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“I don’t know exactly what part you are playing, girl, or whether you are of any importance. But I will not have my rules broken. I am warning you. Do you understand?” The pressure of his fingers tightened.
I was paralyzed by fear. I could only stare at him, gasping for breath. Didn’t anyone notice what was happening to me?
“I asked if you understood.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
The grip of the count’s fingers slackened at once, the hand was removed. Air could stream freely into my lungs.
The count’s lips curled, and he shook his wrist.
“We shall meet again,” he said.
Gideon bowed. The three men bowed back. I was the only one who stood perfectly still, unable to move at all, until Gideon took my hand and led me out of the room.
* * *
EVEN WHEN we were sitting in the coach again I still felt terribly nervous—weak, exhausted, and dirty in a strange kind of way.
How had the count managed to speak to me without the others hearing? And how had he touched me when he was four yards away? My mother had been right. He could get into your mind and control your feelings. I’d let his conceited, erratic way of talking and his frail old appearance mislead me. I had hopelessly underestimated him.
How stupid of me.
In fact I’d underestimated this whole strange story that I’d fallen into.
The coach had started moving and was rocking just as much as it had on the outward journey. Gideon had told the Guardian in the yellow coat to hurry. As if he needed to! The Guardian had been driving like a man who was tired of life even on the way to Lord Brompton’s house.
“Are you all right? You look as if you’d seen a ghost.” Gideon took off his coat and put it on the seat beside him. “Quite hot for September here.”
“Not a ghost,” I said, unable to look him in the eye. My voice shook slightly. “Only Count Saint-Germain and one of his tricks.”
“He wasn’t particularly civil to you,” Gideon admitted. “But that was only to be expected. He obviously had other ideas of what you should be like.”
When I said nothing, he went on. “In the prophesies, the twelfth time traveler is always described as rather special. Ruby red, with G major, the magic of the raven. Whatever that may be. Anyway, the count didn’t want to believe me when I said you were just an ordinary schoolgirl.”
Curiously enough, this comment immediately disposed of the weak, wretched feeling that the count’s phantom touch had set off. Instead of weariness and fear, I felt a strong sense of injured pride. And fury. I bit my lip.
o;I think they have a prime minister in France too. No king, not even for state occasions. Well, they got rid of the aristocracy in the French Revolution, you see, and the king along with him. Poor Marie-Antoinette had her head chopped off by the guillotine. Isn’t that terrible?”
“Oh, yes, surely!” laughed his lordship. “Terrible folk, the French. We Englishmen can never get along with them. So now, do tell me: what country are we at war with in the twenty-first century?”
“Well, no country,” I said, rather unsure of my ground here. “Not really, anyway. We just send troops here and there to help out. In the Middle East and so on. But to be honest, I don’t know a lot about politics. Why not ask me something about … about refrigerators? Not how they work—I don’t know how they work, really. I just know they do work, and every home in London has a fridge, and you can keep cheese and milk in it for days, and they don’t go bad.”
Lord Brompton did not look as if he was particularly interested in fridges either. Rakoczy stretched in his chair like a cat. I hoped he wouldn’t think it was a good idea to stand up.
“Or you can ask me about telephones,” I added quickly. “Not that I can explain how they work either.” If I’d sized up Lord Brompton accurately, telephones were something else he wouldn’t understand. To be honest, he didn’t look as if he could take in even the principle of the incandescent lightbulb. I tried to think of something else that might interest him.
“And then, er … well, then there’s this tunnel running underneath the English Channel between Dover and Calais.”
This seemed to be the funniest thing Lord Brompton had ever heard. He slapped his huge thigh as he shook with laughter. “Wonderful! Wonderful!”
I was just beginning to relax a little when Rakoczy spoke—in English with a harsh accent. “And Transylvania?”
“Transylvania?” The home of Count Dracula? Did he mean it seriously? I avoided looking into those black eyes. Maybe he was Count Dracula. His pale complexion would suit the part, anyway.
“My native land in the beautiful Carpathians. The principality of Transylvania. What is happening in Transylvania in the twenty-first century?” His voice sounded a little hoarse, and there was definitely a note of nostalgia in it. “And what has become of the Kuruc people?”
The what people? Kuruc? I’d never heard of them.
