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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 horror 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,