Courting Magic: A Kat, Incorrigible Novella

by Burgis, Stephanie

Of course, his father had been even more fashionable. But…

  “Mrs. Carlyle,” Alexander said, and bowed to Angeline, who was still sitting, caught by surprise for once in her life, staring as if dumbstruck from a winged armchair. “I beg your pardon if I’m late.”

  Angeline shook herself and stood. “Not at all,” she said, moving toward him. “I…take it that you are the additional guest Mr. Gregson had mentioned to me?”

  “Indeed,” Mr. Gregson murmured. He was by my side, suddenly, although I hadn’t noticed him stepping forward. “I do beg your pardon for the mystery, Mrs. Carlyle, but I wasn’t certain which name to give the young man. So much was still to be decided, you see, when you first issued your invitation, and I was waiting to see how quickly official arrangements could be made.”

  “But…” I began.

  Lord Lanham said, “But surely—”

  “Ahem.” Mr. Gregson coughed. “Perhaps the four of us could speak privately for just one moment, Mrs. Carlyle?”

  “Of course.” Angeline was half-smiling, now, a look of wonder on her face, while Stepmama waved her fan wildly in the background. “I cannot wait to find out all the details later.”

  I should have been smiling, like my sister, but I couldn’t. Alexander hadn’t met my gaze even once since he’d entered the room. I had to fight to keep my breathing steady as I followed the others to the far corner, by the pianoforte, where five tall candles stood in a candelabra to light our faces. As the rest of the guests erupted into conversation behind us, Alexander took a position almost military in its rigidity, his hands behind his back and his gaze directed directly in front of him, clearly waiting for Mr. Gregson to speak.

  I didn’t bother to wait. “How can this be?” I hissed. “How—how—?” I waved my hand frantically at my former magic tutor, running out of words. The stiffer that Alexander’s posture became, and the more carefully he kept his gaze averted from me, the more wild and uncontrollable I felt inside. Soon I would be hopping in agitation if I didn’t find a way to restrain myself.

  “Sir,” Lord Lanham said, and bowed his head respectfully to Mr. Gregson, as was no doubt more befitting when addressing the Head of our Order. “If you wouldn’t mind explaining to us…”

  “Of course not,” Mr. Gregson said mildly. “It’s very simple, actually. As you two both already know, the late Lord Ravenscroft’s title and estate were reclaimed by the Crown in an Act of Attainder for his crimes.”

  “Er…yes,” Lord Lanham said, sliding an uneasy gaze at Alexander.

  Alexander’s face was positively stony in its lack of expression. I wanted to grab him and shake him, to make him wake up and look at me.

  I clenched my hands in my skirts to keep them still. “So why did Henshawe call Alexander that?”

  “Why do you think, my dear?” Mr. Gregson gave a smile of prim satisfaction, his spectacles glinting in the candlelight. “Lands and titles belonging to the Crown can be granted to new recipients, you know. And when a young man has performed a signal service to his country…particularly when unmasking a rogue who had disguised himself as the Prince of Wales in his wrongdoing, thus turning his own crime into treason against the Crown…”

  “I didn’t do it alone,” Alexander said abruptly. “Kat was the one who found him out in the first place. She deserved to be rewarded at least as much, if not more. And—”

  “Fortunately,” said Mr. Gregson, “Kat didn’t mind sharing the glory just this once. In fact, she gave me the idea in the first place, whether she realized it or not.” He flashed me a knowing look. “She was quite insistent that any reward be granted to you alone…but I did rather hope that the reward we chose might prove beneficial for you both.”

  “For them both?” Lord Lanham frowned, looking between us. “How so, sir? I don’t understand.”

  Mr. Gregson smiled smugly as he put one hand on the Marquess’s arm. “Perhaps you might reintroduce me to your charming fiancée, Alistair, while we leave these two to sort out that question for themselves.”

  They walked away, leaving Alexander and me standing together by the piano, our faces only partially shielded from the rest of the company by the tall, thin branches of the candelabra. Silence built around us, heavier and heavier. I fought the impulse to shatter it with a scream.

