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EMILY DICKINSON
FIFTEEN
“STEP ON IT, old chap!” cried Xemerius. “High time for a showdown with the baddie!”
I was in the passenger seat of Gideon’s Mini, with Xemerius on my lap, as Gideon threaded his way through the early afternoon traffic in the Strand.
“Shut up,” I hissed at Xemerius. “The count can wait forever as far as I’m concerned.”
“What did you say?” Gideon cast me an inquiring glance.
“Oh, nothing.” I stared out of the window. “Gideon, do you really think our idea will work?” My cheerful mood of this morning had worn off, to be replaced by a nail-biting uneasiness that left me feeling trembly.
Gideon shrugged his shoulders. “At least it’s better than—what did you call it?—the rough plan of action that was all we had before.”
“I didn’t call it that, it was Lesley,” I corrected him. For a moment, we were both lost in our own thoughts. Our meeting with Lucy and Paul had shaken us both. And I hadn’t realized how much time travel can take out of you until, on the way back, we arrived right in the middle of a choir practice and had to run for it pursued by several seventy-year-old screeching sopranos. But at least we were now forearmed for our meeting with Count Saint-Germain. It was Lucy who had come up with the brainwave, and that brainwave was also the reason for the aforesaid nail-biting uneasiness.
“Watch what you’re doing, laddie!” cried Xemerius, covering his eyes with his paws. “That was a red light!”
Gideon stepped on the gas and failed to give way to a taxi before turning right toward the Guardians’ headquarters. A little later, he was coming to a halt in the parking lot, tires squealing. He turned to me and put his hands on my shoulders. “Gwyneth,” he began in a serious voice, “whatever happens, I want you to know that—”
He got no farther. At that moment, the door on my side of the car was flung open. I was about to turn and give the unspeakable Mr. Marley a piece of my mind, but it was Mr. George, looking anxious and running his hand over his shiny bald patch. “Gideon, Gwyneth, at last!” he said reproachfully. “You’re over an hour late.”
“The later the evening, the better the party,” crowed Xemerius, hopping off my lap. I glanced at Gideon, sighed, and got out.
“Come along, children,” Mr. George urged us, taking my arm. “Everything’s ready for you.”
“Everything” meant a dream of a dress for me, combining cream embroidery and lace with velvet and brocade in a cool shade of gold, and a colorfully embroidered coat for Gideon.
“Are those monkeys on it?” Gideon stared at the embroidery on the coat as if it were drenched in prussic acid.
“Yes, zey are capuchin monkeys, to be precise.” Madame Rossini beamed at Gideon, and assured him that exotic animal embroidery motifs were the latest thing in 1782. She started getting up a good head of steam to tell us how much time it had taken her to generate the embroidery data files on the model of original patterns, so that her sewing machine could follow them, but Mr. George stopped her in her tracks. He had been waiting at the door, staring at his gold watch. I had no idea why he was in such a hurry. After all, it didn’t make any difference to the count how late it was here.
o;And I can’t understand how come I’m really doing this,” said Gideon, getting Lesley’s backpack on. He had put the vaccination kit into it. “We’re breaking all the Golden Rules at once. Come on, Gwenny, you first.”
I knelt beside him and smiled at him. He’d refused to put on his sea-green eighteenth-century clothes for this expedition, although I’d tried to explain that he’d scare James in his ordinary things. Or even worse, James wouldn’t take us seriously.
“Thank you for doing this for me,” I said all the same, putting my finger into the compartment under the ruby.
“That’s okay,” said Gideon, and then his face blurred before my eyes. When I could see properly again, I was kneeling on wet leaves among a lot of fallen chestnuts. I quickly stood up and put Raphael’s shoe down where I had landed.
It was pouring with rain, and there wasn’t a soul in sight. Only a squirrel scurried up to the top of the tree and looked curiously at us.
Gideon had landed beside me and was looking around. “Hm,” he said, mopping rain off his face. “Perfect weather for riding and vaccination, I’d say.”
“We’ll lie in wait behind that bush,” I suggested. For once, I was the one to take Gideon’s hand and lead him on.
He was reluctant. “Only for ten minutes,” he insisted. “If he doesn’t turn up by then, we’re going back to Raphael’s shoe.”
“Yes, yes,” I said.
There really was already a bridge over the narrow part of the lake at this time, although it didn’t look at all like the one I knew. A coach rattled by on the road around the park. And a single horseman was coming over the bridge from the opposite bank at a brisk trot. On a gray horse.
“There he is!” I cried, and began waving for all I was worth. “James! Here I am!”
“How about making yourself even more conspicuous?” asked Gideon.
James, who was wearing a coat with several rows of capes and a kind of three-cornered hat with rain dripping from its brim, brought his horse to a halt a few yards away from us. His eyes wandered over my wet hair and down to the hem of my dress, and then he inspected Gideon.
