Courting Magic (Kat, Incorrigible #4)(23)

But I knew exactly what my sisters would say. ‘Matching’ each other wouldn’t give us a yearly income, would it? And without an income to support us and any children we might one day have…

If Alexander ever went to my father, I knew exactly what Papa would say…and not only because Stepmama, Angeline and Elissa would all agree with him.

I couldn’t unwrap my arms from around my chest. They were the only things holding me together as every impossible dream inside me shattered.

But I still couldn’t speak.

After five years of waiting, I could not send him away.

“It’s all right,” Alexander said at last. His voice sounded as weary as if he’d walked for miles in the last few minutes, as the burning silence had stretched on and on between us. “I always knew it couldn’t happen,” he said. “It was only an impossible dream. I knew better than to believe in it.”

He started to turn away, and I finally found my voice.

“I don’t care,” I whispered fiercely. “All of this—what we did tonight—it still wasn’t a mistake. You know it wasn’t.”

“No, Kat,” Alexander said. “Perhaps for you, it wasn’t. But for me…” His voice dropped to a raw rasp. “I wish to God we’d never stepped into these gardens. Because now I’ll never be able to forget.”





CHAPTER NINE


I had never in my life felt so grateful to be a Guardian. With my invisibility magic-working in place, no one could see my return to the house. No one could see the tears sliding down my cheeks as I walked straight past the crowded supper room where I should have been sitting, or the way I doubled over when I finally reached the ladies’ retiring room, clutching my stomach as if I’d taken a mortal wound.

I didn’t sob, though. I didn’t make a sound.

Everything inside me felt too raw for that…raw and echoing and completely hollow.

I didn’t even look around when the door of the retiring room opened and closed behind me. I was invisible, after all. Why should I bother?

Then the woman who’d entered spoke.

“Come, now, Kat,” my cousin Lucy said briskly. “I know that you’re in here, so you may as well show yourself. Where else would you be?”

My invisibility shattered as I jerked around, losing hold of the magic-working in my surprise. Lucy was standing before the door, her arms crossed and her pretty, round face as serious as I’d ever seen it. Her eyes didn’t even widen as I became visible. She just gave a tiny nod of satisfaction.

“How did you—?” I shook my head, wiping off the last of the tears from my face.

She shrugged. “Well, I know you can make yourself invisible, don’t I? And I know where I always go to hide when something’s gone terribly wrong for me at a ball.”

I couldn’t hold her clear blue gaze. Instead, I looked down at my hands, drawing a deep breath. “What’s gone wrong for you at balls?”

“Oh, really.” I could hear the eye-roll in her voice. “What do you think? I’m loud and I’m plump and I don’t have an impressive dowry, and my great-aunts are eccentric, so I’m sure you can imagine what some people like to say about me, even when they know I’m listening. And moreover…” She sighed. “Well, he’s never come to any of the London balls that I was invited to before, but…you sat next to him at supper, didn’t you, until you ran away!”

That made me look back up at her, frowning. “You mean…Lord Lanham?”

I couldn’t imagine hiding in any retiring rooms to cry over the ever-so-proper Marquess of Lanham. But I couldn’t mistake the flash of intensity in Lucy’s eyes when I said his name.

She covered it up quickly, though, with a rueful smile.

“He’ll never notice me in that way,” she said matter-of-factly. “Well, why should he? He could marry anyone. He ought to marry the daughter of a viscount, at the very least, if he has any sense at all. But that doesn’t stop me from wishing sometimes.” She gave me a stern look. “So I know what that looks like on someone else.”

I bit my lip, trying to pierce through the fog of my own misery to be the good friend she deserved. “He does notice you, you know.”

“Oh, I know. I make certain of it. Isn’t he adorable when he’s outraged?” She gave a mischievous smile. “It isn’t kind of me, I know, but I do always try to bring it out in him.”

“Mm.” I took a deep breath, gathering myself together. For the first time since I’d stepped into the room, I looked at my reflection in the mirror.

Oh, no.

At some point in that starlit time underneath the sweet chestnut tree, my hair had become completely disordered. It was falling out of my pins and around my face in a way that couldn’t be mistaken for anything but a disaster. And as for my face…

I let out a groan of horror. There was no amount of cold water that could possibly disguise my red and swollen nose and eyelids.

“It’s a good thing that you’re a witch, isn’t it?” said Lucy placidly. “I just have to look like that for the rest of the evening when it’s me. You can do something about it.”

So I was the second witch that evening to sit in front of the mirror, repairing my face while Lucy rearranged my hair and kept up a soothing stream of commentary and suggestions. I didn’t change my eye color or my features, as Mrs. Montrose had, but the crisp, bright scent of fresh raspberries filled the air as I cast spell after spell to bring my own natural features back into order.