlyle. “Oh, Lord! No more. Not tonight!”

  She started to close her door. I pushed it back open. “Wait!”

  “I do beg your pardon,” Mr. Carlyle said. He grinned easily and swept a bow. “It’s an awkward moment for a meeting, I understand. But I appear to be in a bit of a fix, and your sister thought you might be able to help.”

  “You what?” Angeline frowned at him. “Kat, what’s going on?”

  “He doesn’t know what he’s doing here or who we are,” I said. I was proud of myself for keeping my voice so steady as I said it. I added, as lightly as I could, “It’s almost as if he’d been under a spell until just now.”

  Mr. Carlyle laughed. “Well, I’m not sure I would phrase it quite so thrillingly. I’m sure there’s some more tedious explanation for it.”

  “Oh,” Angeline said. “Oh.” Her dark eyes widened. She took a deep breath and stepped out of the room. “You don’t remember anything? About any of us?”

  “I’m afraid not,” he said. His lips curved into a startlingly mischievous grin as he met her gaze. “But I must say, I rather wish I did.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Angeline blushed.

  I said, before he could get completely the wrong idea, “You’ve been studying with our father, Mr. Stephenson.”

  “Really? They sent me down from Oxford for a term?” He frowned. “Why would they? I haven’t gotten into any trouble, have I? I was doing quite well, I thought.”

  I took the coward’s option. “We wouldn’t know anything about that,” I said. “You arrived on our doorstep about a week and a half ago, with your first quarter’s payment, and that’s all any of us know about you.”

  “Hmm. Well, lucky me.” He smiled again at Angeline. She stared back at him, looking completely unlike herself.

  “I’m Angeline,” she blurted. “I mean, my name. Angeline Stephenson. Since you’ve forgotten.”

  “Miss Angeline.” His smile deepened. “A pleasure to meet you. Again.”

  I said, “If anyone hears us talking out here, we’ll all get into enormous trouble. Don’t you think you should go to bed, Mr. Carlyle?” I glared at Angeline to reinforce the message.

  She said weakly, “Yes, perhaps that would be a good idea.”

  “Perhaps it would, after all,” he said. “And who knows? Perhaps when I wake up, I’ll remember everything.”

  Angeline looked as if she might swoon with horror at the thought.

  “We shall all hope so, for your sake,” I said firmly.

  He bowed to both of us. “Well, I am sorry to have disturbed both of you. But there is just one more small problem …” He paused, tilting his head questioningly. “Do either of you know where my bedroom is?”

  I was the one who saw Mr. Carlyle to his bedroom door. Angeline was still behaving extremely oddly. Perhaps it was the strain of having her spell broken that had thrown her off balance. Whatever it was, I didn’t like it.

  As soon as Mr. Carlyle was safely stowed away, I hurried down the corridor to my own room. But I heard another door open first.

  “Kat?”

  It was Elissa’s whisper. She stood in her own doorway, her blond hair unpinned and falling around the shoulders of her light pink dressing gown. “I thought I heard your voice,” she said. “Who were you talking to?”

  “Mr. Carlyle,” I said. I frowned at Angeline’s door beyond, but it didn’t budge. “He seems to have suffered a loss of memory. He doesn’t remember the past week and a half.”

  “Oh, no! That’s terrible.” Elissa’s face softened into distress. “The poor man. Perhaps it was the shock of the burglary.”

  “Perhaps,” I said. “But at least it looks like he’ll stop mooning around Angeline now.”

  Elissa’s lips twitched. “I shouldn’t laugh,” she said, “it’s too unkind. But thank goodness all the same. He’s been driving Angeline wild. She must be so relieved.”

  I narrowed my eyes at Angeline’s closed door. “Let’s hope so.”

  “Don’t go to bed yet,” Elissa said. “I wanted to talk to you. Why don’t you come inside for a few minutes? You can braid my hair, if you don’t mind.”

  “All right.” I followed her in, and she closed the door behind me.

  Only one slim candle, sitting on a table beside the bed, lit Elissa’s room. Her bedroom was as small as my own, but needless to say, it was much tidier. I didn’t see scattered beads anywhere on her floor, or any piles of clothing. In the shadows, only her combs and pins glittered on her dressing table, and a copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho sat half-open on her bed. She must have sat up reading again. Without Angeline nearby to complain about the candlelight, Elissa could read gothic novels all night long.

  I sat down on the bed next to her book, and she brought me her hairbrush and sat down in front of me, curling her legs up neatly underneath her. I liked the soft, silky feel of Elissa’s hair in my hands, and the swish of the brush through it, throwing sparks into the air.

  I brushed her hair in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the peace. The room was perfectly quiet and still except for the creaks of the old house around us. Then Elissa spoke, so softly I could barely hear her.

  “Mr. Collingwood was very gentlemanly, wasn’t he?”

  “Who? Oh, Sir Neville’s brother. Yes, I suppose so.” I set down the hairbrush and started to divide her fair hair into three sections across her shoulders, frowning with concentration. “Certainly not as bad as his older brother, anyway.”

