Ruby Red

“Gwyneth?”

“What?”

“I didn’t mean to insult you. I wasn’t putting you down—I just meant you were an average girl, understand?”

Oh, wonderful. It got better and better.

“Perfectly,” I said, glaring at him. “I couldn’t care less what you think of me.”

He looked at me calmly. “You can’t help it.”

“You don’t know anything at all about me!” I said indignantly.

“Maybe not,” said Gideon. “But I know lots of girls like you. They’re all the same.”

“Lots of girls like me? Huh!”

“I mean, girls who aren’t interested in anything but hairstyles, clothes, films, and pop stars. And you’re always giggling, and you go to the loo in groups. And you make snide remarks about some girl named Lisa or whatever for buying a cheap chain store T-shirt for five pounds.”

Even though I was irate, I burst out laughing. “You mean to say that all these girls you know make snide remarks about someone called Lisa for buying a cheap T-shirt?”

“Well, you see what I mean.”

“Yes, I do.” I didn’t really intend to say any more, but it just burst out of me. “You think all girls who aren’t like Charlotte are stupid and superficial. Just because we had a normal childhood instead of all those fencing lessons and instruction in mysterious prophesies. The fact is, you haven’t ever had time to get to know any normal girls. That’s why you have all these pathetic prejudices.”

“Oh, come on! I’ve been to school, same as you.”

“Yeah, sure!” The words were just spilling out of me. “If you’ve been trained for your life as a time traveler only half as thoroughly as Charlotte, then you’ve had no time to make any friends at all, and your opinion of what you call average girls comes from observations you made when you were standing about the school yard alone. Or are you telling me that the other kids at your school thought your hobbies, like Latin, dancing the gavotte, and driving horse-drawn carriages, were really cool?”

Instead of being insulted, Gideon looked amused. “You left out playing the violin.” He leaned back and crossed his arms.

“The violin? Really?” My anger had gone away again as fast as it had come over me. Playing the violin! Honestly!

“At least you have a bit of color back in your face. You looked as pale as Miro Rakoczy.”

Definitely. Rakoczy. “How do you spell his name?”

“R-a-k-o-c-z-y,” said Gideon. “Why?”

“I want to Google him.”

“Oh, did you fancy him so much?”

“Fancy him? He’s a vampire,” I said. “He comes from Transylvania.”

“He does come from Transylvania, but that doesn’t make him a vampire.”

“How do you know?”

“Because there are no such things as vampires, Gwyneth.”

“Oh, no? If there are time machines, why wouldn’t there be vampires too? Ever looked into his eyes? They’re like black holes.”

“That comes of drinking belladonna. He’s experimenting with it,” said Gideon. “A plant poison said to expand the consciousness.”

“How do you know that?”

“It says so in The Annals of the Guardians. In their pages, Rakoczy is known as the Black Leopard. He saved the count from two assassination attempts. He’s very strong and extremely skilled with weapons.”

“Who wanted to kill the count?”

Gideon shrugged. “A man like that has many enemies.”

“I can see why!” I said. “But I kind of get the impression that he can look after himself.”

“Oh, he certainly can,” agreed Gideon.

I wondered whether I ought to tell him what the count had done, but I decided not to. Gideon wasn’t just a polite acquaintance—the way it looked to me, he and the count were bosom buddies.

Trust no one.

“You really traveled to see all those people in the past and take blood from them?” I asked instead.

Gideon nodded. “Counting you and me, eight of the twelve time travelers have now been read into the chronograph again. I’ll find the other four, too.”

I remembered what the count had said and asked, “How can you have traveled from London to Paris and Brussels? I thought the length of time we can spend in the past was limited to a few hours.”

“Four hours, to be precise,” said Gideon.

“You couldn’t possibly get from London to Paris in four hours back then, let alone with spare time to dance the gavotte and collect a drop of blood from someone.”

“Quite right. So we traveled to Paris with the chronograph first,” said Gideon. “And then I went to Brussels, Milan, and Bath on separate occasions. I was able to track down the others in London.”

“I see.”

“Really?” Gideon’s smile was ironic again. This time I ignored it.

“Yes, really, I’m beginning to get the hang of this.” I looked out the window of the coach. “I’m sure we didn’t drive past these meadows on the way to Lord Brompton’s, did we?”

“No. We’re in Hyde Park,” said Gideon, suddenly wide awake and on the alert. He leaned out. “Hey, Wilbour or whatever your name is, why are we driving this way? We have to get back to the Temple by the shortest possible route.”

I couldn’t make out what the man on the box said in reply.

“Stop at once!” Gideon ordered. He looked pale when he turned back to me.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “The man says his orders are to take us to a meeting place at the southern end of the park.”

The horses had stopped, and Gideon opened the carriage door. “There’s something wrong here. We don’t have much time left before we travel back. I’ll take the horses’ reins and drive us to the Temple.” He got out and closed the door again. “Whatever happens, stay in the coach.”

At that moment, there was a loud bang. I instinctively ducked. I knew that sound only from films, but I recognized it at once as a shot being fired. I heard a soft cry, the horses whinnied, and the coach jolted forward but then came to a halt again, rocking.

“Get your head down!” shouted Gideon, and I threw myself flat on the seat.

A second shot was fired. The silence that followed the noise was more than I could stand.

“Gideon?” I sat up and looked out.

On the grass outside the window, Gideon had drawn his sword. “Keep down, I told you!”

Thank God, he was still alive. Although maybe not for much longer. Two men had appeared as if from nowhere, both dressed in black, and a third was riding a horse out of the shadow of the trees. A silvery pistol gleamed in his hand.

Gideon was fighting the other two men at the same time. They were all silent, and except for their gasping and the clash of their swords, there was nothing to hear. For a few seconds I watched, fascinated, admiring Gideon’s skill with a sword. It was like something out of a film, every thrust, feint, and leap was perfect, as if stuntmen had been working on the choreography for days. But when one of the men in black cried out and fell to his knees, with a jet of blood shooting out of his throat, I came to my senses. This wasn’t a film, this was for real. And though the swords might be deadly weapons (the man who’d been hit was now lying on the ground twitching and making horrible sounds), there didn’t seem to me much they could do against pistols. Why wasn’t Gideon carrying a pistol? It would have been easy to bring a useful weapon like that from home. And where was the coachman? Why wasn’t he fighting beside Gideon?

By now the mounted man had come up to them and got off his horse. To my surprise, he too had drawn a sword and was attacking Gideon with it. Why didn’t he use the pistol? He’d thrown it down on the grass, where it was no good to anyone.

“Who are you? What do you want?” asked Gideon.

“Only your life,” said the man who had been the last to arrive.

“Well, you’re not having it!”

“Oh, we shall take it, you may be sure of that!”

And as I watched it through the window, the fight went on, still like a well-rehearsed ballet. The wounded man was now lying motionless on the ground, so that the others had to fight around him.

Gideon parried every attacking thrust as if he knew in advance what his opponents were going to do, but no doubt they had also had fencing lessons since childhood. Once I saw one of the men’s blades hiss toward Gideon’s shoulder while he was busy parrying his other opponent’s thrust. Only an agile sideways turn prevented the sword from striking home. Presumably it would have taken half Gideon’s arm off. I heard wood splintering as the man’s blade struck the coach instead.

This couldn’t be true! Who were these characters, and why were they after us?

I quickly slid across the seat and peered through the window on the other side. Wasn’t there anyone around to see what was going on here? Could you really be attacked like this in Hyde Park in broad daylight, in the middle of the afternoon? The fight seemed to last forever.

Although Gideon was holding his own against two men at once, it didn’t look as if he could ever fend them off completely. His opponents were forcing him to retreat more and more, and in the end, they would surely win the fight.

I had no idea how much time had passed since I heard the first shot, or how long we still had to wait before we traveled back, but it was probably unlikely that we’d dissolve into thin air before the eyes of Gideon’s attackers. I couldn’t bear it any longer, sitting in this coach just watching them prepare to murder Gideon.

Maybe I could climb out the window and fetch help?

For a brief moment, I wasn’t sure whether the huge hooped skirt would fit through the gap, but a second later, I was standing on the sandy carriageway trying to get my bearings.

I heard only gasping from the other side of the coach, along with curses and the pitiless ring of blade on metal blade.

“Surrender, why don’t you?” gasped one of the strangers.

“Never!” Gideon replied.

Cautiously, I made my way forward to the horses. As I did so, I almost fell over something yellow. I only just managed to suppress a scream. It was the man in the yellow coat. He had fallen off the coachman’s box and was lying on his back in the sand. I saw, with horror, that part of his face was missing and his clothes were drenched in blood. The eye of the undamaged part of his face was wide open, looking into nowhere.

The shot I’d heard had been aimed at him. It was a ghastly sight; I felt my stomach churn. I’d never seen a dead person before. I’d have given anything to be sitting in the cinema now so I could close my eyes and know it wasn’t real.

But this was real. This man was dead, and Gideon was out there in genuine danger of death himself.

The clash of metal roused me from my numb state. Gideon groaned, and that finally brought me back to my senses.

Before I knew what I was doing, I’d spotted the sword at the dead man’s side and clutched it tightly.