by Webb, Holly
Lily nodded, very slightly. She supposed that Louis didn’t do magic either – or no more than Aunt Clara. How on earth did he stop himself? Of course their aunt wouldn’t want her darling corrupted by his criminal cousins. ‘What does –’ she stopped, realising that she had no idea what their uncle was called. ‘Your husband, Aunt Clara. What does he do?’
‘Sir Oliver is a gentleman of leisure,’ her aunt replied coldly. ‘He has estates in the north. He comes of a very old family. Very respectable.’
Obviously not a magician then, Lily translated. So their cousin had only half magician blood. But still. Even the littlest magic usually travelled down the family line. Some magicians were stronger than others, of course. Lily had a much harder time controlling her magic than Georgie did, because Georgie simply didn’t like the magic very much. She had been forced into using it in strange and unpleasant ways by their mother, and she’d had enough. Besides, if she let her magic spill out, the unknown spells Mama had planted inside her stirred, and odd, dangerous things began to happen. It was safer to pretend the magic wasn’t there at all. It would be torture for Lily, but Georgie seemed to be able to stuff it away inside her and ignore it quite happily. Perhaps Louis was the same.
The coachman drew up in front of a grey stone house, with scrubbed-white steps leading up to the blackest, shiniest front door Lily had ever seen. It was not a friendly-looking house, and even in a street of smart stone houses, it gleamed a little more than the others. It was almost the stone version of Aunt Clara’s spell, a monument to manners and good taste. As a footman hurried down the steps to assist them from the carriage, Lily felt as if an invisible thread had attached itself to her scalp, dragging her to stand up straight.
‘I suppose it’s hardly worth sending you to your rooms to change for lunch,’ Aunt Clara sighed, twitching off her gloves. ‘You’re unlikely to have anything more suitable to change into. Very well. William, tell Cook we will have lunch now.’
The footman glided away, and Lily felt almost grateful for the invisible thread. Part of her wanted to huddle away quietly somewhere, but she set her shoulders back further, and looked around the entrance hall, trying to seem unimpressed.
It wasn’t as big as Merrythought, of course, but it was richer. The footman had been crusted with gold braid, and there was even more of it on the dark velvet curtains. Daniel would have loved them for the theatre, Lily thought, smiling unhappily. Nothing was faded, or dusty. Even the ancient-looking portraits shone.
‘You brought them.’ The boy from the theatre was walking down the curved staircase, and Lily watched him curiously. The only other boy she knew well was the mute servant-boy at Merrythought, Peter. He had spiky brownish hair, and a mostly brownish face, tanned from working outdoors. Their cousin looked rather like him. A younger, well-fed, perfectly-groomed version, the brown hair neatly trimmed to sit above his snow-white shirt collar. His eyes were a hard blue, like Aunt Clara’s – or like her glamour, anyway.
‘These are your cousins.’ Aunt Clara nodded, her voice slightly brittle.
She hates doing this, Lily realised. Bringing us into her house, and endangering him. But she thinks we’re more dangerous at the theatre. She can’t risk us dishonouring her family all over again, if we’re recognised. Lily shivered as the choking magic of the house settled on her shoulders. We mustn’t stay here long. She may not be making spells on purpose any more, but her magic’s all through this house already. It’s going to squash us into perfect little ladies.
Louis bowed politely, but he didn’t smile, and Henrietta squirmed in Lily’s arms. Lily could tell she didn’t like him. She sighed inwardly. Henrietta was not a tactful dog. She would have to do her best to keep her and Louis away from each other.
They followed Aunt Clara to a red-painted dining room that made Lily think of raw meat. She wasn’t hungry in the slightest, and she could feel Louis staring at her sideways.
A tall, thin man strode into the room, and stopped as soon as he saw Lily and Georgie. He peered at them through an eyeglass attached to his waistcoat, and Lily heard Louis snigger. ‘I see you found our little – ah – relatives,’ he said quietly.
‘There’s no doubt.’ Aunt Clara sat down at the table, waving Lily and Georgie into seats on the other side. Henrietta hid herself under the snowy tablecloth, glaring at Lily in a way that suggested she expected to be fed too.
