Courting Magic (Kat, Incorrigible #4)(19)

I opened my mouth. Then I slammed it shut again, fighting back the impossible word that wanted to come out.

Angeline had summoned Frederick to her with a true-love spell, and it had brought him walking halfway across the country, entranced against his will. It had taken tears and pain before he had forgiven her, but they both knew what the spell had meant.

I didn’t know which part frightened me more: that I had come so close to answering Angeline without a thought; or that a horrible, creeping part of me wanted to cast the same spell myself and know for certain.

The thought of Alexander dropping to his knees, all stiffness and pretenses gone, and begging me to marry him, as Frederick had begged the first time he’d seen Angeline…

No! I slammed the door shut on that fantasy with all my might. Sickness roiled in my stomach.

My mother and my sister had both used witchcraft against the men they loved, and they had both regretted it deeply. I was a Guardian. I would not do the same.

And I would not have this conversation any longer, even with myself.

I said, with icy dignity, “The supper gong sounded several minutes ago. I don’t know about you, but I shouldn’t like to miss my meal.”

Angeline looked at me for a long, fraught moment. Then she took a deep breath. “Very well, Kat,” she said. “But no matter how it makes you feel…even you can’t ignore the truth forever.”

***

We were late to supper, naturally. The Marquess, equally naturally, had waited for me. He was far too much of a gentleman to abandon his dance partner, or to make any comment when I sat beside him in grim near-silence, barely picking at the food on my plate.

Alexander was nowhere to be seen.

I hated that I couldn’t stop myself from looking for him. I hated that my sister’s words wouldn’t stop echoing in my head.

The state of his clothing when we’d first met had told its own damning story about his income, but that was almost the only story I knew about his life since we’d last met. I knew that he caught magical criminals for his Order as I did for mine. I knew that he must be committed to his work, or he wouldn’t have subjected himself to the disdain of my Order in order to pursue the rogue witch across social barriers. But I didn’t even know if he had a secondary profession nowadays, or whether his Order supported him somehow. I knew far too little about him, obviously, to even consider marrying him.

Not that he had asked me yet—or ever would, if I knew anything about the pride that had driven him ever since we’d first met.

That was what he’d meant with his cryptic words after our dance set, wasn’t it? He’d spent his whole childhood having it drummed into him that he wasn’t good enough for the world of his aristocratic father, no matter what his strength and loyalty. Now, no matter how he felt, he would never take away my place in that world by asking me to marry him. Which was fortunate, as apparently my family wouldn’t dream of allowing me to accept.

So it all worked out very neatly, didn’t it? No proposals would be made, and therefore none would be refused. And there was no reason at all for my throat to feel so chokingly tight, or for tears to build up horrifyingly close behind my eyes.

I would not be the girl who wept at her début. Instead I gritted my teeth and forced myself to spear a slice of cold ham with my knife.

“So,” I said to the Marquess. “What do you think our next move should be?”

He gave a start, and I realized he hadn’t even been looking at me. His brooding gaze had been resting beyond my shoulder, in the same direction from which I could hear Lucy’s high, infectious laugh.

Still, he focused on me when I spoke and even leaned a fraction of an inch closer to reply. “I am glad to see you recovered, Miss Stephenson. I wished to say…” He stopped to clear his throat, an expression of acute discomfort on his face. “That is, if you will allow me to express…I very much hope…”

He took a quick, desperate-looking swallow of his wine, looking as if he needed it for fortification along a hideously embarrassing path. “You must not attach too much blame to yourself for the misery you are presently suffering, Miss Stephenson. No one who truly understood the situation could think harshly of you for it.”

“They…couldn’t?” Horror nearly strangled my words as I looked into the Marquess’s earnest, worried face. No wonder he’d barely been able to force out the words to talk to me about it.

Suddenly, I was intensely grateful that Alexander wasn’t in the room. I wasn’t sure I could face him again, not now or ever…not if I really had been that obvious.

Angeline might have guessed how I felt even before I knew it, but she was my sister. She knew me better than anyone else in the world. If even the Marquess had noticed how I felt, though, I must have looked like an utterly love-struck fool.

Then again, how had Angeline described the way I looked at Alexander?

I set my knife down and shoved my plate away, desperately trying to gather some composure. “My lord, I think…I mean, of course I’m grateful for your sympathy, but—”

“I am equally to blame,” said the Marquess, and stopped my panicked babble in its tracks.

I took a deep, steadying breath and looked hard at my supper companion. “You are?”

“Of course,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper. “It was I who told you that the man we saw couldn’t possibly be the true Prince of Wales. How could you know better when you’ve only just entered Society? I was the one who misled you. Every action you took from then onwards, no matter how unwise, was only in pursuit of our goal, and based on my error in judgment.” His face twisted as if in anguish. “I can only call it unforgivable.”