Kat, Incorrigible (9 page)

It had belonged to Mama. But now it seemed to think that it belonged to me.

I tried very hard not to think about how easy Mr. Gregson and Lady Fotherington had said it was for them to leave the mirror … and how much they already seemed to know about my family. Maybe it was good that we were leaving for Grantham Abbey. At least they wouldn’t know to look for me there.

Since it wouldn’t allow me to leave it behind, I slipped Mama’s mirror into the beaded reticule Stepmama had made me for Christmas. I hung the silly, dainty bag over my arm before I left the attic. Angeline and Elissa might
raise their eyebrows at the sight of me actually carrying such a ladylike item, but that had to be better than any reaction they might have to the sight of Mama’s mirror appearing suddenly on my lap in the carriage as we traveled, or at my place setting on the Grantham Abbey dinner table.

I had been careful to pack my boys’ clothing, though, just in case. If worse came to worst, I could always fall back on my first plan … especially if I needed to make a quick escape.

We set off an hour later in Squire Briggs’s rickety old second-best traveling carriage, loaned to Stepmama for the trip. It had once been painted a horrible shade of dying olive, but the paint had mostly faded on the outside. The cushions inside felt as thin as writing paper. I scrunched myself into an uncomfortable far corner with my reticule on my lap and tried not to meet my sisters’ eyes as they took their seats across from me. I couldn’t help noticing how pale and unhappy Elissa looked. Angeline’s face was set in her most mulish expression.

At least Frederick Carlyle was staying at home with Papa and Charles, so Angeline would have a month’s respite from his proposals. I didn’t think she’d appreciate it if I pointed that out right now, though.

Stepmama came last and sighed as she settled herself beside me. Dozens of bandboxes and valises were already tied precariously to the top of the carriage, but our housekeeper, Mrs. Watkins, had to push several more underneath
our feet and on top of our laps before Stepmama finally declared us ready to leave.

Mrs. Watkins shoved the door closed on our mountain of parcels, and with a crack of the whip, Squire Briggs’s coachman started the horses off. The carriage rattled and shook us all the way down the drive and onto the winding main road.

As I peered back through the narrow carriage window, I saw Frederick Carlyle staring after us from the branches of the oak tree, as heartbroken as a lost puppy. From a distance—from far enough away that you couldn’t see the blankness in his eyes—he really did look quite handsome. My lips twitched.

As I turned back from the window, my gaze crossed Angeline’s. She’d been looking back at Mr. Carlyle too. Her eyes sparkled; for a moment, I thought we were about to share a conspiratorial smile.

Then her expression smoothed back into disdain, and she looked pointedly away.

I scowled and scrunched myself tighter into my corner, letting my head bang against the hard wooden panels of the carriage as it rattled down the road. We were on our way to Grantham Abbey.

As the hours passed and we drove deeper and deeper into the Dales, the landscape grew harsher and bleaker around us. In our house, and in our comfortable little village, despite how hilly it was, you could almost
forget that we lived in Yorkshire. But the Dales were different. Wild. Dangerous. As massive, craggy hills rose high before us and a rocky chasm opened up beside the road, I managed to forget Stepmama’s never-ending voice rising and falling beside me and even my sisters’ simmering disapproval. A hawk soared over our carriage, letting out a high, piercing cry of defiance, and I wanted to jump out of the window and fly with it. When the carriage finally took a steep descent into a wooded valley, I had to bite down on disappointment.

But we drove deeper and deeper into the rolling, wooded valley, and I realized that it was just as wild and untamed as the barren hills above it. The thick woods made a dark, whispering wall to our left, full of secrets. A roaring river swept past us on our right, powerful enough to carry us all away.

Stepmama said, “There must be dreadful flooding every year. They shouldn’t build these roads so close to the water. Really, it only takes a little common sense….”

I hunched my shoulder away from her and kept my gaze on the rushing, foam-scudded river just outside my window. I wondered if it would ever be safe to swim in it … or, if not, how dangerous it would really be.

Elissa gasped and pointed out the window. “Is that it?”

I tore my gaze away from the river to look where she was pointing. Gothic stone arches rose in the distance, high above the trees.

“Grantham Abbey,” Stepmama said. I could hear the
smile in her voice. “My second cousin, on my mother’s side, will be our hostess. Lady Graves. She was fortunate enough to catch the eye of Sir John Graves after only one season in Town, and her sisters …”

I tried to ignore the rest of her lecture on the many fine connections her family had made. But I twitched when I caught her saying to Elissa, “… because they knew what was due to their family, who had taken care of them all those years without reward.”

“Happiness, you mean?” I said, and turned around. “Maybe what was really due to their family was for them to make happy matches to men they truly cared for, so that their family could be happy for them.” I narrowed my eyes at Stepmama in an imitation of Angeline’s classic, most threatening look. “And that’s exactly what their family wanted from them. Not financial reward. Because their family actually loved them, unlike some people.”

Elissa said, “Kat—”

“You, young lady, are very ignorant,” said Stepmama. Color mantled her cheeks as she glared at me. “If you think any young ladies in your situation can afford to wait for some fanciful notion of romantic love, you are blind to the ways of the world. And you should know better than to talk to your elders about things you know nothing about, particularly in such an impertinent manner.”

“Why wouldn’t I know what I was talking about?” I said. “I’m part of Elissa’s family, aren’t I?”
Unlike you
, I could have added, but I was old enough to know how
much trouble that would have caused. “So I know exactly what Elissa’s family really wants for her.”

