Lily and the Shining Dragons (6 page)

‘The cushions are rather comfortable,’ Henrietta reported from the velvet chaise longue under the window. ‘I think your aunt’s horror of magic has infected the whole house, though.’ She snorted. ‘It’s almost funny. She’s so frightened of magic, she’s using more magic to try and shut it out. It’s a wonder she’s still sane enough to walk. It’s dampening your power, though, this house. It’ll be good practice for you, learning to work round it.’

‘I suppose we just keep telling ourselves it’s not for long,’ Lily sighed.

Georgie sat down next to Henrietta, looking out of the window at the sunny street below. ‘But I don’t think she knows anything. She’s forsworn magic. And we can hardly ask her anyway! She won’t want to talk about her dreadful brother-in-law, will she? Father shamed her by being sent to prison. She said she hadn’t spoken to Mama for over ten years – she must have broken the connection with our family when he was arrested.’

Lily curled up on the floor, leaning against the chaise longue, her cheek against Henrietta’s smooth side. ‘Actually, I wouldn’t put it past Aunt Clara to have given evidence against him. It would have been the best way to prove she really wasn’t a magician any more, wouldn’t it? To betray one?’

Henrietta growled in disgust. ‘If she laid information on your father, which I can well believe, then surely she must know where they’re keeping him. She may even have had to go there to give evidence.’

‘So we just have to get her to tell us.’ Lily nodded determinedly.

It was all very well making that sort of decision, but they couldn’t make Aunt Clara talk when they never saw her. The hours of a society lady were very different to those of her young nieces. It turned out that Aunt Clara breakfasted in bed, took luncheon only rarely, and dined at one grand party after another. Lily and Georgie heard from her by means of notes, slipped under the door of their room by a silent maid. A pile of etiquette books appeared on the little table of inlaid wood that stood by the chaise longue, with a note instructing them to practise before the arrival of their governess. And a wardrobeful of pretty, frilled, little-girlish dresses were delivered the day after they arrived. The maid who unpacked them was polite, but would only answer their eager questions with, ‘I couldn’t say, miss,’ or ‘No, indeed, miss.’ It made Lily want to stamp on her foot.

The same maid – her name was Agnes – accompanied them on polite twice-daily walks in the park close by the house, walking behind them and carrying a black umbrella, in case it should be needed.

No one had told the girls that they ought to stay in their own quarters, but somehow it was hard to venture out, apart from meals – and even then, supper was served in their room, as their aunt and uncle were always dining away.

‘I don’t think I can bear this much longer,’ Lily muttered, on the second day, flinging
Elegant Flowers of Conversation for the Young Miss
across the room.

‘We could ring for Agnes. It’s almost time for a walk,’ Georgie suggested, smoothing out the fabric in her lap admiringly. A workbox had arrived with the books, along with a handbook on embroidery. Lily suspected that her sister was actually enjoying herself, which only made it worse.

‘I don’t want a walk!’ she snapped. ‘I want to go home. Oh, I mean the theatre,’ she added crossly, as Georgie’s eyes widened in fear. ‘I never would go back to Merrythought and Mama, Georgie. I only said it that once because of this awful house. It’s still squashing me.’

There was a scratching noise, and Lily stalked across the room to open the door for Henrietta. ‘Where have you been?’ she demanded, and the pug’s ears flattened. She nudged the door shut with her nose, and then whirled round to glare at Lily.

‘Exploring, as you should have been!’ she snapped. ‘You’re letting this house turn you into a prisoner just like your father.’

‘Fine.’ Lily rattled the door open again, and strode out into the passage.

‘Good, good.’ Henrietta wagged her stubby curl of a tail eagerly. ‘Where shall we go?’ she whispered, her eyes glinting.

Lily frowned. ‘Where is Sir Oliver?’ she asked.

‘Lily, don’t…’ Georgie stood in the doorway, trailing her embroidery and looking worried.

‘I only want to know where he is so as not to go there!’ Lily rolled her eyes at her sister. ‘I need to find where Aunt Clara keeps her papers. She may have letters. Something we can use to find out about Father.’

‘But still… We shouldn’t.’

‘
You
aren’t. And no one said we had to stay in this room.’

Georgie nodded reluctantly. It was true, but somehow it had been clear, even so. ‘I should come with you.’

Lily shook her head. ‘Why? It’s easier to be quiet if there’s only me. And Henrietta,’ she added hurriedly, before the pug could take offence.

