Free Rose 3: Rose and the Magician's Mask by Holly Webb

that before? Rose couldn’t remember, and she hoped Bella wouldn’t either.
     
    Rose’s humble little carpet bag was buried in a mountain of other baggage that was piled over the black-and-white tiled floor. She could just see a fraction of it sticking out, and she was twisting her gloved fingers behind her back, so as to stop herself snatching it back up. She wanted to clutch it close, likea little bit of home. She made do with stroking the little china doll in her cloak pocket instead. She had noticed that one side of the doll’s face was shinier than the other now, from all the times she ran her thumb over its cheek.
    They were going, really going! She had run to the receiving office herself with Mr Fountain’s letter to Lord Lynton, the British Ambassador to the duke’s court, explaining that they would arrive at the mercyof the tides. Now the strange words of the address kept dancing through her head, wonderfully foreign. Freddie had written them out onto dozens of labels for the bags, muttering crossly about the fiddly spelling. Rose had one tied onto the handles of her little bag, too.
    Mr Fountain was proving himself a fussy and demanding traveller, and kept adding more and more luggage. An extra coach had been hired to carry it all, and its coachman and two of the stable boys were loading it, with Mr Fountain dancing around them, beseeching them to be careful.
    ‘Be good, Rose,’ Miss Bridges told her sternly. ‘And please, if you can, try to keep control of Miss Isabella.’ She glanced at Bella, who was standing out on the front steps, looking particularly darling and carrying her Christmas doll. ‘Or at least, do not let her…’ She paused again. ‘I don’t know quite what to say,’ she sighed.
    ‘I will do my best, Miss,’ Rose promised.
    ‘Come back safely,’ Miss Bridges said, her voice sterner than ever, before she shocked Rose by folding her in a brief and bony hug. ‘You too, Master Frederick,’ she added, in a voice that was now positively doom-laden.
    ‘Yes, Miss Bridges.’ Freddie sounded surprised. Hehad been quite certain that the housekeeper couldn’t stand him, as he was constantly breaking things.
    Miss Bridges rolled her eyes, and passed Rose a smallhamper. ‘Mrs Jones said you had better take care of this, Rose. And do not let that cat in it!’
    ‘Potted shrimps!’ Gus mewed in Rose’s ear, from where he was perched, peering down from the top of the grandfather clock. ‘Delicious. You really had better let me look after it, Rose. Perhaps I should sit on it.’
    ‘Come along, children, don’t dawdle!’ Mr Fountain scolded, most unfairly. ‘Miss Bridges, I know I can rely on you to take care of everything in my absence.’ He flapped his travelling cloak at Rose and Freddie, shooing them towards the family carriage.
    Susan minced after them with a pile of fur rugs, and Rose snuggled her feet onto the hot brick that had been wrapped in more fur on the carriage floor. After Freddie had got out again to fetch the travelling chessboard that he had left on the hall table, and Bella had found her purse in the pocket of her cloak, despite it most definitely having not been there before, Mr Fountain at last gave the order to drive on.
    Rose, sitting with her back to the horses, could see just a glimpse of the Fountain house, and the servants gathered to wave them off. Even Sarah and Mrs Jones were at the top of the area steps, waving theirhandkerchiefs. She waved back shyly. As far as the servants knew, they were off gallivanting with Mr Fountain on a visit to some strange foreign place, where there was a lot of magic, and the master was gathering information for the king. Everyone in the kitchen had agreed it was just like him to go rushing off at a moment’s notice, setting everyone in an uproar until he got his way.
    No one knew that they were really chasing after afour-hundred-year-old mask, and the madmen who’d stolen it. The madmen who wanted to use it for some