Free Lily and the Shining Dragons by Holly Webb Page B

would be to teach you some manners,’ Henrietta remarked calmly from the sofa. ‘You’ve been remarkably rude, ever since we arrived.’
    Louis gawped at her for a few seconds, and then drew himself up straight. ‘I knew there was something unnatural about you,’ he told her, trying not to sound scared.
    ‘Magic is perfectly natural.’ Henrietta smirked at him. ‘It’s denying it that’s wrong. You’ll come to a bad end, if you try to hide it.’
    ‘And I’ll be shut up in a school full of freaks if I don’t!’ he snapped back. ‘Besides, I might not have any magic. I probably won’t. Mama doesn’t. What?’ He glared at Henrietta and the girls as they all began to laugh.
    ‘Her bad end is taking rather a long time to arrive, that’s all…’ Henrietta explained. ‘She has been denying her magic for years, except for a few spells she has on this house, and herself. She has a remarkably determined way of looking at things, it seems to me. She thinks the spells are just her high standards, and society manners, but it’s far more than that. And they’re grown into her now. She’ll never be rid of them.’
    ‘She doesn’t…’ Louis faltered, as he seemed to realise what he was saying – and what he’d been seeing, ever since he’d been old enough to understand. ‘She just doesn’t,’ he muttered again. But the girls could tell he knew, deep down. He was silent for a moment, staring unseeingly at the melted clock, and then he seemed to harden, shaking off his fear, and looking sharply at Lily. ‘Why did you think Fell Hall was a prison? What do you want to know about prisons for?’
    ‘Our father is in one.’
    ‘A gaolbird! Does Mama know?’ Louis’s eyes brightened at the thought of scandal. ‘She’d have a fit.’ He almost giggled, as if he was so scared he’d turned silly.
    ‘She probably put him there,’ Lily told him bitterly. ‘He wouldn’t give up his magic. She would have been desperate to get him out of the way, wouldn’t she?’
    Louis nodded. ‘She would only have been doing her duty as an Englishwoman,’ he murmured, but he seemed uncertain about it. ‘Family…’ He shrugged. ‘Her sister’s husband, though, she ought not to have done it.’
    ‘She would have been protecting her good name – and yours,’ Henrietta told him sternly. ‘Should she care more for her sister’s family, or her own?’
    ‘You can’t defend her!’ Lily protested, staring at Henrietta in surprise.
    ‘I may not agree with her, but that’s not to say I can’t understand her reasoning.’ Henrietta yawned, so widely that the ridged underside of her jaw glinted in the sunny drawing room. She shut her mouth with a snap, and looked sideways at Lily. ‘Water under the bridge, now, anyway.’
    ‘I suppose.’ Lily sighed.
    Louis glanced up, and then left the doorway, and came to crouch by Henrietta on the sofa. He clearly didn’t dare touch her, but she darted out her purplish tongue, and licked his hand, so he squeaked with surprise, and smiled shyly. ‘Mama won’t let me have a dog. She says it wouldn’t be fair, since I’m away at school for most of the time. She’s right, but I would so love one.’
    ‘Rude, but essentially good-natured,’ Henrietta pronounced, licking him again. ‘Like most boys.’
    ‘I’m sorry – if she did betray your father.’ Louis ventured to run a finger down Henrietta’s velvet back.
    ‘It’s why we agreed to come here. Your mother thinks we want to be respectable, and come out into society – she can’t imagine that anyone wouldn’t want that.’ Lily grimaced. ‘But actually, we were hoping that she might know where Father is. That we might be able to find out. Are you sure Fell Hall isn’t a prison as well as a school?’ she asked hopefully.
    Louis frowned. ‘I don’t know for certain, but I think the prison is somewhere different, from the things that Mama’s said. It’s a deep secret.’ He eyed Lily and Georgie