  “Forgive me,” Alexander finally said. He had his gaze trained above me, and he looked braced for a blow. “I know you must hate it.”

  “I beg your pardon?” I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

  His gaze finally flashed down to mine…then jerked away as if the contact had burned him. “Me as…Lord Ravenscroft,” he said, as stiltedly as if the words pained him to utter. “I know what he tried to do to your family…and to you. I wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t even look at me now that I’m carrying his name.”

  “Are you mad?” I couldn’t reach out and shake him in front of all of my sister’s guests. But I could roll my eyes, and I did so with vigor. “If there’s one thing that all of us should have learned from Mr. Packenham, it’s that no one should be judged by their father’s actions, good or bad. And at any rate…” I crossed my arms, glaring at him. “Which of us has been refusing to look at the other one all evening?”

  He blinked, his stiff stance loosening at last. “I thought—that is, I assumed you wouldn’t wish—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I demanded. “It’s been five days, Alexander. Five days, and I didn’t hear a single word from you. I thought you were gone! I thought you’d vanished back into the countryside, and I would never, ever see you again or—”

  A sob broke through my voice, and I slammed my mouth shut, burning with humiliation. Scowling as ferociously as I could, I turned toward the wall to avoid being seen by our audience on the other side of the room as I dashed away the tears from my eyes. “Those were tears of fury,” I told Alexander as I turned back to him. “Because I am furious with you!”

  He lifted his hand as if to touch my shoulder…then pulled back before he could reach me, with a swift look back at the other side of the room. “Truly, I couldn’t tell you,” he said in a low voice. “I didn’t even know it myself until yesterday. I thought that I would be leaving soon, too. I thought there was no purpose in even trying to see you again. It would only pain us both, and make it harder to—”

  “You thought a great deal of rubbish,” I said through clenched teeth. I closed my eyes, fighting back the rest of my tears.

  “Perhaps I did,” Alexander said. “Or perhaps my heart was breaking, too.”

  My breath caught in my chest. I opened my eyes. His face wasn’t haughty or closed off anymore. His intent green eyes were fixed on mine, passionate and determined and full of an emotion I couldn’t help but understand.

  My head spun as I stared back at him. Deep inside me, a giddy glow began to burn, thawing nearly the last of my numb misery away.

  “Henshawe told me I was still needed in the capital,” Alexander said. “He didn’t give me any missions, though, so I spent my first few days after I gave my evidence kicking my heels alone in my boardinghouse.”

  “In the same city as me,” I whispered. “All those days…”

  His expression turned rueful as he watched me. “I wanted to be anywhere but there. I wanted something to do, a villain to fight, anything to take my mind off…”

  “I know what you mean,” I said, and swallowed hard. “Keep going.”

  “Well, and then they called me in.” He shrugged, his face filled with disbelief. “They’d stitched the whole thing up without a word to me beforehand. There was to be no public ceremony, due to the secrecy of the magical issues involved, but the title was securely mine. The estate was already legally mine. The…”

  He drew a deep breath, his shoulders squaring. “Kat, you have to understand, I’m still not wealthy, and I never will be. My father sank himself deep in debt, and his estate has only barely recovered under the care of the managers that the Crown installed there during the
last six years. There’s still so much work to be done to make it solvent, and I don’t know how to do any of it. I never studied land management. I never expected—”

  “That’s all right,” I said. There were tears in my voice again, but this time I didn’t even try to hold them back. “We can learn how to do it all together.”

  The smile that curved Alexander’s lips, then, turned his expression fierce with joy. He leaned down toward me, slowly and deliberately, until his broad shoulders filled up the borders of my vision and his warmth curled all around me, eating up the space between us while something like magic filled the air. “Was that by any chance a proposal of marriage, Miss Stephenson?” he asked softly.

