Lily and the Shining Dragons by Holly Webb Read Free Book Online Page A

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