Kat, Incorrigible Read Online Free PDF

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