  My skin was tingling and a laugh was bubbling up inside my chest, but I lifted my chin and gave him my haughtiest, most queenly expression as I stood up as tall as I could on my tiptoes, until our lips were nearly touching. “We-e-ell,” I breathed, “if you require me to explain it to you, Lord Ravenscroft…”

  “For God’s sake, man!” Frederick Carlyle bellowed across the room. “At least wait until you’re alone before you kiss her, if you please! Remember, her family is watching you, and we haven’t had our dinner yet!”

  The room burst into laughter as we spun around, shocked out of our perfect, two-person bubble. Alexander’s face was flushed and his thick brown hair falling out of its carefully windswept arrangement, but his grin didn’t fade a bit as he grabbed my hand in his, looking younger and happier than I’d ever seen him before.

  “It’s too late,” he told me, loudly enough for everyone else to hear him. “You’ve already proposed to me in front of your whole family. I’m yours now, Kat Stephenson, whether you like it or not.”

  Mine. My love and my partner and my perfect match—not lost after all, but mine, forever and always.

  I looked up at him with everything I felt brimming in my chest. His face shifted in response, his own chest rising and falling as his eyes widened, and I knew, I just knew, if we could only run away for one single moment, turn invisible long enough to find a private corner, we could…

  “Don’t even think about it, Kat!” Angeline called out, laughing. “You can’t run away from us now. It’s time to introduce your young man to the family again. But properly this time!”

  “Ohhh, my family!” I groaned.

  But my lips tugged into an irrepressible grin as I turned around to find my sisters and their husbands all watching me together. Elissa was blatantly holding Mr. Collingwood’s hand in hers—a positively shocking act of impropriety by her standards—looking misty-eyed as she smiled proudly at me. Angeline tipped her head against Frederick Carlyle’s shoulder as she watched us, giving me a warm, mischievous smile that hinted at dangerous secrets.

  I wasn’t sure whether I should anticipate or dread the marital advice that she would give me, but I couldn’t wait to find it all out.

  Papa wore an expression half-stricken, half-joyful, as he discreetly wiped his eyes. Stepmama held both of her hands squeezed tightly in front of her chest, her eyes wide with wonder and delight…and, I was only too hideously certain, with a vast array of wedding plans already brewing inside her, just waiting to explode upon Alexander and me with stunning force. Nearby, Lucy blew me a kiss from beside her own astounded-looking fiancé.

  Mr. Gregson beamed at Alexander and me alike like a proud godfather to both of us.

  “Angeline’s right,” I told Alexander. “We can’t avoid it any longer. It’s time for you to become a part of the family.”

  But we’ll find our own private moment later, I promised him. My voice was a teasing whisper inside his mind, where no one else would hear us, now or ever.

  We certainly will, Alexander murmured back, and his voice was a caress that made goosebumps pebble across my skin.

  Magic, hot and joyful, sparked between our palms as we touched…and then, hand in hand, we went together to introduce my fiancé to my family at last.

  THE END

  NOTE TO READERS

  Thank you so much for reading “Courting Magic”! If you have time to write a review of it on Amazon, B&N, Goodreads, or any other book-related site you use, I would be really grateful.

  Newsletter!

  If you’d like to be the first to know when my next books and stories are coming out, sign up for my newsletter here: http://www.stephanieburgis.com/newsletter.

  Find out more

  If you’d like to catch up on Kat’s earlier adventures (and her older siblings’ romances!), check out the three books in the Kat, Incorrigible trilogy (also known in the UK as The Unladylike Adventures of Kat Stephenson). You can read the first three chapters of each of them on my website: http://www.stephanieburgis.com.

  You can also follow me on twitter at @stephanieburgis or friend me on Facebook at my personal profile page: https://www.facebook.com/stephanieburgis I’m always happy to friend back all of my readers! You can also find my personal blog on my website, where I talk about writing, parenting, and my adventures in Welsh castles and coffeeshops: http://www.stephanieburgis.com/blog.

  And if you’d be interested in reading more novellas set in Kat’s Regency world, please do let me know — I’m still wavering on whether to write more or not!

