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SURPRISINGLY, it was a peaceful, comfortable evening, because my grandmother and Aunt Glenda and Charlotte had gone to the opera.
“Tosca,” said Great-aunt Maddy, sounding pleased, and she shook her blond curls. “Let’s hope they come home feeling edified.” She gave me a mischievous wink. “Good thing Violet had the tickets available.”
I looked inquiringly around at everyone. It turned out that Great-aunt Maddy’s friend (a nice old lady by the beautiful name of Mrs. Violet Purpleplum, who always knitted us scarves and socks for Christmas) had been going to the opera with her son and her future daughter-in-law, but now it turned out that the future daughter-in-law was going to be someone else’s future daughter-in-law instead.
We all immediately relaxed, as usual when Lady Arista and Aunt Glenda were out of the house. It was a bit like being in elementary school when the teacher leaves the classroom. Even in the middle of supper, I had to jump up and show my brother and sister, Great-aunt Maddy, Mum, and Mr. Bernard how Puffylips and Charlotte had taught me to dance the minuet and flutter a fan, and Xemerius prompted me if I forgot anything. Looking back, I thought it was more comic than tragic myself, and I could see why the others were so amused. After a while, they were all dancing (except for Mr. Bernard, and even he was tapping the toe of his shoe in time to our rhythm), talking through their noses like Mr. Giordano, and telling each other, “Stupid thing! See how Charlotte does it!” and “Right! No, right is where your thumb is on the left!” and “I can see your teeth! That’s unpatriotic!”
Nick demonstrated twenty-three ways of communicating without words by fanning himself with a napkin. “This one means oops, your fly is open, sir, and if you lower the fan a little and look at someone over the top of it, it means wow, I’d like to marry you. But if you do it the other way around, it means ha ha, we are now at war with Spain.”
Nick showed a lot of acting talent, you had to give him that. Finally Caroline kicked her legs so high while she was dancing—it was more of a cancan than a minuet—that one of her shoes flew off and landed in what was left of the Bavarian cream we’d had for pudding.
That sobered us up a little, until Mr. Bernard fished the shoe out the dish, put it on Caroline’s plate, and said with a perfectly straight face, “I’m glad there’s plenty of that pudding left. Miss Charlotte and the ladies are sure to want a little something to eat when they get home from the opera.”
My great-aunt beamed at him. “You’re always so thoughtful, dear Mr. Bernard!”
“It is my duty to look after you all,” said Mr. Bernard. “I promised your brother I would before his death.”
I looked thoughtfully at the two of them. “I wonder if Grandpa ever told you anything about a Green Rider, Mr. Bernard? Or you, Aunt Maddy?”
Aunt Maddy shook her head. “Green Rider? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ve no idea,” I said. “I know I have to find him, that’s all.”
“If I want to look for something, I usually go to your grandfather’s library,” said Mr. Bernard, and his owlish brown eyes looked very bright behind his glasses. “I have always found what I want there. If you need help, I know my way around the library very well, because I’m the one who dusts the books.”
“That’s a good idea, dear Mr. Bernard,” said Great-aunt Maddy.
“Always at your service, ma’am.” Mr. Bernard put more wood on the fire before wishing us good night.
Xemerius followed him. “I want to see if he takes his glasses off when he goes to sleep,” he said. “And I’ll tell you if he steals out of the house at night to play bass in a heavy-metal band.”
My brother and sister were really supposed to go to bed early during the week, but today my mother let them stay up. After laughing till we were worn out, we settled down in front of the fire. Caroline cuddled up in Mum’s arms, Nick nestled against me, and Great-aunt Maddy sat in Lady Arista’s wing chair, blew a blond curl away from her face, and looked at us contentedly.
“Will you tell us about the old days, Aunt Maddy?” asked Caroline. “When you were a little girl, and you had to visit your horrible cousin Hazel in the country?”
“Oh, you’ve heard that so often already,” said Aunt Maddy, putting her pink felt slippers on the footstool. But she didn’t take much persuading. All her stories about her horrible cousin Hazel began “Hazel was about the most conceited girl you can imagine,” and then we would say in chorus, “Just like Charlotte!” and Great-aunt Maddy would shake her head and say, “No, Hazel was much, much worse. She picked up cats by their tails and swung them around her head.”
As I rested my chin on Nick’s hair and listened to the story, in which Aunt Maddy, aged ten, avenged all the tortured cats in Gloucestershire by tipping Cousin Hazel into a pool of liquid manure, my thoughts went to Gideon. Where was he now? What was he doing? Who was with him? And was he maybe thinking of me, too—with that odd, warm feeling somewhere deep inside? Probably not.
I suppressed a deep sigh, with difficulty, as I thought of the moment when we parted outside Madame Rossini’s sewing room. Gideon hadn’t so much as looked at me again, even though only a few minutes earlier, we’d been kissing.
Again. Although I’d sworn over the phone to Lesley last night that it would never happen again. “Not until we’ve finally decided just what’s going on between us.”
Lesley had only laughed. “Oh, come on, who do you think you’re kidding? It’s obvious what’s going on. You’re head over heels in love with the guy!”
But how could I be in love with a boy I’d only known for a few days? A boy whose behavior was impossible most of the time? Although at those moments when it wasn’t he was just so … so … so incredibly—
“Here I am!” crowed Xemerius, landing in sweeping style on the dining-room table next to the candle. Caroline, who was sitting on Mum’s lap, gave a small start of surprise and stared his way.
“What’s the matter, Caroline?” I asked quietly.
“Oh, nothing,” she said. “I thought I saw a shadow, that’s all.”
“Really?” I looked at Xemerius in surprise.
He just shrugged one shoulder and grinned. “It’s nearly full moon. Sensitive people can sometimes see us then, usually just out of the corners of their eyes. Then if they look more closely, we’re not there at all.” Now he was dangling from the chandelier again. “That old lady with the golden curls sees and senses more than she’s letting on. When I put a claw on her shoulder, just to find out what would happen, she reached up to the place … not that that surprises me, in your family.”
I looked lovingly at Caroline. A sensitive child—not that she’d inherited Great-aunt Maddy’s talent for seeing visions.