‘Your aunt is out paying a call, and Sir Oliver is in his library, with the accounts,’ Henrietta said smugly. ‘I listened. There’s a lot of big furniture in this house, I can hide behind it easily. And they like me in the kitchens. I’ve been doing tricks for them. And I caught a mouse in the scullery, so now the cook thinks I’m a treasure.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought a house as smart as this would have mice,’ Lily said in surprise. ‘Where would a mouse find to hide? Everything’s so clean and polished.’

‘It didn’t have any.’ Henrietta sat down, and scratched under her collar with a hind paw, gazing blissfully at the ceiling. ‘Ahhh! Better. No, I had to go quite a way down the street to find one. And then the stupid thing got under the laundry copper, and made it very hard for me to capture it again.’ She scratched again, and then shook herself irritably. ‘And it
may
have given me a flea. Still. If we do run into any of the servants, just be polite, and say that I wanted to be let out. They won’t mind.’

‘You see?’ Lily told Georgie. ‘I’ll be fine. I just need to go and explore a little, that’s all. I can’t bear being in here any longer. And once we have a governess, Georgie, there’ll be someone watching us all the time. We need to nose around while we’ve got the chance.’

Georgie nodded reluctantly, and watched as Lily caught Henrietta up in her arms, and set off down the moss-green carpet.

It felt far more momentous than it ought to, Lily thought. She was only walking down a passageway! But after she’d been muffled up in that pretty, silken room for a day, even a passage felt exciting. ‘Where are we going?’ she whispered to Henrietta, pausing as they came to the balcony that ran around the entrance hall.

Henrietta’s whiskers twitched. ‘It’s unfortunate that Sir Oliver is in the library,’ she muttered. ‘I suspect any useful correspondence would be there. Although…Your aunt has a little sitting room, attached to her bedroom. That could be interesting.’

‘How do you know all this?’ Lily stared down at her. ‘You haven’t been out of our room that much.’

‘I listen, Lily.’ Henrietta laid her ears back irritably. ‘Like I said, I’ve been in the kitchens, begging for sugar.’ She shuddered. ‘I even let them balance biscuits on my nose. It was most undignified. But I know that your aunt has all the servants walking on tiptoe, they’re so terrified of her.’

‘Why don’t they just leave?’ Lily drew back into the shadow of a tall, broad-leafed plant, in a gilded stand. It was large enough to shield them a little. The fat leaves smelled of furniture polish, Lily noticed, shaking her head slightly. Aunt Clara was even madder than Mama.

‘She pays well. Very well, I think. His estates must be rather large, and he has some sort of factory too. Your aunt was lucky to catch him, especially with her tarnished background.’ Henrietta licked Lily’s ear lovingly. ‘Stupid people. Your aunt most of all. It can’t be right to change oneself about like this. She has the strangest smell, did you notice?’

Lily laughed, then put her hand over her mouth quickly. ‘No. I wish I could smell magic the way you do. She feels strange when I’m close to her, though. I noticed it most at that meal we ate, the first day we were here – there’s a sort of sweetness about her. It’s in her voice, and the glamour she wears, and it’s all through the house. I know it’s all Sir Oliver’s money, but this house belongs to her, whoever’s paying for it, and however polite she is to him.’

‘We could pretend we were looking for her,’ Henrietta suggested slyly. ‘For you to ask about the governess. Her sitting room is in the passage that mirrors yours – off the other side of the balcony.’

‘You’re sure she’s out?’ Lily muttered, peeping out around the plant. There was no one to be seen, but the strange atmosphere of the house was making her twitchy. It felt like someone was watching them.

‘Quite sure.’ Henrietta wriggled down from Lily’s arms, and trotted out on to the balcony, peering through the balustrade and down to the empty main hall. Then she looked back eagerly at Lily, and raced off, making for the opposite passageway.

Lily followed her, padding along in the pretty little kid slippers her aunt had provided. She probably hadn’t meant them for spying.

‘Here.’ Henrietta had stopped in front of a door. ‘Knock on it,’ she whispered.

‘But she isn’t here!’ Lily frowned.

‘Just make sure.’ Henrietta rolled her marblelike eyes. ‘And if you knock, you can say you were looking for your aunt if anyone catches us. The servants here are very well-trained. Very quiet. Someone could be watching.’ She glanced around, and shut her mouth uneasily, with a little snap of teeth.

Lily had her hand on the gilded door handle, when there was a tapping of feet across the marble floor of the hallway, and a murmur of voices at the front door.