  “I thought he was very kind.”

  “Well, he did spend the whole night mooning after you, just like—well, almost as badly as Mr. Carlyle used to moon over Angeline,” I said. “So I’m not surprised you liked him.”

  Elissa didn’t say anything. But I heard her sigh.

  For once, Elissa had actually chosen me, instead of Angeline, as her confidante. So I tried to think of something more sympathetic to say. “Couldn’t you marry him instead of Sir Neville?” I asked. “If his family is so wealthy—”

  “He’s a younger son,” Elissa s
aid. “Sir Neville inherited all the property as well as the title. Stepmama told me very clearly that Mr. Collingwood has no fortune of his own. Even though …” Her voice softened into wistfulness. “Their mother had an independent fortune. If she had wanted to, she could have left both of her sons wealthy men. Everyone expected her to divide her fortune between her sons … but she never left a will, so it all went to Sir Neville.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Mr. Collingwood is a completely ineligible prospect.”

  “Oh.” Suddenly the little room didn’t seem so peaceful anymore. The weight of Elissa’s melancholy felt like a smothering cloak, lying across both of us. I said, “Maybe he’ll come into some money of his own soon.”

  “How?”

  “Well …” I was thinking so intently, I didn’t take enough care with my braiding. Elissa let out a stifled gasp, and I realized I had yanked her hair so tightly that the braid was pulling at her scalp. “Sorry!” I said. “Sorry.” I loosened the strands and saw her shoulders relax. I sighed. “Maybe he’ll inherit money from an eccentric great-aunt who doesn’t like his older brother. I wouldn’t blame her for it either. I didn’t like Sir Neville one bit.”

  “No?” Elissa turned her head to look at me, pulling the half-finished braid out of my hands. Her blue eyes were shadowed in the darkness. “Truly, Kat? Why not?”

  That feeling of brooding, dangerous intensity, like a malevolent shadow creeping across me … I held back a shiver and tried to think of how to say it properly. “He looked as if he wanted to own everybody in the room. Or as if he already did, and just took that for granted.”

  She sighed and turned away, looking down at her clasped hands. “He’s a wealthy man. That’s how they all are.”

  “Mm …” I wasn’t so sure, but I couldn’t argue. Until tonight, I’d never met anyone wealthier than our own local squire. The only way you could call Squire Briggs “brooding” was if you meant it like a brooding hen, fat and lazy. But I supposed he wasn’t wealthy enough to count. So I only said, “He made me nervous.”

  “You? Nervous?” Elissa’s lips curved into a smile. “I don’t believe it. You’ve never had a nervous moment in your life. My brave Kat.”

  You’d be surprised, I thought. But I didn’t say it out loud. The last thing I wanted to do right now was admit to my oldest sister what I’d been doing with Mama’s magic mirror—or what my meddling had brought about. And I didn’t want to even think about what had happened in the corridor just now.

  So I stayed quiet until I finished the braid and tied it off. “There,” I said. “All finished.”

  “Thank you.” But Elissa didn’t look up from her clasped hands.

  I frowned at her. “What is it? Is it only Mr. Collingwood, or—?”

  “Don’t worry,” Elissa said. “It’s only foolishness, I know it. Please. Forget that I ever mentioned Mr. Collingwood.”

  “But—”

  “And please,” Elissa added, “don’t mention it to Angeline. She wouldn’t understand.”

  “All right,” I said. I wasn’t at all sure that I understood either. “But if you truly prefer Mr. Collingwood to Sir Neville—”

  “It doesn’t matter what I prefer,” Elissa said. Her face looked drawn and noble in the candlelight, and I remembered Angeline calling her a would-be gothic heroine. “What the family needs from me now—”

  “Oh, Lord,” I said, and stood up fast, knocking The Mysteries of Udolpho off the bed. I left it lying on the floor as I glared at her. “Just because Stepmama’s been pouring family duty into your head doesn’t mean that you have to listen. Someday you could try thinking of what you need from yourself instead. Then maybe you’d have to stop being such a perfect martyr and actually let yourself be happy for once!”

  I was panting with outrage by the end, but Elissa didn’t even blink.

  Instead she sighed wistfully and gave me a sad, sweet smile of ineffable love and forgiveness. “You’ll understand when you’re older, dear,” she said.

  I ground my teeth and stalked out of the room.

  Eleven

  The first person I saw when I walked into the breakfast room the next morning was Mr. Gregson. He stood near the big bay windows, bathed in sunshine and spearing ham and pheasant from the sideboard as calmly as if nothing in the world could worry him. It was infuriating, especially after I’d spent half the night awake and vibrating with tension.

  I stalked straight across the room to him, ignoring the guests already sitting at the breakfast tables. “What do you think you’re playing at?” I hissed.

  He bowed courteously and gestured to the stack of dishes by the sideboard. “You had better take a plate, Katherine, or the other guests will wonder what you’re making such a fuss about.”

