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Gideon cleared his throat, and Mr. George stopped staring into space. He went on: “Until now we always thought they took that step here in London in September, a few weeks before your birth.”
“But then they can’t possibly have known my name!”
“Correct,” said Mr. George. “That’s why, since this morning, we have been considering the possibility that they went into the past with the chronograph only after your birth.”
“For whatever reason,” added Gideon.
“But we still have to find out how Lucy and Paul knew your name and your destiny. One way and another, Margaret Tilney refuses to cooperate with us.”
I thought about it. “So how are we going to get at her blood now?” Oh, my God, surely I hadn’t just said that, had I? “You won’t use force, will you?” I pictured Gideon doing sinister things with ether, bonds, and a gigantic syringe—and that ruined my perfect image of him.
Mr. George shook his head. “One of the golden rules of the Guardians is that we use force only when nothing else will work. We try negotiation and amicable agreement first. So we will do as Margaret has suggested. We’re going to send you to see her.”
“So that I can convince her?”
“So that we can find out about her motives and her informants. She’ll talk to you—she said so herself. We want to know what she has to tell you.”
Gideon sighed. “There’s no getting around it, but myself, I’ve been talking to a brick wall all morning.”
“Yes, Gwyneth, and that’s why at this moment Madame Rossini is making you a nice summer dress for the year 1912,” said Mr. George. “You’re going to meet your great-great-grandmother.”
“Why 1912?”
“We picked the year at random. All the same, Gideon thinks you may be falling into a trap.”
“A trap?”
Gideon said nothing, just glanced at me. And he did look worried.
“By the laws of logic, that’s as good as impossible,” said Mr. George.
“Why would anyone set a trap for us?”
Gideon leaned toward me. “Think about it: Lucy and Paul have the chronograph in their power, and ten of the twelve time travelers have already had their blood read into it. To close the Circle so that they can use it for themselves, they only need blood from you and me.”
“But … Lucy and Paul wanted to stop the Circle being closed and the secret from being revealed,” I said.
Once again Mr. George and Gideon exchanged a glance.
“That’s what your mother thinks,” said Mr. George.
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?”
