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“We’ll go on our own from here,” he said as we reached the foot of the stairs, where the two guards were standing with their swords drawn. “Give the count my regards! Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare.”
The two Guardians let us pass, and the secretary bowed a good-bye. Gideon took a torch out of its holder and made me go on. “Come along, we have another two minutes at the most!” He seemed to be in high spirits, if untidy. “Have you worked out yet what the password means?”
“No,” I said, surprised at myself to find that my heart, having grown back, refused to fall into the ravine again. It was acting as if everything was all right, and the hope that after all my heart might not be wrong was almost too much for me. “But I did find out something else. Whose blood is that on your sword?”
“He who does not know how to dissimulate does not know how to rule,” said Gideon, holding up the torch to show us the way around the next corner. “Louis XI.”
“Very suitable, I’m sure,” I said.
“To be honest, I haven’t the faintest idea of the name of the man who got his blood all over these clothes. Madame Rossini is going to throw a fit.” Gideon opened the laboratory door, and put the torch in a holder on the wall. By its flickering light, I saw a large table covered with strange apparatus, glass bottles, little flasks, and beakers filled with liquids and powders in many different colors. The walls were in shadow, but I could see that they were almost entirely covered by diagrams and writing, and just above the torch, a roughly sketched death’s-head with pentagrams instead of eyes was grinning at us.
“Come over here,” said Gideon, leading me around to the other side of the table. Then he let go of my hand at last. But only to put both his own hands on my waist and draw me close to him. “How did your conversation with the count go?”
“It was very … enlightening,” I said. The phantom heart in my breast was fluttering like a small bird, and I swallowed the lump in my throat. “The count explained how you … you and he share the same weird opinion that a woman is easier to control if she’s in love. It must have been really annoying to put in all that strenuous work on Charlotte and then have to begin again at the beginning with me, wasn’t it?”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Gideon looked at me, frowning.
“You did it really well, all the same,” I went on. “The count thinks so, too, by the way. Of course you didn’t have a particularly difficult time with me.… My God, I’m so ashamed when I think how easy I made it for you.” I couldn’t look at him anymore.
“Gwyneth—” He interrupted himself. “Look, we’ll be traveling back any minute. Maybe we should continue this conversation later. In peace and quiet. I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re getting at.…”
“I only want to know whether it’s true,” I said. Of course it was true, but as everyone knows, hope dies hard. I was getting the familiar feeling that we were about to travel forward in time again. “Whether you really planned to make me fall in love with you—the same as you did with Charlotte before me.”
Gideon let go of me. “This isn’t the moment,” he said. “Gwyneth. We’ll talk about it when we get back. I promise you.”
“No! Now.” The knots tying up my throat broke apart, and my tears began to flow. “Just say yes or no—that’ll do. Did you plan it all?”
Gideon was rubbing his forehead. “Gwen—”
“Yes or no?” I sobbed.
“Yes,” said Gideon, “but—oh, please stop crying.”
And for the second time that day, my heart—only this time its second edition, the phantom heart that had grown out of sheer hope—fell over the precipice and smashed into thousands of tiny little pieces at the bottom of the ravine. “Okay, that’s really all I wanted to know. Thanks for being so honest.”
s still smiling that warm, kindly smile. “My dear, it is important to learn early that no woman can claim rights of any kind over a man. Women who do so end up unloved and lonely. The cleverer a woman is, the sooner she will come to terms with the nature of men.”
What stupid twaddle!
“Ah, but of course you are still very young, are you not? Much younger, it seems to me, than other girls of your own age. You have probably just fallen in love for the first time.”
“No,” I muttered.
Yes, though. Yes! Or at least it felt like the first time. It was so special. So necessary to me. So painful. So sweet.
The count laughed quietly. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I would be disappointed if it were otherwise.”
He had said the same thing at the soirée, when I burst into tears at the sound of Gideon’s violin playing.
“Fundamentally, it is very simple: a woman in love would not hesitate to die for the object of her affections,” said the count. “Would you give your life for Gideon?”
Well, I’d rather not. “I’ve never thought about it,” I said, confused.
The count sighed. “Regrettably—and thanks to the dubious motives of your mother in protecting you—you and Gideon have not yet spent very much time together, but I am already impressed to see how well he has played his part. Love positively shines out of your eyes. Love and jealousy!”
Played what part?
“Nothing is easier to calculate than the reactions of a woman in love. No one is more easily controlled than a woman whose actions are determined by her feelings for a man,” the count went on. “I explained that to Gideon the very first time we met. Of course I am a little sorry that he wasted so much energy on your cousin—what is her name again? Charlotte?”