  “A fuss?!”

  But he was right. If we’d been alone I would have let him have it, but there were six or seven people eating at the breakfast tables behind us, conversing (the ladies) and reading the morning paper (the gentlemen). If I embarrassed myself in public again, even Lady Graves might give in to Stepmama’s way of thinking. Seething, I snatched up a plate and turned my gaze to the piles of food waiting on the sideboard, as if I were simply trying to make up my mind among them.

  I’d had all night to transform my first fear into outrage, though, and I wasn’t going to let myself be distracted now. “You’re not going to get away with it!” I whispered.

  “With eating breakfast, you mean?” Mr. Gregson murmured back. “Or are you referring to our little discussion yesterday? I can hardly claim to have ‘got away with’ anything at that point, as I recall, since you ran away before I even had time to marshal my arguments.”

  “I did not run away,” I said. “I’d heard everything you had to say that was of interest to me, so I chose to leave.”

  “Hmm.” He bent over the sideboard, reaching for the pot of raspberry preserves. “If you say so, my dear. It would be most improper for me to contradict a lady, even when her story does sound remarkably unconvincing.”

  “I did not—” I cut myself off as I realized the nearer houseguests were already turning around to look at us.

  Mr. Gregson only smiled beatifically at our audience, his spectacles glinting in the sunlight. I speared a hard-boiled egg, breathing hard.

  “I wasn’t talking about yesterday afternoon, anyway,” I whispered, once I had my voice back under control. “As you know perfectly well, I was referring to the burglary!”

  “Ah. Well, you will recall that I did warn you at our very first meeting. If you will continue to meddle in things you do not understand—and to reject perfectly rational advice on the matter—then you must, I’m afraid, be prepared to face the consequences. I trust you do have the books safely hidden now? Somewhere nearby—in this very house, I would imagine?”

  I breathed deeply and restrained myself, with great effort, from throwing a plate of eggs right into his smug face. “They are not only hidden, they are protected. So there’s no use in trying to take them from me!”

  He coughed delicately. “And yet it might, however, be for the best—for the sake of everyone concerned—if you did give them to me of your own free will, as soon as possible.”

  “Or?” I slammed down my knife with a clatter. “Or else? What will you do?”

  “I am merely thinking of your own safety, my dear. And the safety of your whole family, of course.”

  I gasped and swung around, forgetting all about the other guests. “Are you actually trying to threaten—?”

  “Why, Miss Katherine!” said a familiar voice behind me. “Good morning.”

  It was Frederick Carlyle, looking well-rested, fresh, and impossibly different from the man I’d known for the past week and a half. Even the graceful way he bowed now was different from the way he’d moved until last night, and the look of intelligent amusement on his face was a transformation. Even as I thought that, his eyes narrowed, and the amusement vanished from his face. He moved smoothly to place himself beside me in what loo
ked astonishingly like a protective position.

  “And are you perfectly well this morning, Miss Katherine?” he asked me blandly—but his gaze was fixed on Mr. Gregson.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Thank you.” Since the two men were still looking measuringly at each other, I added, “Mr. Carlyle, Mr. Gregson,” as an introduction.

  “We’ve already met, just last night,” Mr. Gregson said, and frowned at me.

  “Umm …,” I began, and then caught a ghost of a conspiratorial grin on Frederick Carlyle’s face. I decided not to mention his amnesia. Mr. Gregson didn’t deserve an explanation, anyway.

  More guests were pouring in now behind us, starting with three fluttering young ladies in pastel shades, all giggling and blatantly making eyes at Mr. Carlyle. It was obvious that nothing was going to be sorted out now, so I only gave Mr. Gregson one last warning look and left the sideboard without bothering to curtsy. It was a good thing Stepmama wasn’t down yet, or she might have had a Spasm at the oversight.

  I didn’t have long to sit and simmer on my own, though. Ten minutes later, a plate slammed down across from me so hard I was surprised it didn’t crack.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I said.

  Angeline’s back was ramrod straight, and her cheeks were flushed. “Nothing in the world is wrong with me,” she said. “I’m not the one making a fool of myself.”

  “What did I do?” I set down my knife and stared at her as she sat down. “I haven’t even—”

  “I wasn’t talking about you,” Angeline said. She enunciated her words as clearly as bullets from a dueling pistol, and bit off each one with distaste at the end.

  “Who, then? I don’t—”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, why don’t you turn around and see for yourself?”

  If Elissa had been there, she would have told us both that it was entirely improper for a lady to stare, or even to look directly at any person she wasn’t partnering in conversation. Luckily, Elissa wasn’t there, so I turned in my chair and looked around without bothering to hide my interest. But I didn’t see anything worth looking at, no matter how hard I tried. Mr. Gregson was reading the morning paper; various guests I didn’t know were gossiping and eating; Mr. Carlyle was laughing and talking to the three young ladies who’d been eyeing him earlier; they were all giggling at everything he said….