‘No, I see the resemblance. Dreadful clothes. We will have to engage a governess, I suppose.’ He tucked the eyeglass away, and nodded once at Lily and Georgie, and then proceeded to ignore them for the rest of the meal.
Georgie was bowed over her plate, toying miserably with a portion of salmon. Lily could see how upset she was. She had made their dresses, with help from Maria.
Lily was more worried about the idea of a governess. She had never had one, of course, but she had a vague idea that governessing involved learning to speak Talish, and the art of conversation, and deportment – which was just another word for manners. None of it sounded in the slightest bit interesting. But the worst part was that if they were sent back to the schoolroom, they would be children again. After weeks of being treated as valued members of the theatre company, they were already being dismissed as unimportant little girls. Still, a governess would take time to engage, surely. Hopefully they would be gone before she arrived.
‘Do you go to school?’ Lily asked Louis, who was sitting across the table from her.
Aunt Clara and her husband – it was impossible to think of him as Uncle Oliver, although she supposed he was – were discussing some issue with the servants, and Lily spoke in a low voice, not wanting to draw their attention. She had a feeling that her aunt didn’t really want them to talk to Louis – or not without her listening, at least.
Louis gave her a fishlike look, as though he didn’t expect girls to speak.
‘I asked if you went to school,’ Lily repeated, smiling sweetly at him. Stupid boy. Did he think if he ignored her she’d just go away?
He stared back at her with dislike. ‘Of course I do. It’s the holidays now. But you could hardly go there. It’s a boarding school, and only for boys.’
Lily lifted her head a little, so as to glare down her nose at him. She supposed they had just arrived in his house with very little warning, but he had no need to be so rude.
It was only for a little while, she told herself. Until they could find out where their father’s prison was. Lily had a sudden dismal thought: And then what will we do? The dull red of the walls seemed to be pressing in on her, squashing all their hopeful plans. Finding him was only the beginning. He was hardly likely to be able to mend Georgie from within a prison. They were going to have to get him out. Stealing someone from a secret magicians’ jail sounded much more difficult here than it had back at the theatre.
Lily pushed her salmon around her plate. It was an odd colour, like the trapeze artists’ flesh-coloured tights. She hid the rest of it under her cutlery, struck by a sudden wave of homesickness. They should have stayed.
A cold insistent nose pressed against her leg, and a little of the gloom lifted. Lily fumbled the bread roll off her side plate into her lap, and fed it to Henrietta, who sniffed disapprovingly. She’d been spoiled by the corners of meat pies she begged from Sam and the stagehands, and a mere roll wasn’t what she was used to.
The lunch seemed to go on for ever, with Georgie sagging miserably beside her, and Louis sulking across the table. But eventually Aunt Clara rose, and beckoned the girls to follow her upstairs.
The house was dark, with heavy gilded wallpapers, and strangely quiet. Lily was sure that there were a great many servants, and here and there she thought she heard a footstep, but clearly they had been trained to keep out of their mistress’s way.
‘I have asked the housekeeper to prepare a room for you to share,’ Aunt Clara told them as she trailed her mass of skirts over the polished wooden floors. ‘As you were accustomed to share at—’ Words seemed to fail her at the horr
or of it. ‘Where you were before…’
‘Thank you,’ Lily murmured, admiring the room as their aunt opened the door. It was probably four times the size of their room at the theatre, and even their old bedrooms back at Merrythought would have fitted into it easily. She had wondered if they would be stuffed into some back corridor, being unfortunate relations, but perhaps she had been unfair to Aunt Clara.
‘I will leave you to settle in. I must go and draft an advertisement for a governess. Sir Oliver is quite right. We can hardly bring you out into society without a little polish.’
‘Bring us out into society?’ Lily muttered as she closed the door. ‘I don’t want to be brought out! Like those stupid girls who came to see the show, all covered in lace and feathers every night? I’d rather go back to Mama.’
Georgie gasped, and Lily hunched her shoulders angrily. ‘All right, so I wouldn’t. But this house is horrible. It’s so cushiony. I feel like I can hardly breathe.’
‘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.