Dragon's Flame , livre ebook

Title Page
DRAGON’S FLAME
Book One of the Dragonfire Series
Alix J Beaumont
Jenny Ainslie-Turner



Publisher Information
This edition published in 2014 by
Acorn Books
www.acornbooks.co.uk
Converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
First published in 2014
Copyright © 2014 Alix J Beaumont, Jenny Ainslie-Turner
The right of Alix J Beaumont and Jenny Ainslie-Turner to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.



Chapter One
William Carmichael stared at the raindrops running down the outside of the window of his office and tried to decide what was the best way to deal with the man standing behind him, and the problem had had brought with him. He glanced over his shoulder at the short, rotund figure of Robert Stevens, Deputy-Headmaster of Grayling Academy, and sighed.
“Look, Robert,” Carmichael turned around and sat down in the high-backed, leather chair of the headmaster’s office. “I know you have a problem with these girls, and frankly, I can even see your point, but...”
“William,” Stevens shook his dark-haired head and frowned. “Please don’t tell me that you’re going to make more excuses for these girls? I’ve come to you with problems with their behaviour three times since the start of term, and you always make some excuse, always find a way to treat them more lightly than they should be!”
“Robert, just answer me this: is there any problem with their work? Any at all?”
“No, I suppose not,” Stevens sat down across the desk from him. “They are all very bright girls. It’s just... they are so undisciplined.”
“So, what did they do this time?” Carmichael asked.
“It’s no one thing, William,” Stevens folded his arms. “It’s just complaint after complaint I’ve received from their teachers. They talk back, never pay attention, disrupt the entire class around them, and yet they always have the right answer when asked, and...” he sighed and shook his head. “They just encourage the other pupils to question too much as well. Every lesson becomes a battle where, when whoever’s teaching them is trying to impart some important fact, one or another of those girls is always asking ‘why’. Why is it important? Why do we have to learn it this way? Why don’t we look at it like... All things like that. It’s disruptive. Incredibly disruptive.”
“So, you want me to punish them for showing independent thought?” Carmichael cocked his head.
“You make it sound like I’m the Spanish Inquisition,” Stevens sighed. “Alright, I’m sure their ‘independent thought’ is very valuable, but not at the expense of everyone around them, surely?”
Carmichael paused, and turned his chair back to the window, steepling his fingers as he thought how best to reply. “Robert...” he said slowly. “How much do you know about the Fairchild girls?”
“Why does that matter? Surely who they are has no bearing on...”
“This does,” Carmichael cut him off. “Look, Lucy, Chloe and Felicity Fairchild have... well, not the most enviable of pasts. They’ve lived with Felicity’s mother, Marisa Fairchild, and their grandfather, since they were five years old.”
“Some kind of family accident?” Stevens guessed.
“Hardly,” Carmichael shook his head. “This is just between us, you understand. It goes no further than this office.”
“Some kind of secret?” Stevens said, half-smirking.
“Far from it. Most of the town knows. It’s hard to keep something like this quiet in such a small place. But that doesn’t mean the poor girls need everyone talking about it. Understand?”
“Alright,” Stevens nodded, looking more serious now. “So, what happened?”
“Philip Fairchild, Lucy’s father, was married to Susan Carter,” Carmichael explained. “Except that he had an affair with Susan’s sister, Joanna, at about the same time as his wife was pregnant with Lucy. Well, the ins and outs of it are private, I’m sure the family knows why, but, basically, poor Joanna had a bit of a history of... well, substance abuse, to put it mildly. I grew up with her, you know. Nice girl, but... she just went off the rails. Personally, I doubt she even knew what she was doing when she slept with her brother-in-law, but, there you go... at the end of the day, all that matters is that Joanna had a baby, Chloe, about six months after Philip’s wife gave birth to his legitimate daughter.”
“Christ,” Stevens shook his head, looking shaken. “But, hell, I’m sorry to say it, William, but the way society is nowadays, why is this grounds for...”
