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And it was what I’d thought myself so far. “And you don’t?”
“Look at it the other way around. Suppose Lucy and Paul want the secret all to themselves?” said Gideon. “Suppose that’s why they stole the chronograph? Then all they still need to go one better than Count Saint-Germain would be our blood.”
I let the words sink in. Then I said, “And since they can only meet us in the past, they have to lure us somewhere there to get at our blood?”
“They may think that they can get it only by force,” said Gideon. “Just as we know, looking at it from the other angle, that they aren’t going to give us their blood willingly.”
I thought of the men who had attacked us yesterday in Hyde Park.
“Exactly,” said Gideon, as if he had read my thoughts. “If they’d killed us, they could have had as much of our blood as they wanted. It only remains to find out how they knew we’d be there.”
“I know Lucy and Paul. That’s simply not their style,” said Mr. George. “They grew up knowing the golden rules of the Guardians, and I’m sure they wouldn’t plan to get members of their own families murdered. They would prefer discussion and negotiation—”
“You knew Lucy and Paul, past tense, Mr. George,” said Gideon. “But can you really be sure what they are like by now?”
I looked from one to the other of them. “Well, anyway, I think it would be interesting to find out what my great-great-grandmother wants to meet me for,” I said. “And how can it be a trap if we choose the time of our visit ourselves?”
“That’s how I see it too,” said Mr. George.
Gideon sighed, resigned. “It’s all been decided now, anyway.”
* * *
MADAME ROSSINI PUT an ankle-length white dress with a fine-check pattern and a kind of sailor collar over my head. It was held in around the waist by a sky-blue satin sash, and there was a ribbon bow of the same material where the collar met a buttonhole.
When I looked at myself in the mirror, I was a little disappointed. I saw the reflection of a demure, good girl. The outfit reminded me slightly of what the servers wore at Mass in St. Luke’s, where we sometimes went to church on Sundays.
“The fashions of 1912 can’t, of course, be compared with the extravagance of the Rococo era,” said Madame Rossini as she handed me a pair of buttoned leather ankle boots. “I would say the idea was to conceal rather than reveal feminine charm.”
“I’d say so too.”
“And now your ’air.” Madame Rossini gently pushed me down on a chair and made a long side parting in my hair. Then she put it up in strands at the back of my head.
“Isn’t that a bit—well—bushy over my ears?”
“It’s in period,” said Madame Rossini.
“But I don’t think it suits me, do you?”
“Everything suits you, my little swan-necked beauty. Anyway, this isn’t a beauty contest. It’s all about—”
“Authenticity. Yes, I know.”
Madame Rossini laughed. “Then zat’s all right.”
This time Dr. White came to collect me and take me to the cellar where the chronograph was hidden. He looked very bad-tempered, as usual, but to make up for it, Robert the little ghost boy gave me a beaming smile.
I smiled back. He really was very cute with his blond curls and dimples. “Hello!”
“No need to sound so effusively pleased to see me,” said Dr. White, bringing out the black blindfold.
“Oh, no! Why do I have to have that on again?”
“There’s no reason to trust you,” said Dr. White.
“Oh, let me do that, you clumsy fool!” Madame Rossini snatched the black blindfold from his hand. “Zis time no one is going to ruin my lovely ’airstyle!”
A pity, really. Madame Rossini herself put the blindfold on, very carefully. Not a hair was disturbed.
