Kat, Incorrigible Read Online Free PDF Page B

sound as if it’s a terrible thing.”
    “Well …” I thought about it. “It is, isn’t it? I mean, it would be one thing if you only put yourself in his way and let him fall in love with you naturally, but to make him fall in love … well, that’s like cheating at cards, isn’t it? It’s dishonorable. Even Charles wouldn’t do that.”
    “It might help if Charles did cheat,” Angeline said. “Then he might not lose so often.” But I could tell by the look on her face that I’d won. “I didn’t mean it to happen that way,” she said. “I cast a spell to bring my true love to me. I thought he’d arrive riding a great black stallion, or driving a fine carriage through the village, and he would see me quite by accident and fall in love. I didn’t expect him to be already so”—she gestured helplessly with her apple—“so stupidly besotted. And I certainly didn’t expect him to be one of Papa’s students, for heaven’s sake!”
    “Well, you can’t get rid of him now,” I said. “He’s already brought his first quarter’s payment, and Stepmama knows it too.”
    “Oh, Lord. She’ll never let him go!”
    Suddenly we were laughing together, for the first time in ages—the first time since she’d started going to balls with Elissa and gossiping in secret, when everything had changed between us. Angeline reached across the bed and grasped my hand. “Kat, you little wretch. What on earth am I going to do about him?”
    “You could always marry him,” I said doubtfully. “If the spell was meant to summon your true love …”
    “There was some mistake,” said Angeline. “There had to be. I’m not even surprised—it was the first spell I ever made up by myself, so it’s no wonder it brought me the wrong man. This one isn’t even old enough to get married.”
    “He’s older than you are.”
    “He can’t be more than twenty! His family would have a fit. They’d say I’d bewitched him.”
    “You did.”
    “Not intentionally. Why would I? He’s completely witless!
    All you have to do is talk to him for two seconds to realize that.”
    I said, “Maybe once you take away the spell …”
    “I don’t know how to take it away!”
    “Oh,” I said. I bit my lip, but I couldn’t keep the laughter from leaking out. “Can you imagine what mealtimes will be like? Stepmama can’t stop both of you eating together. He’ll propose to you three times a day!”
    “Papa probably won’t even notice,” Angeline said. “Anyway, it will wear off eventually. It has to. And in the meantime …” She sighed. “In the meantime, Papa can earn a bit more money than usual, and Mr. Carlyle will have a very good tutor.”
    “But what are you going to do?” I asked. “If you won’t marry Mr. Carlyle—”
    “I wouldn’t marry a fool like Frederick Carlyle even if he had ten thousand pounds a year,” Angeline said. “It’s completely out of the question.”
    “Well, then, what will you do instead?”
    “I’m certainly not going to sit here waiting for Stepmama to fix on an eligible suitor for me, I can tell you that much.” Angeline snorted. “Elissa may sigh all she likes about family loyalty, but I won’t let it take me that far.”
    “Elissa.” Finally we’d come to what I’d meant to ask all along. “What wouldn’t you two tell me last night? What’s wrong with Sir Neville?”
    Angeline sat back. I could see her face shuttering against me—the “secrets” look I’d learned to hate. “Would you expect anything to be right about a man picked out by Stepmama?”
    “You know more than that,” I said. “You’re just not telling me.”
    “Well, there’s the fact he’s twenty years older than her, for a start.”
    “You said Frederick Carlyle was too young.”
    “There’s a difference between a handsome man of five-and-twenty—or even thirty—and one who’s old enough to be your father,” Angeline said tartly.
    “So that’s all it is? Sir Neville is too old for