This time, it wasn’t grief that silenced her. It was utter shock.
Between her and the golden dragon’s face, a small, silvery cloud had appeared. It writhed in mid-air, as if a miniature thunderstorm were preparing to take place at its centre. Then, with a popping sound, it shot outwards in all directions, expanding until it took up all her vision and the cluttered buttery around her disappeared entirely. Everything was silvery and unclear … until, gradually, colours and figures formed within it.
A half-sob escaped Rose’s lips. “H-Harry?”
Her younger sister, real as life, sat in a small but sunny parlour, reading out loud – or so it seemed from the silent movement of her lips – from a forbiddingly large tome to an elderly lady in a rocking chair with a small, sleeping dog on her lap.
Could that be their great-aunt Sophronia? It was she who had invited Harry – in crabbed, criss-crossed handwriting – to live with her as a companion and helper far up north in Yorkshire. There were lines that looked well-worn from pain on the lady’s haggard face, but as she listened to Harry’s reading, her eyes fell closed with what looked like relief.
“No wonder.” The sound that came from Rose was half-laugh, half-sob as she recognised the book that Harry was reading from – in ancient Greek. “I always fell asleep even listening to Harry talk about that one!”
She felt no urge towards somnolence now as her gaze clung to Harry’s beloved face; those clever brown eyes absorbed with all of their usual calm interest behind ancient spectacles that were propped on her small, stubborn nose. That familiar, thick dark hair doing its best to fall out of its chignon at every angle ... Harry and Rose had inherited different shades of hair, but both of them shared their father’s hopelessly thick and impossible-to-control locks.
Rose’s right hand lifted without her conscious will, reaching towards her younger sister’s face to brush a fallen strand back into place …
But the colours shimmered and disappeared at her touch, sweeping outwards to blur the vision in solid silver.
“No!” Rose gasped. “Please, wait—no—Elinor?”
As with the first vision, the one that formed before her now was as clear and as vivid as if it were taking place in the same room, but this time, it was impossible to believe that it could be true.
Her hard-working, practical older sister, who had been trapped in miserable servitude to their abominable cousin Penelope for the past six months, was … laughing with delight? Rose could hardly remember ever seeing her serious sister look as happy as she did now, her head tipped carelessly back against a faded and scarred carriage seat. She was cradling a colourful blue and green dragon on her lap, but rather than giving it any immediate attention, she was laughing and gazing adoringly up at …
“Who is that?” Rose demanded wrathfully.
She had never seen that handsome, brown-haired gentleman before, but there could be no plausible good explanation for his presence if this vision was real. They had no male relations of that age, and for proper Elinor to willingly ride alone in a closed carriage, side-by-side with an unrelated gentleman, was inconceivable.
As Rose watched in horror, her most sensible sister recklessly reached out to grasp the man by one broad shoulder, then draw him down to cover his lips with her own.
“Good God!” Rose’s jaw dropped open. Her left hand fell away from the warm, scaly presence at her side …
And the vision disintegrated into a thousand silvery pieces before vanishing entirely.
Rose stared into Griff’s eyes, her thoughts as whirling and fragmented as that second vision had become. It took her two tries before she managed to clear her throat and mind and fasten on one crucial detail – the only mystery put forwards by that vision that she might actually be able to solve.
“That dragon on Elinor’s lap,” she told Griff numbly, “had golden streaks along its face.”
… And today, Rose had witnessed someone checking every dragon he met – with visible anxiety – for that feature.
Rose’s chest expanded with a deep, cleansing breath of determination. Gently, she nudged Rhiannon awake in her lap, reassuring her through that first panicked moment of alertness. Then she nodded down at both dragons together. “Come along,” she said firmly.
It was time to extract a serious explanation from her new fiancé.
Unfortunately, that mission was easier decided than done. As Rose had thoughtlessly left Mr Aubrey without supervision, he had fallen prey to her uncle, who had swooped down to carry off his long-awaited guest from the public arena of the library to the sacrosanct eyrie of his personal study. No other members of the household were allowed to trespass upon that sanctum without express invitation, so Rose was left to kick her heels in her own bedroom, both dragons watching her every move with interest.
It was a small bedroom with a high, leaded window, and it had felt terribly bleak for the last six months, without either of her sisters there to fill the endless, yawning silence. Now, the dragons’ eager investigation of every nook and cranny risked disastrous results – as she discovered while leaping to save Rhiannon from toppling head-first off the tall chest of drawers – but between mitigating Rhiannon’s too-bold explorations and stopping Griff from chewing on her bedcovers and furniture, Rose found herself feeling far more comfortable in the room than she ever had before.
Really, that faded green-and-white wallpaper was quite pretty. She’d never noticed that before. That particular shade of green, in its aged form, very nearly matched the pale green of Mr Aubrey’s eyes …
And that was quite enough of that nonsense. Setting her teeth together, Rose pulled out the old travel desk that Uncle Parry had given her, threw herself onto the narrow bed, and set herself to doing the only thing she could do: write to her sister.
Elinor still hadn’t replied to her last letter.
Elinor always replied.
But then, if that vision had actually been real, and her sister had thrown all respectability and hopes for her future to the wind and run off to become a fallen woman …
“Chrrrp?”