  IF YOU ENJOYED WHAT YOU READ…

  Then read more about the irrepressible Kat Stephenson:

  In twelve-year-old Kat’s Regency England, magic is the greatest scandal of all … but that’s not going to stop her when there are sinister aristocrats to defeat, highwaymen to foil, and true loves to capture for her older sisters.

  Read Stephanie Burgis’s full trilogy of lighthearted fantasy adventures, available now from Simon and Schuster (US) and Templar (UK).

  Kat, Incorrigible (US title) / A Most Improper Magick (UK title)

  Available as an ebook and paperback in the US and UK.

  Renegade Magic (US title) / A Tangle of Magicks (UK title)

  Available as an ebook and paperback in the US.

  Available as an ebook and paperback in the UK.

  Stolen Magic (US title) / A Reckless Magick (UK title)

  Available as an ebook and hardcover in the US.

  Available as an ebook and paperback in the UK.

  Reviews

  “Matchmaking and spellcraft come alive in this breezy, delightful romp through Regency England that will appeal to fans of spunky heroines and British romances.”

  - Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books (on Kat, Incorrigible)

  “Mysterious, adventurous and absolutely hilarious.”

  - Sai Vishudhi, The Guardian - Children’s Book Website (on Kat, Incorrigible)

  “Regency romance meets Harry Potter with a strong jolt of twenty-first-century feminism… The lovely details — Roman baths, detailed costumes, and the seamy underside of Oxford student life — will have readers swooning all over again.”

  - Booklist (on Renegade Magic)

  “Stunning conclusion to an absolutely magical trilogy. Huge recommendation.”

  - The Bookbag (on Stolen Magic)

  ABOUT STEPHANIE BURGIS

  Stephanie Burgis grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, but now she lives in Wales with her husband (fellow writer Patrick Samphire), their two sons, and their crazy-sweet border collie mix. If she isn’t visiting one of the local castles right now with her sons, she’s probably drinking a latté at her favorite coffeeshop, blogging, or devouring a book.

  She has published over thirty short stories for adults and three novels for ages ten and up. You can find out more about her, find links to other short stories, and read the first three chapters of all three Kat novels at her website: www.stephanieburgis.com.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you so much to every reader who emailed me after the third Kat book was published to ask what would happen next (and who Kat would end up with)! This novella would never have been written without all of you—not because I didn’t want to write it (I have been wanting to write this story for year
s!), but because I couldn’t have justified taking the time to write it just for myself. Every single email pushed me closer and closer to the brink, though, until I finally gave in and jumped. You guys are the best!

  I owe so much to my wonderful beta-readers, who read every chapter as I wrote it and cheered me on: Jenn Reese and Patrick Samphire, THANK YOU.

  Thank you so much to the fabulous writers who critiqued my early drafts: Kate Elliott, Erin Blakemore, Page Morgan, Keris Stainton, Aliette de Bodard, Emily Mah Tippetts and Patrick Samphire, I am so grateful for your help!

  Thanks so much to everyone who proofread my later drafts: David Burgis, Stephanie Gunn, Richard Burgis, Patrick Samphire, Deva Fagan and Sherwood Smith. I really appreciate it!

  Huge thanks to Shveta Thakrar for her fantastic (and fast!) last-minute copyedits.

  Thanks so much to my parents, Richard and Kathy Burgis, for the generous babysitting that made it possible for me to get this novella finished and prepared on time.

  And—his name has appeared on this page a few times now, hasn’t it?—thanks so, so much to Patrick Samphire of 50 Seconds North (http://www.50secondsnorth.com) for the beautiful cover, which inspired me through so many of my writing sessions and for the ebook conversion!

  THE COPYRIGHT STUFF

  Courting Magic is copyright Stephanie Burgis, 2014. All rights reserved. This ebook edition is copyright Stephanie Burgis Samphire, 2014.

  This ebook is provided DRM-free. Please respect the hard work of the author by not sharing this ebook on the internet.

  If you received this book for free from somewhere and you enjoyed it, please do consider purchasing a copy to support the author and allow her to continue to write more books.

  Thanks!

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven