“Why were you expecting me?” I asked.
“Because you told me not to be scared when you visited me. Unfortunately you didn’t say when that would be, so I’ve been waiting years and years for you to try scaring me.” She laughed quietly. “But making crochet pigs has a very soothing effect. To be honest, it easily sends you to sleep out of sheer boredom.”
I had a polite “It’s for a good cause, though,” on the tip of my tongue, but when I glanced at the basket, I exclaimed instead, “Oh, aren’t they cute!” And they really were. Much larger than I’d have expected, like real soft toys, and true to life.
“Take one,” said Lady Tilney.
“Do you mean it?” I thought of Caroline and put my hand into the basket. The pigs felt all soft and fluffy.
“Angora and cashmere wool,” said Lady Tilney with a touch of pride in her voice. “I never use any other. Most people crochet with sheep’s wool, but it’s so scratchy.”
“Er, yes. Thank you.” Clutching the little pink pig to my breast, I spent a moment pulling my thoughts together. Where had we been? I cleared my throat. “When do we meet next time? In the past, I mean?”
“That was 1912. Although it’s not next time from my point of view.” She sighed. “What exciting days those were—”
“Oh, hell!” My stomach was doing its roller-coaster ride again. Why on earth hadn’t we chosen a larger window of time? “Then anyway, you know more than I do,” I said hastily. “There’s no time to go into detail, but … maybe you can give me some good advice to help me?” I had taken a couple of steps back in the direction of the window, out of the circle of lamplight.
“Advice?”
“Yes. Well, something like: beware of…?” I looked at her expectantly.
“Beware of what?” Lady Tilney looked back at me just as expectantly.
“That’s just what I don’t know! What ought I to beware of?”
“Pastrami sandwiches, for one thing, and too much sunlight. It’s bad for the complexion,” said Lady Tilney firmly—and then she blurred in front of my eyes and I was back in the year 1956.
Pastrami sandwiches, for heaven’s sake! I ought to have asked who I ought to beware of, not what. But it was too late now. I’d lost the opportunity.
“What on earth is that?” cried Lucas, when he saw the piglet.
Yes, and instead of making use of every precious second to get information out of Lady Tilney, I’d been idiot enough to spend time on a pink soft toy. “It’s a crochet pig, Grandfather, you can see it is,” I said wearily. I was really disappointed in myself! “Angora and cashmere. Other people use scratchy sheep’s wool.”
“Our test seems to have worked, anyway,” said Lucas, shaking his head. “You can use the chronograph, and we can make a date to meet. In my house.”
“It was over much too quickly,” I wailed. “I didn’t find anything out.”
“At least you have a … er, a pig, and Lady Tilney didn’t have a heart attack. Or did she?”
I shook my head helplessly. “Of course not.”
Lucas put the chronograph back in its velvet wrappings and took it over to the shrine. “Don’t worry. This way we have enough time to smuggle you back down to the cellar and go on making plans while we wait for you to travel back. Although if that useless Cantrell has slept off his hangover, I don’t know how we’ll talk our way out of it this time.”
* * *
I FELT positively euphoric when I finally landed back in the chronograph room in my own time. So maybe the trip to acquire the pink piglet (I’d stuffed it into my schoolbag) hadn’t brought much in the way of results, but Lucas and I had worked out a cunning plan. If the original chronograph really was in that chest, we wouldn’t have to depend on chance anymore.
“Any special incidents?” Mr. Marley asked.
Well, let’s think: I’ve spent all afternoon conspiring with my grandfather, breaking all the rules. We read my blood into the chronograph, then we sent me back to the year 1852 to conspire with Lady Tilney. Okay, I hadn’t actually been conspiring with her, but it was a forbidden meeting all the same.
“The lightbulb in the cellar flickered now and then,” I said, “and I learned French vocabulary by heart.”
Mr. Marley bent over the journal, and in his neat, small handwriting, he actually did enter 1943 hours, the Ruby back from 1956, did her homework there, lightbulb flickered. I suppressed a giggle. He had to keep such meticulous records of everything! I’d bet his star sign was Virgo. But it was later than I liked. I hoped Mum wouldn’t send Lesley home before I was back.
However, Mr. Marley didn’t seem to be in any hurry. He screwed the top back on his fountain pen infuriatingly slowly.
“I can find my own way out,” I said.
“No, you mustn’t,” he said in alarm. “Of course I’ll escort you to the limousine.” Mr. Marley closed the journal and stood up. “And I have to blindfold you—you know I do.”
Sighing, I let him tie the black scarf around my head. “I still don’t understand why I’m not supposed to know the way to this room.” Quite apart from the fact that I knew it perfectly well by now.
“Because that’s what it says in the Annals,” said Mr. Marley, sounding surprised.
“What?” I exclaimed. “My name’s in the Annals, and they say I mustn’t know the way here and back? Why not?”
Now Mr. Marley’s voice was distinctly uncomfortable. “Naturally your name isn’t there, or all these years the other Ruby, I mean Miss Charlotte, of course, wouldn’t have—” He cleared his throat, then fell silent, and I heard him opening the door. “Allow me,” he said, taking my arm. He led me out into the corridor. I couldn’t see him, but I felt sure he was blushing furiously again. I felt as if I were walking along beside a radiant heater.
“What exactly does it say about me there?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, but I really can’t … I’ve said too much already.” You could almost hear him wringing his hands, or at least the hand that wasn’t holding me. And this character claimed to be a descendant of the dangerous Rakoczy! What a joke!
“Please, Leo,” I said, sounding as friendly as I could.
“I’m sorry, but you won’t learn any more from me.” The heavy door latched behind us. Mr. Marley let go of my arm to lock it, which seemed to take a good ten minutes, while I tried to save a bit of time by taking a firm step forward, not too easy with my eyes blindfolded. Mr. Marley had grabbed my arm again, and a good thing, because without a pilot, I could have run straight into a wall down here. I decided to try flattering him. It couldn’t hurt. Maybe he’d be prepared to come out with more information later.
“Did you know that I’ve met your ancestor in person?” In fact I’d even taken a photograph of him, but unfortunately I couldn’t show it to Mr. Marley. He’d have told tales of me for bringing forbidden objects back from the past.
“Really? I envy you. The baron must have been an impressive personality.”
“Er, yes, very impressive.” You bet he was! That creepy old junkie! “He asked me about Transylvania, but unfortunately there wasn’t much I could tell him about it.”
“Yes, living in exile must have been hard for him,” said Mr. Marley. Next moment, he let out a shrill “eek!”
A rat, I thought, and in panic I snatched the blindfold off. But it wasn’t a rat that had made Mr. Marley squeal. It was Gideon. Still as unshaven as this afternoon, in fact more so, but with his eyes extremely bright and watchful. And looking so incredibly, outrageously, impossibly good.
“Only me,” he said, smiling.
“I can see that,” groused Mr. Marley. “You scared me stiff.”
Me too. My lower lip began trembling again, and I dug my teeth into it to keep the stupid thing still.
“You can go home now. I’ll escort Gwyneth to the car,” said Gideon, holding out his hand to me as if I was sure to take it.
I looked as haughty as you can with your front teeth digging into your lower lip—probably I just looked like a beaver, if a haughty beaver—and ignored his hand.
“You can’t,” said Mr. Marley. “It’s my job to escort Miss Gwyneth to the—aargh!” He was staring at me in horror. “Oh, Miss Gwyneth, why did you take the scarf off? That’s against the rules.”
“I thought it was a rat you’d seen,” I said, casting a dark glance at Gideon. “And I wasn’t all that wrong, either.”
“Now look what you’ve done!” said Mr. Marley accusingly to Gideon. “I don’t know what I can … the rules say that … and if we—”
“Don’t be so uptight, Marley. Come on, Gwen, let’s go.”
“But you can’t.… I must insist that…,” stammered Mr. Marley. “And … and … and you have no right to tell me what to do—”
“Then go tell tales of me.” Gideon took my arm and simply hauled me on. I thought of resisting, but then I realized that would only lose me even more time. We’d probably still be standing here arguing tomorrow morning. So I let him lead me away, glancing back apologetically at Mr. Marley. “See you, Leo.”
“Yes, exactly. See you, Leo,” said Gideon.
“You … you haven’t heard the last of this,” stammered Mr. Marley, behind us. His face was shining like a beacon in the dark corridor.
“No, sure, we’re trembling with fright already.” Gideon didn’t seem to mind that Mr. Marley could still hear him as he added, “Stupid show-off.”
I waited until we had turned the next corner and then shook myself free of his hand and quickened my pace until I was almost running.
“Ambitious to compete in the Olympic Games?” inquired Gideon.
I spun around to face him. “What do you want?” Lesley would have been proud of the way I spat that at him. “I’m in a hurry.”
“I only wanted to make sure you understood my apology this afternoon.” All the mockery had gone out of his voice now.
But not out of mine. “Yup, I did,” I snorted. “Which doesn’t mean I accepted it.”
“Gwen—”
“Okay, you don’t have to say you really like me again. Guess what, I liked you too. In fact, I liked you a lot. But that’s all over now.” I was running up the spiral staircase as fast as I could go, with the result that by the time I reached the top, I was right out of breath. I felt like hanging over the banisters gasping for air. But I wasn’t going to expose my weakness like that. Particularly as Gideon didn’t seem to have been exerting himself at all to keep up. So I hurried on, until he grabbed my wrist and made me stand still. I winced as his fingers pressed on my cut. It started bleeding again.
“It’s okay for you to hate me, really, I don’t have any problem with that,” said Gideon, looking seriously into my eyes. “But I’ve discovered things that make it necessary for you and me to work together. So that you … so that we’ll get out of all this alive.”