AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“As if I would touch you at all of my own free will! I’m doing it only because I have to,” groused Mr. Marley behind me. Gideon raised an eyebrow and gave me a sardonic smile.
I quickly smiled back just as sardonically, letting my glance wander as slowly as possible from the weird jacket down over the comical padded trunk-hose and his stockinged calves, all the way to the buckled shoes he was wearing.
“Auzenticity, young man!” Madame Rossini was still waving the stiff, pleated collar about. “’Ow often do I ’ave to tell you? Ah, ’ere is my leetle swan-necked beauty.” A broad smile spread over her round face. “Bonsoir, ma petite. Tell zat idiot not to make me so angry.”
“Okay, hand the thing over.” Gideon let Madame Rossini put the ruff around his neck. “Although I’m not likely to come face-to-face with anyone—and even if I did, I can’t imagine that people went about day and night wearing starched pie-frills like this.”
“Oh, yes, zey did—at least ze gentlemen at court.”
“I don’t know what’s bothering you. It really suits you,” I said with a mean grin. “Makes your head look like an enormous chocolate in its little paper case.”
“Yes, I know.” Gideon was grinning too. “Good enough to eat. But at least it takes people’s eyes off these trunk-hose. Or so I hope.”
“Zey are very, very sexy,” claimed Madame Rossini. I couldn’t help giggling.
“Glad to see I’ve cheered you up a bit,” said Gideon. “My cloak, please, Madame Rossini.”
I bit my lower lip to keep the giggles back. All I needed now was to be fooling around with this bastard as if nothing had happened! As if we were really friends. But it was too late.
In passing, he caressed my cheek, and it was so quick that I was incapable of any reaction. “Get well soon, Gwen.”
“Ah, zere ’e goes! At least ’e looks right for ’is adventure in ze time of Queen Elizabeth ze First, zat little rebel.” Madame Rossini was grinning. “But I am sure ’e will take ze ruff off on ze way, zat bad boy.”
I was staring after the bad boy myself. Hm … maybe the trunk-hose were just a tiny bit sexy after all.
“Come on, we have to go as well,” said Mr. Marley, taking my elbow and then letting go of it at once, as if it had burnt him. He kept several feet away from me on the way to the car. All the same, I heard him mutter, “Outrageous. She is definitely not my type.”
* * *
MY FEARS that Charlotte might have found the chronograph by now were unfounded. I’d underestimated my family’s ingenuity. When I arrived home, Nick was playing with a yo-yo outside my door.
“Only members allowed into HQ,” he said. “Password?”
“I’m the boss, remember?” I ruffled his red curls. “Yuck, is that chewing gum again?” Nick began to protest indignantly, but I took my chance to slip into my room.
I hardly recognized it. Aunt Maddy, called in by Mr. Bernard, who was probably still chasing from flower shop to flower shop, had spent all day in here, and she had given the room a little of her own special Aunt Maddy touch. I wasn’t exactly untidy, but all the same, my things, for some unknown reason, had a tendency to lie around covering all parts of the floor. Today, for the first time in a long while, you could see the rug again, and the bed was neatly made. Aunt Maddy had conjured up a pretty white bedspread from somewhere. My clothes lay neatly folded on a chair, loose sheets of paper, exercise books, and textbooks had been sorted and stacked on my desk, and even the pot with the dead fern on the windowsill had gone. Instead there was a beautiful flower arrangement there, smelling deliciously of freesias. Even Xemerius wasn’t dangling untidily from the ceiling light, but sitting decoratively on the chest of drawers with his dragon tail coiled around him, right beside a huge dish of candy.
“Gives the room a totally different feeling, doesn’t it?” he said. “I must say, your auntie knows something about feng shui.”
“Don’t worry, I haven’t thrown anything away,” said Aunt Maddy, who was sitting on the bed with a book. “I just cleared up a bit and did some dusting, so that I could make myself comfortable.”
I couldn’t help it, I had to give her a big kiss. “And I was worrying dreadfully all day.”
Xemerius nodded energetically. “You were right to worry. We’d hardly read ten pages—er, I mean, Aunt Maddy had hardly read ten pages, before Charlotte came slinking in,” he said. “She looked really surprised to see your auntie. But she made a quick recovery, claimed she wanted to borrow an eraser.”
Aunt Maddy told the same story. “Since I’d just tidied your desk, I was able to help her. Oh, and I sharpened your crayons and sorted them by color. Later she came back, saying it was to return the eraser. Then Nick and I took turns all afternoon. I had to go to the loo now and then, after all.”
“Five times, to be precise,” said Nick, who had followed me in.
“All that tea I drank,” she said apologetically.
“Oh, thank you, Aunt Maddy. You’ve both been wonderful.” I tousled Nick’s hair again.
Aunt Maddy laughed. “I like to make myself useful. And I told Violet that we’d have to meet in your room tomorrow.”
uo;d have loved a private word with him. But the doctor seemed to have forgotten me entirely, he was so deep in his conversation.
“Come along, Gwyneth,” I heard a sympathetic voice saying. Mr. George. “We’ll take you straight off to elapse, and after that, you can go home.”
