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

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,