Kat, Incorrigible (Volume 1) - Hardcover

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Stephanie Burgis is the author of Masks and Shadows. She has published over thirty short stories for adults. Kat, Incorrigible (US)/A Most Improper Magick (UK) won the Waverton Good Read Children's Award in 2011 for Best Début Children's Novel by a British writer. It was followed by Renegade Magic/A Tangle of Magicks and Stolen Magic/A Reckless Magick. Born in Michigan, she now lives in Wales with her husband, writer Patrick Samphire, and their children. Before becoming a fulltime writer, she studied music history as a Fulbright Scholar in Vienna, Austria, and worked as a website editor for a British opera company.

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A Most Improper Magick

One

1803

I was twelve years of age when I chopped off my hair, dressed as a boy, and set off to save my family from impending ruin.

I made it almost to the end of my front garden.

“Katherine Ann Stephenson!” My oldest sister Elissa’s outraged voice pinned me like a dagger as she threw open her bedroom window. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?”

Curses. I froze, still holding my pack slung across my shoulder. I might be my family’s best chance of salvation, but there was no expecting either of my older sisters to understand that. If they’d trusted me in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to run away in the middle of the night, like a criminal.

The garden gate was only two feet ahead of me. If I hurried…

“I’m going to tell Papa!” Elissa hissed.

Behind her, I heard groggy, incoherent moans of outrage—my other sister, Angeline, waking up.

Elissa was the prissiest female ever to have been born. But Angeline was simply impossible. If they really did wake the whole household, and Papa came after me in the gig …

I’d planned to walk to the closest coaching inn, six miles away, and catch the dawn stagecoach to London. If Papa caught up with me first, the sad, disappointed looks I’d have to endure from him for weeks afterward would be unbearable. And the way Stepmama would gloat over my disgrace—the second of our mother’s children to be a disappointment to the family …

I gritted my teeth together as I turned and trudged back toward the vicarage.

Angeline’s voice floated lazily through the open window. “What were you shouting about?”

“I was not shouting!” Elissa snapped. “Ladies never shout.”

“You could have fooled me,” said Angeline. “I thought the house must have been burning down.”

I pushed the side door open just in time to hear my brother, Charles, bellow, “Would everyone be quiet? Some of us are trying to sleep!”

“What? What?” My father’s reedy voice sounded from his bedroom at the head of the stairs. “What’s going on out there?”

My stepmother’s voice overrode his. “For heaven’s sake, make them be quiet, George! It’s past midnight. You cannot let them constantly behave like hoydens. Be firm, for once!”

I groaned and closed the door behind me.

Like it or not, I was home.

I squeezed through the narrow kitchen and tiptoed up the rickety staircase that led to the second floor. When I was a little girl and Mama’s influence still lingered in the house, each of the stairs had whispered my name as I stepped onto them, and they never let me trip. Now, the only sound they made was the telltale creak of straining wood.

The door to Papa and Stepmama’s room swung open as I reached the head of the first flight of stairs, and I stopped, resigned.

“Kat?” Papa blinked out at me, peering through the darkness. He held a candle in his hand. “What’s amiss?”

“Nothing, Papa,” I said. “I just went downstairs for some milk.”

“Oh. Well.” He coughed and ran a hand over his faded nightcap. “Er, your stepmother is quite right. You should all be in bed and quiet at this hour.”

“Yes, Papa.” I hoisted the heavy sack higher on my shoulder. “I’m just going back to bed now.”

“Good, good. And the others?”

“I’ll tell them to be quiet,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

“Good girl.” He reached out to pat my shoulder. A frown crept across his face. “Ah … is something wrong, my dear?”

“Papa?”

“I don’t mean to be critical, er, but your clothing seems … it appears … well, it does look a trifle unorthodox.”

I glanced down at the boy’s breeches, shirt, and coat that I wore. “I was too cold for a nightgown,” I said.

“But …” He frowned harder. “There’s something about your hair, I don’t quite know what—”

My stepmother’s voice cut him off. “Would you please stop talking and come back to bed, George? I cannot be expected to sleep with all this noise!”

“Ah. Right. Yes, of course.” Papa gave a quick nod and turned away. “Sleep well, Kat.”

“And you, sir.”

I tiptoed up the last five steps that led to the second-floor landing. The doors to Charles’s room and my sisters’ room were both closed. If I was very, very lucky …

I leaped toward the ladder that led up to the attic where I slept.

No such luck. The door to my sisters’ room jerked open.

“Come in here now!” Elissa said. I couldn’t make out her features in the darkness, but I could tell that she had her arms crossed.

Oh, Lord.

“‘Ladies don’t cross their arms like common fishwives,’” I whispered, quoting one of Elissa’s own favorite maxims as I stalked past her into their room.

Elissa slammed the door behind her.

“Give us light, Angeline,” she said. “I want to see her face.”

Angeline was already lighting a candle. When the tinder finally caught and the candle lit, the sound of my sisters’ gasps filled the room.

I crossed my arms over my chest and glared right back at them.

“You—you—” Elissa couldn’t even speak. She collapsed onto her side of the bed, gasping and pressing one slender hand to her heart.

Angeline shook her head, smirking. “Well, that’s torn it.”

“Don’t use slang,” Elissa said. Being able to give one of her most common reproofs seemed to revive her spirits a little; the color came flooding back into her face. With her fair hair and pale skin, I could always tell her mood from her face, and right now, she was as horrified as I’d ever seen her. She took a deep, deep breath. “Katherine,” she said, in a voice that was nearly steady. “Would you care to explain yourself to us?”

“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t.” I lifted my chin, fighting for height. I was shorter than either of my sisters, a curse in situations like this.

“What is there to explain?” Angeline said. “It’s obvious. Kat’s finally decided to run off to the circus, where she belongs.”

“I do not!”

“No?” Angeline’s full lips twisted as she looked at me. “With that haircut, I don’t know where else you hoped to go. Perhaps if you hid behind all the other animals—”

“Shut up!” I lunged for her straight across the room.

Their bed was in the way. I hit my knees on it, then flung aside my sack and crawled across the bed to get to her. Angeline’s taunting laughter made my vision blur with rage. I landed on her, punching blindly, and kept on fighting even after she’d shoved me down onto the bed and wrapped her arm around my neck, half strangling me.

“Stop it!” Elissa shrieked.

Something heavy hit the...