Read Kat, Incorrigible for Free Online Page B

hadn’t heard any noises for the past hour and a half, but that didn’t mean I was safe. Angeline slept like the dead, but Elissa could wake up at the sound of a pin falling outside her door. If Elissa found out what I intended to do, I would never hear the end of it. And if Stepmama heard me, or guessed what I was up to … well, I just wouldn’t let that happen.
    I balanced carefully on the balls of my feet for silence as I crossed the room.
    I eased open the trapdoor that led down from the attic, using both hands. It was too dangerous to carry a lit candle; if I wasted one hand juggling it, I might do something foolish like letting the trapdoor slam shut and wake everybody up.
    There was one thing I had to carry with me, though. I’d slipped Stepmama’s hidden key out of her bedroom that evening after dinner while she was still downstairs drinking her final cup of tea. Now I gripped it between my teeth as I stepped down into total darkness.
    My feet felt for the steps beneath me. I breathed as quietly as I could while I gently lowered the trapdoor, wincing at every creak.
    When I reached the landing outside Angeline and Elissa’s room, I had to take a moment to orient myself. I closed my lips to breathe through my nose, listening through the darkness for any telltale squeak or whisper. The key in my mouth tasted metallic and dangerous, like forbidden secrets taking root inside me.
    I felt for the banister of the stairs.
    Angeline had found a new hiding place for Mama’s magic books. I’d searched her room through and through every day for the past two days and hadn’t found a hint of them. For all I knew, they might be hidden by another of her spells.
    But Mama’s magic books weren’t the only magical items in our house. And if Angeline could dare to break the most powerful rules in our family, then so could I.
    I made my way down the stairs, through the drawing room, and into the sewing room, where we’d all sat for hours that afternoon working on tedious dressmaking for the upcoming house party. I’d hidden a candle, a tinderbox, a candlestick, and two paper spills in the window seat.
    It took me three minutes of trying and a set of scraped knuckles before I finally managed to light the tinderbox and transfer the flame over to my candle. Its pale glow flickered across the chairs and our folded gowns-in-progress, casting shadows from the cabinets that lined the walls. I only cared about one of the cabinets: the one that none of us were ever allowed to open. The one that we were all meant to pretend didn’t exist.
    The key in my mouth seemed to swell, pressing outward, as I crossed the room.
    I spat it into my hand and knelt down on the floor. The key slipped into the lock as easily as if it had never left.
    I took a deep breath and turned the key. The cabinet doors swung open.
    At first I couldn’t make anything out from the jumbled piles that filled up every shelf. They’d been tossed inside without order or reason, and in the flickering candlelight, they all seemed to merge into unified shapes: Mama’s past, just waiting for me to make sense of it.
    Then I made out the shape of a small, rounded frame.
    Mama’s miniature portrait sat on the top shelf.
    She looked like Angeline. I knew I didn’t have time to linger—at any moment Stepmama might decide to come downstairs for a late-night cup of tea, or Elissa might wake and hear me—but I couldn’t stop myself from picking up the miniature, just for a moment. Mama had Angeline’s dark, curling brown hair and deep, dark eyes, but she had Elissa’s sweet smile. She smiled up at me from the painting with pure delight. My vision blurred in the candlelight.
    I despised weeping females. So I swallowed hard as I put the miniature back on the shelf.
    Stepmama had thrown all of Mama’s possessions in here five years ago, three months after marrying Papa and moving into our house. The teapot had refused to pour for her, the cups had spilled themselves before