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“Only making polite conversation,” I said. I’d picked up that expression from James. “So what are you going to study?”
“Medicine.” He sounded a bit embarrassed.
I bit back a surprised “oh!” and looked out the window again. Medicine. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting.
“Was that your boyfriend at school today?”
“What? Who?” I looked at him, taken aback.
“That guy behind you with his hand on your shoulder.” It sounded perfectly casual, almost as if he wasn’t interested.
“You mean Gordon Gelderman? God, no!”
“So if he’s not your boyfriend, how come he can touch you?”
“He can’t. To be honest, I hadn’t noticed he was doing it.” I hadn’t noticed because I was fully occupied watching Gideon exchanging sweet nothings with Charlotte. The memory made me blush furiously. He’d kissed her. Or almost.
“Why are you going red? Because of this Gordon Gallahan?”
“Gelderman,” I corrected him.
“Whatever. He looked like an idiot.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “He sounds like an idiot too,” I said. “And he’s useless at kissing.”
“I wasn’t actually asking for the precise details.” Gideon bent down to retie his shoelaces. When he straightened up again, he crossed his arms and looked out the window. “Here we are, look. Belgrave Road. Excited by the idea of meeting your great-great-grandmother?”
“Yes, very.” I immediately forgot what we’d just been talking about. How strange all this was. The great-great-grandmother I was about to visit was some years younger than Mum.
She’d obviously married someone rich, because when the cab stopped outside the address in Eaton Place, it was a very posh house. And the butler who opened the door to us was posh too. Even more so than Mr. Bernard. He was actually wearing white gloves!
He examined us suspiciously when Gideon handed him a card and said we were paying a surprise teatime call. He was sure, said Gideon, that his good friend Lady Tilney would be very pleased to hear that Gwyneth Shepherd had come to visit her.
“I suspect he doesn’t think you’re posh enough,” I said as the butler disappeared with the visiting card. “No hat and no side-whiskers.”
“No mustache either,” said Gideon. “Lord Tilney has one from ear to ear. See that portrait of him in front of us?”
“Wow,” I said. My great-great-grandmother had weird taste in men. It was the kind of mustache you’d have to put in curlers at night.
“Suppose she just gets the butler to say she’s not at home?” I asked. “Maybe she doesn’t want to see you again so soon.”
“‘So soon’ is good—as far as she’s concerned the last time was eighteen years ago.”
“As long as that?” A tall, slim woman with her red hair piled up in a style not unlike mine was standing on the stairs. She looked like Lady Arista, but thirty years younger. I saw, to my surprise, that the upright way she walked was just like Lady Arista as well.
When she stopped in front of me, neither of us said anything, we were so absorbed in looking at each other. I could see a trace of Mum in my great-great-grandmother. I don’t know what or whom Lady Tilney saw in me, but she nodded and smiled, as if satisfied with the way I looked.
Gideon waited for a while, and then he said, “Lady Tilney, I still want to make the same request as I did eighteen years ago. We need a little of your blood.”
“And I still say what I said eighteen years ago. You are not having any of my blood.” She turned to him. “However, I can offer you tea, although it’s still a little early. But we can talk better over a cup of tea.”
“Then in any case, we would be delighted to take a cup of tea with you,” said Gideon, laying on the charm.
We followed my great-great-grandmother up the stairs to a room on the street side of the house. There was a small round table by the window laid for three with plates, cups, cutlery, bread, butter and jam, and in the middle a platter of scones and wafer-thin cucumber sandwiches.
“It looks almost as if you were expecting us,” I said, while Gideon took a good look around the room.
She smiled again. “It does, doesn’t it? One might think so. But in fact I am expecting some other guests. Do please sit down.”