“I’m not done,” Carmichael cut him off. “Joanna left Chloe with Susan and Philip, without telling anyone who Chloe’s father was. Well, maybe she told Philip, we’ll never know. She went off, lost in her drugs and whatever else she was into. Every so often, she’d come back, say she was going to get clean, dote on her little girl for a while, and then vanish again.
“And then one time, on some kind of binge, she let slip to Susan just where Chloe had come from. Poor little girls were about five years old at the time. Anyway, Susan was... uncompromising, you could say. She, apparently, confronted her husband, told him she knew about his affair, and said she was leaving, and taking both Lucy and Chloe with her. Only good thing out of all of this was that, as far as we can tell, she never blamed that little girl for what her father had done. “
“So what happened?”
“Philip Fairchild killed her. Smashed her head in right then and there. And not just her. John Fairchild, Philip’s brother and Felicity Fairchild’s father, he was there too. And he got the same treatment when he tried to protect his sister-in-law. Someone called the police, and when they turned up, they found Philip getting the two girls ready to leave, no idea where he planned to take them, but he was going to disappear, I’m sure. And, as if that wasn’t enough, as soon as she heard about what her confession had caused, Joanna took an overdose of, well, whatever it was she was on at the time. Maybe she felt guilty, maybe it was an accident, no one is sure. Anyway, Marisa Fairchild suddenly found that her daughter no longer had a father, she no longer had a husband, but she had suddenly inherited care of her two nieces, who were not only cousins, but also half-sisters of each other. So, you see what I mean when I say they had a difficult childhood?”
“Maybe so, but... Surely we’re not helping them by letting that excuse their behaviour...”
“Maybe, maybe not, but at the least, we can understand why they are so... well, why they are apart from everyone around them. I’m sure Marisa is a good mother to the girls, after all, she adopted the other two girls when she didn’t have to, but, at the end of the day, those girls pretty much have always been apart.”
“I still think they deserve detention, at the least, for...”
“I know you do,” Carmichael cut him off. “So bring them in, and let’s see what kind of compromise we can reach. And , I must point out, that you’ve already kept them behind for over an hour today anyway! It’s nearly half-four, Robert.”
“Yes, well, you were busy,” the deputy head replied with a shrug.
“Fine,” Carmichael shook his head. “Just go get them.”
Stevens got up and went to the office door. Opening it, he ushered in three teenage girls, all dressed in Grayling Academy’s uniform of grey pleated skirt, blouse and maroon blazer, with the grey and maroon striped school tie.
Lucy Fairchild led her sisters into the headmaster’s office, trying to hide how angry she felt. She did not know why Deputy Headmaster Stevens always seemed to have it in for her and her sisters, but she hated it. At least, she thought, Headmaster Carmichael was more reasonable.
She stopped in front of the headmaster’s desk, Chloe and Fliss standing either side of her. Stevens took a place on the other side of the desk, next to the headmaster, and Lucy fought the urge not to glare at him. Instead, she kept her chocolate coloured eyes staring straight ahead, at Carmichael.
“Has,” she saw the headmaster look sideways at his deputy, “Mr. Stevens told you why you’re here, girls?” he asked.
Lucy knew that, with most teachers, that would not have been a real question but that Carmichael was aware of the antipathy between the Fairchild girls and the deputy head. She glanced to Chloe and Fliss, but both of them seemed happy for her to do the talking. “No, sir, not really,” she replied calmly.
She was, it was fair to say, the one who usually took the lead. She was the one who was usually spotted first when the three girls entered a room. Tall for her seventeen years, with shoulder length, golden-blonde hair, she naturally commanded more attention than her shorter and darker siblings, both of whom were still sixteen years old.
“Really?” Carmichael responded, cutting Stevens off, who had his mouth open to object. “Well, I’m told that the three of you insist on asking inappropriate questions during classes, about the reasons for why you are supposed to be learning the approved syllabus.”
“The syllabus is stupid,” Chloe muttered under her breath.
“Excuse me, Miss Fairchild?” Stevens practically snapped at her. While most people would probably hav