“It’s all right, Kat,” Elissa said quickly. “You don’t need to—”

Stepmama opened her mouth to blast me.

Angeline drawled her words as lazily as if they meant nothing to her. “There’s no use trying to quash Kat, ma’am. You know she’s not old enough yet to understand that girls are only worth what they can bring their parents in their sale, like a milch cow or some other disposable possession.”

My eyes flashed to Angeline’s face.

Stepmama said, “That is quite enough from both of you! All of you!” She was breathing quickly. “You three girls may think yourselves very clever and ill-used, I daresay, but I don’t see any of you paying your own room and board in my house, or finding yourselves any funds to support yourselves in the future.”

“Indeed not,” said Angeline. “But I had thought it was Papa’s house, actually. And I don’t see you paying room and board either.”

“Everyone stop it!” Elissa shouted.

It was so unexpected, everyone fell silent and stared at her. Her pale cheeks were flushed, and her eyes shone bright with unshed tears.

“I know what I must do,” she said more quietly. “And I will do it. For all my family’s sake. But I can’t bear all this lecturing and arguing and—” She broke off, putting one
hand to her mouth. “I can’t,” she repeated. “Please. Just let us not talk about it!”

“But you don’t have to do it!” I said.

“Katherine—,” Stepmama began, dangerously.

“
No
,” Elissa said. “Just stop!”

And, to my amazement, Stepmama did.

Angeline took Elissa’s hand and squeezed it, and Elissa rested her head on Angeline’s shoulder. I stared at them both from my corner of the carriage and felt hot prickling behind my eyes.

“Oh, Lord,” Angeline said. She sighed and reached across the piled boxes to take my hand, too.

I squeezed her warm, strong hand. Elissa leaned over to close her free hand around both of ours. The prickling sensation behind my eyes grew even stronger. I had to twist my back to lean across the bandboxes, but I didn’t care. I could have sat that way forever.

“Humph,” said Stepmama, and turned away to look out her window.

We rode the rest of the way in silence. But as we drew closer and closer to Grantham Abbey, down the narrow, winding road between the river and the dark wall of trees, Elissa’s hand gripped tighter and tighter around mine and Angeline’s.

We turned the last curve in the road and saw it all spread out before us along the opposite riverbank: Grantham Abbey. Great stone arches curved upward, filled with empty blue sky where stained-glass windows should
have been. Tall stone walls formed rooms that were larger than Papa’s whole church, but without any roofs left to shield them from the wind and rain. Even the outlying piles of medieval stone, where other walls had fallen, looked as massive as if a giant had been at work.

As I gazed, openmouthed, at the ruined abbey, my reticule began to itch and burn with heat against my lap.

I pulled my hand back from my sisters’ grasp and wrapped both hands around the reticule. At any moment the little beaded bag might start to glow with dangerous, golden light. Mama’s magic mirror was excited by where we were. And my mouth was suddenly dry with sickly, horrible fear. I’d learned my lesson. I wasn’t ever going back into that mirror world again. But I wasn’t sure that the mirror itself would accept my decision.

Luckily, my sisters weren’t looking at me.

“Look,” Angeline said, as the carriage rattled onto the stone bridge that led across the river. “There’s the house itself … if you can call it a house.” She snorted. “The first owners certainly must have thought well of themselves.”

“What on earth are you chattering about now?” Stepmama’s frown eased into a smile of satisfaction as she peered through the window at the house beyond the abbey. “I would call that a very fine house indeed.”

If Grantham Abbey could have fit two hundred monks within its walls, the manor house attached to it could have held a hundred more of the monks’ closest friends. The
peaked windows of the house had been built to mirror the arches of the abbey, and it sprawled nearly as far along the sides of the hill as the abbey ruins below it.

It was almost enough to take my mind off the dangerously hot reticule in my hands. “What do you think they do with all that space?”

Angeline arched one eyebrow and smirked. “Roll around in it and gloat, perhaps?”

“They most certainly do not,” Stepmama said sharply. “My cousin Rosemary has done very well for herself indeed, and you girls would do well to take note of it. Her success certainly did not arise from impertinent humor.”

“What a pity,” Angeline murmured. “She could use a sense of humor, to live in a gothic monstrosity like that.”

Elissa still hadn’t uttered a word. Her face was as white as snow.

I frowned at her and freed one hand to reach out to her. She gasped at my touch.

“Why, Kat! You’re burning hot. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing!” I said. I pulled my hand back, too late. Angeline had already swiveled around to frown at me.

“She doesn’t look feverish,” said Angeline. “She is a little flushed, though.”

“I’m fine,” I said. I wrapped my hand back around my reticule, pushing it deeper into my lap, away from view. “Leave me alone.”

“If you’re not feeling well …,” Elissa began.

Angeline’s frown deepened. “Maybe that’s not it after all,” she said. “I know that look in your eyes, Kat. What have you got in your lap?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just a reticule, like yours.”

“Hmm.” Angeline leaned across the pile of bandboxes that separated us. “Let’s see that—”

“Enough!” Stepmama said. “We’ve arrived.” The carriage pulled to a stop in the long, circular drive in front of the house, where about a dozen footmen waited for us. “Angeline, Elissa … Kat …” She directed her most forbidding glare at me. “I trust you all to behave like proper young ladies. Or—!”

She left her threat unfinished as the carriage door sprang open. The footman’s eyes widened as he saw how much baggage lay piled at our feet, but he bowed low anyway and offered his hand to Stepmama as soon as he’d cleared the way of bandboxes. She accepted his hand with a steely smile and stepped down onto the stone drive.