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“Not to Win but to T-take Part,” I stammered.
“Gwyneth Shepherd?” he stammered back.
I nodded. “How do you know?”
The young man took a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket and held it out to me. He looked just as excited as I felt. He was wearing suspenders and a small pair of round-rimmed glasses; his fair hair had a side parting and was combed back with a lot of hair cream. He could have been in one of those old gangster films as the precociously clever but harmless assistant to the hard-boiled chain-smoking detective who falls for the gangster’s moll, the girl with all those feather boas who always gets shot in the end.
I calmed down slightly and looked around. There was no one else in the room, and no sign of Xemerius. He might be able to walk through walls, but he obviously couldn’t travel in time.
Hesitating briefly, I picked up the piece of paper. It was yellowed, a sheet out of a notebook torn hastily out of the perforations. The message scrawled on it, in surprisingly familiar handwriting, said
For Lord Lucas Montrose—important!!!
12 August 1948, 12 noon, the alchemical laboratory. Please come alone.
Gwyneth Shepherd
My heart began beating faster. Lord Lucas Montrose was my grandfather! He’d died when I was ten. I looked at the curving lines of the two capital Ls. No doubt about it, unfortunately; the scrawly writing was exactly like mine. But how could it be?
I looked up at the young man. “Where did you get this? And who are you?”
“Did you write that?”
“Maybe,” I said, and my thoughts began frantically going around in circles. If I’d written it, how come I couldn’t remember writing it? “Where did you get it?”
“I’ve had it for five years. Someone put it in my coat pocket along with a letter. On the day of the ceremony for admission to the Second Degree. The letter said, He who keeps secrets ought also to know the secret behind the secret. Show not only that you can keep quiet, but that you can also think. No signature. It was in different handwriting from the note, it was—er—rather elegant old-fashioned handwriting.”
I bit my lower lip. “I don’t understand.”
“Nor do I. All these years, I’ve thought it was some kind of test,” said the young man. “Another exam, so to speak. I never talked to anyone about it. I was always waiting for someone to mention it to me or drop more hints. But nothing of that kind happened. And today I stole down here and waited. I wasn’t really expecting anything at all. But then you materialized out of nowhere right in front of me, just like that. At twelve noon on the dot. Why did you write me that note? Why are we meeting down in this remote cellar? And what year do you come from?”
“Two thousand eleven,” I said. “Sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t know the answers to those other questions myself.” I cleared my throat. “So who are you, then?”
“Oh, sorry. My name is Lucas Montrose. No Lord. Adept Second Degree.”
My mouth was suddenly dry. “Lucas Montrose of 81 Bourdon Place.”
The young man nodded. “That’s where my parents live, yes.”
“In that case…” I stared at him and took a deep breath. “In that case, you’re my grandfather.”
“Oh, not again,” said the young man, sighing heavily. Then he pulled himself together, moved away from the wall, dusted down one of the chairs stacked on top of each other in a corner of the room, and offered it to me. “Why don’t we sit down? My legs feel like rubber.”
“Mine too,” I admitted, sinking onto the upholstered seat. Lucas took another chair and sat down opposite me.
“So you’re my granddaughter?” He grinned faintly. “You know, that’s a funny idea for me. I’m not even married. Strictly speaking, I’m not even engaged.”
“How old are you, then? Oh, sorry, I ought to know that. Born 1924—that makes you twenty-four in 1948.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll be twenty-four in three months’ time. And how old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Just like Lucy.”
Lucy. I thought of what she’d called after me when we were on the run from Lady Tilney’s house.
I still couldn’t believe that I was sitting in front of my own grandfather. I looked for any likeness to the man who used to tell me exciting stories while I sat on his lap. Who had protected me from Charlotte when she said I was trying to show off by telling ghost stories. But young Lucas Montrose’s smooth face didn’t seem at all like the wrinkled, lined face of the old man I’d known. I did see a likeness to my mum, though—the blue eyes, the firm curve of his chin, the way he was smiling now. I closed my eyes, feeling that all this was simply … well, too much for me.