‘Aunt Clara’s back!’ Lily jumped away from the door as if it had bitten her, and raced back along the passageway to the balcony.

She could hear her aunt’s voice in the hall now, asking the footman to send her maid to her room. Lily looked around her worriedly – her plan had been for no one to see her, however much she protested that they were allowed to explore. She put out her hand to a long velvet curtain draped around the window, thinking that perhaps she could duck behind it, when another hand closed over hers. Lily screamed – quietly – and tried to wrench her hand away.

‘What are you doing sneaking around?’ her cousin snapped, stepping out from behind the curtain.

‘I wasn’t! And what are you doing hiding behind curtains?’ Lily gasped back. Her heart was still thudding so hard it felt as if parts might snap. She had looked down at the fingers round hers expecting them to be scaly, or at least clawlike, not just ink-stained and bitten-nailed.

‘This is my house. I can sit where I like.’ Louis was a year younger than Lily, but he was taller, and he looked down at her as if she were some sort of worm. ‘You
were
sneaking. I saw you hovering outside my mother’s room.’

Lily glanced down at Henrietta worriedly. They had been whispering, but he still might have been close enough to hear them. But he couldn’t have done. He would have said something. Surely.

There was a whispering of silk skirts on the balcony, and Louis hurriedly let go of Lily.

Aunt Clara didn’t so much as raise her eyebrows seeing the pair of them together. Only the slightest catch in her gliding step betrayed her surprise.

‘Good afternoon, Aunt,’ Lily stammered, wanting to say something before Louis accused her of spying. ‘I was coming to find you. Georgie and I wanted to know if you had succeeded in finding us a governess.’

Aunt Clara looked down at her thoughtfully. ‘I’m afraid not yet.’ She walked around Lily, admiring her from all angles. ‘You look very well indeed,’ she murmured. ‘And the dog too. Very pretty.’

Lily blushed. She wasn’t used to compliments. She wondered if it was another part of her aunt’s strange twisted magic, that suddenly her opinion seemed so important. Aunt Clara was still staring at her, and Lily fidgeted uneasily.

‘I suppose it was naïve of me to expect you to stay quietly in your room,’ her aunt said at last. ‘It doesn’t surprise me that it’s you I find – shall we say exploring? To be polite about it? Unless your sister is wandering around some other part of the house?’

Lily shook her head. ‘She’s doing embroidery,’ she muttered.

Aunt Clara nodded, as though she had thought as much. ‘Quite.’

‘She was spying!’ Louis burst out.

‘Well, of course she was!’ Aunt Clara smiled lovingly at him. ‘And so would you have been, dearest. Your cousin is a curious child, just like you.’ She gave Lily a look of distaste. ‘Not
quite
like you.’

‘I haven’t been…’ Lily began, but Aunt Clara glared at her, clearly telling her to be silent.

Lily bit her bottom lip. Was it possible that Louis didn’t know about his mother’s magical background? Hadn’t anything strange ever happened to him, something that made him wonder about his family? Lily looked at him thoughtfully. His mouse-brown hair was ruffled, and his clothes looked more dishevelled than when she’d seen him last. But he didn’t look as though his breakfast had gone floating around the room, or his bed had sprouted paws recently. Lily’s own magic had only started to work properly a few weeks before, and she was older than Louis. Perhaps nothing had happened to him yet. Perhaps he took after his father, and nothing ever would. Still, she thought Aunt Clara was taking a great risk, not warning him. What if he had inherited magic, and it suddenly exploded out of him one day?

‘Come and sit with me, Lily,’ Aunt Clara said sweetly. ‘I want to talk to you.’ She swished gracefully along the passage to her sitting room. Lily followed her, and Louis stared after them resentfully.

Aunt Clara’s sitting room was as perfect as she was. There were a great many flowers, and the air was so heavy with their scent that Lily noticed every breath she took. She could even taste them, a honey sweetness on the back of her tongue. When Aunt Clara closed the door, the perfume wrapped Lily round, dizzying her, and she slumped into a delicate little chair, shaking her head. Henrietta was staggering, her delicate nose hit even harder than Lily’s.

‘Your manners are quite graceless,’ her aunt told her disapprovingly. ‘And you are shockingly indiscreet! You will not mention our family failings in this house, do you understand? Louis does not know about my family, and he must not. This is why I brought you here! I can’t risk the secret getting out!’ Her perfectly manicured nails were digging into her palms, and her eyes shone brilliantly.