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“Shh, my leetle swan-necked beauty,” said Madame Rossini. “What do you think zey pay me for ’ere? For you to wear ze same dress twice?” She concentrated on doing up the little buttons at the back. “I am only sorry you ’ave ruined ze ’airstyle. In ze Rococo age, a work of art like that ’ad to last for days. Ze ladies slept sitting up on purpose.”
“Well, I could hardly have gone to school with it piled up like that,” I said. I’d probably have got stuck in the door of the bus. “Is Giordano helping Gideon to get dressed?”
Madame Rossini clicked her tongue. “Huh! Zat boy say ’e does not need ’elp. Meaning ’e will wear dull colors again and take no care with ’is cravat. But I ’ave given ’im up! Now, what can we do with your ’air? I will get ze curling wand, and zen we will simply put a ribbon in it, et bien!”
While Madame Rossini worked on my hair with the curling wand, I had a text message from Lesley. “Will wait another two minutes. If le petit français isn’t here then, he can forget about mignonne.”
I texted back. “Your date isn’t for another fifteen minutes. At least give him ten!”
But I didn’t get an answer back, because Madame Rossini took the mobile away from me to take the now-obligatory souvenir photos. The pink suited me better than I’d expected (it wasn’t my color at all in real life), but my hair looked as if I’d spent the night with my fingers plugged into an electric socket. The pink ribbon threaded through it looked like a vain attempt to tame my exploding curls. When Gideon arrived to collect me, he burst out laughing.
“You can stop zat! We might just as well laugh at you!” Madame Rossini snapped at him. “Ha! What do you zink you look like?”
Oh, wow, what did he look like? There ought to be a law against looking so good—even in silly dark knee-breeches and an embroidered bottle-green coat that made his eyes shine.
“You ’ave no idea of fashion, young man! Or you would ’ave put on ze emerald brooch zat go with zat outfit. And zat sword—you are supposed to be a gentleman, not a soldier!”
“I’m sure you’re right,” said Gideon, still laughing. “But at least my hair doesn’t look like those wire-wool pads I use to scour my pans.”
I did my best to look haughty. “The wire-wool pads you use to scour your pans? Aren’t you mixing yourself up with Charlotte?”
“What?”
“I thought she was cleaning up your apartment these days.”
Gideon looked a little embarrassed. “That’s … that’s not quite correct,” he muttered.
“Huh! In your place I’d feel bad about it too,” I said. “Give me the hat, please, Madame Rossini.” The hat, a monstrous creation crowned with pale pink feathers, would at least look better than that hair. Or so I thought. A glance in the mirror showed that I’d made an unfortunate mistake.
Gideon was still laughing.
“Can we get moving now?” I asked crossly.
“Take care of my leetle swan-necked beauty, do you ’ear me?”
“Don’t I always, Madame Rossini?”
“You must be joking,” I said, out in the corridor. I pointed to the black scarf he was holding. “No blindfold today?”
“No, we can do without that. For reasons we both know,” Gideon replied. “And because of the hat.”
“Do you still think I’m about to lure you around a corner and hit you over the head with something?” I straightened my hat. “And by the way, I’ve been thinking about that again, and it’s my belief that there’s a perfectly simple explanation for the whole thing.”
“Which is?” Gideon raised his eyebrows.
“You imagined it all after the event. While you were lying unconscious, you were dreaming about me, and so you decided later that it was all my fault.”
“Yes, that possibility has occurred to me, too,” he said, to my surprise. Then he took my hand and made me walk on. “But, no, I know what I saw.”
“So why didn’t you tell anyone that—apparently—I had lured you into a trap?”
“I didn’t want them to think even worse of you than they do already.” He grinned. “Well … do you have a headache?”
“I didn’t really drink all that much,” I said.
Gideon laughed. “No, sure. Basically you were stone cold sober.”
I shook his hand off. “Could we please talk about something else?”
