“Just a moment, please.” I gave his younger version a friendly smile. “There’s something I have to clear up here. I’ll be back soon.”
But obviously neither the older nor the younger Gideon felt like any explanations. While the younger one followed me, trying to grab my arm, the older one didn’t wait for him to see around the corner, but leaped forward and struck his alter ego on the forehead with the full weight of his flashlight. The younger Gideon fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
“You hurt him!” I knelt down and looked at the bleeding wound, horrified.
“He’ll survive,” said the other Gideon, unmoved. “Come on, no time to waste! The letter’s already been handed over. He,” he said, giving himself a slight kick, “was already on his way back when he met you.”
I paid no attention to him, but stroked his unconscious younger self’s hair. “You hit yourself on the head! Do you remember how horrible you were to me about that?”
Gideon grinned faintly. “Yes, I do. And I’m really sorry. But who’d ever expect a thing like that? Come on! Before that idiot wakes up again. He delivered the letter ages ago.” Then he said something in French. I suspected that it consisted of hearty curses because, as with Raphael just now, the word merde featured several times.
“Now, now, now, young man,” said a voice quite close to us. “We may be close to the sewage system down here, but that’s no reason to use the language of the sewers so freely.”
Gideon had spun around, but he didn’t look as if he had plans to knock out the new arrival as well as his earlier self. Maybe because the voice had sounded kindly and amused. I raised my flashlight and shone it on a middle-aged stranger’s face, and then from there on down, in case he was pointing a pistol at us. He wasn’t.
“I’m Dr. Harrison.” He introduced himself with a little bow, while his eyes, intrigued, went back and forth from Gideon’s face to the Gideon lying on the ground. “And I’ve just retrieved your letter from our adept on duty during the Cerberus Watch.” He took an envelope with a large red seal on it out of his jacket. “Lady Tilney has assured me that it must not on any account fall into the hands of the Grand Master or any other members of the Inner Circle. Apart from me, that is.”
Gideon sighed and rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. “We were on our way to prevent that very thing, but getting through all these passages took too long … and then, idiot that I am, I managed to cross my own path.” He took the letter and stuffed it into his pocket. “Thank you.”
“A de Villiers admitting to a mistake?” Dr. Harrison laughed quietly. “Well, that’s something new. But fortunately Lady Tilney has taken charge, and I have never yet known one of her plans to fail. Furthermore, arguing with her is entirely useless.” He pointed to the Gideon lying on the floor. “Does he need help?”
“It couldn’t hurt to disinfect that wound and put something soft under the back of his head,” I said, but Gideon interrupted me. “Nonsense, he’ll be fine!” Taking no notice of my protests, he pulled me to my feet. “We must get back now. Please give Lady Tilney our regards, Dr. Harrison. And tell her I’m very grateful.”
“A pleasure,” said Dr. Harrison. He was about to turn and walk away, but then something else occurred to me.
“Oh, Dr. Harrison,” I said, “could you please tell Lady Tilney not to be scared if I come to see her in the future when she’s elapsing?”
Dr. Harrison nodded. “Certainly.” He waved to us, said, “Good luck!” and then hurried away.
I was just calling, “Good-bye!” after him when Gideon tugged me in the other direction again. He left his unconscious alter ego lying all alone in the passage.
“I’m sure this place is teeming with rats,” I said, shaken by pity. “And they’re attracted to blood.”
“You’re confusing them with sharks,” said Gideon. But then he suddenly stopped, turned to me, and took me in his arms. “I’m so sorry!” he murmured into my hair. “I was such a fool! It would serve me right if a rat did come along to nibble me.”
I immediately forgot everything around us (come to that, everything else in general), flung my arms around his neck, and began kissing him, first only where I could get at him at that moment—his throat, his ear, his temple—and then his mouth. He pulled me closer, only to push me away again three seconds later.
“We really don’t have time for this now, Gwenny!” he said abruptly, and he reached for my hand and led me on.
I sighed. Several times. Very deeply. But Gideon didn’t say anything. Two passages farther on, when he stopped and took out the map, I couldn’t stand it anymore and asked, “Is it because I don’t kiss properly?”
“What?” Gideon looked at me over the top of the map, apparently baffled.
“I’m an absolute disaster at kissing, right?” I tried to suppress the hysterical note in my voice, but I didn’t succeed too well. “You see, before this I never … I mean, to do it properly must take time and experience. Films don’t tell you everything, you see! And it kind of hurts when you push me away.”
Gideon lowered the map, and the beam of his flashlight went down to the floor. “Gwenny, listen—”
“Yes, I know we’re in a hurry,” I interrupted him. “But I just have to say it. Anything would be better than pushing me away or … or calling a taxi. I can take criticism. Or at least, I can if you put it nicely.”
“Sometimes you really are…” Gideon shook his head. Then he took a deep breath and said seriously, “When you kiss me, Gwyneth, I feel I’m losing touch with the ground. I don’t know how you do it or where you learnt the trick of it. If it was from a film, well, we just have to go and see it together.” He stopped for a moment. “What I really want to say is, when you kiss me, all I want is to feel you and hold you in my arms. Hell, I’m so in love with you that it feels like someone had emptied a can of gasoline somewhere inside me and set fire to it! But right now, we can’t … we have to keep a cool head. Or one of us, anyway.” The look he gave me finally put an end to my doubts. “Gwenny, all this terrifies me. Without you, there’d be no sense in my life anymore.… I’d want to die if anything happened to you.”
I tried smiling at him, but suddenly I had a huge lump in my throat. “Gideon—” I began, but he didn’t let me finish.
“I don’t want … well, it mustn’t be the same with you, Gwenny. Because the count can use feelings like that against us. And he will!”
“It’s far too late for you to say that,” I whispered. “I love you. And I wouldn’t want to go on living without you.”
Gideon looked as if he’d burst into tears next moment. He took my hand and almost crushed it. “Then we can only hope that the count never, never, never finds that out.”
“And let’s hope we can still think up our brilliant plan,” I said. “So let’s not hang around here any longer. We’re in a hurry.”
* * *
“QUARTER OF AN HOUR, not a minute longer!” said Gideon. He was kneeling in front of the chronograph on the picnic rug that we had spread on the grass in Hyde Park, not far from the Serpentine Gallery and with a view of the lake and the bridge. Although it looked like being as fine a spring day as yesterday, it was still freezing cold, and the grass was wet with dew. Joggers and dog walkers passed by, some of them looking curiously at our little group.
“But a quarter of an hour isn’t long enough!” I said, as I strapped on the hooped framework with its padding at the hips. It would make sure that my dress billowed out around me like a ship in full sail and didn’t drag on the ground, and it had been my reason for bringing the outsize traveling bag along this morning instead of a backpack. “Suppose he arrives late?” Or not at all. That was what I secretly feared most. “I’m sure clocks didn’t keep particularly good time in the eighteenth century.”
“Then it’s just his bad luck,” growled Gideon. “This is a crazy idea anyway. And today of all days!”
“For once he’s right,” said Xemerius, sounding tired. He hopped into the traveling bag, laid his head on his paws, and yawned widely. “Wake me when you get back. I definitely got up too early this morning.” Soon after that, I heard a snore from the bag.
Lesley carefully put the dress over my head. It was the flowered blue dress that I’d worn for my first meeting with the count, and it had been hanging in my wardrobe ever since. “There’d be plenty of time to meet James later,” she said. “For him, it will always be the same time on the same day, whenever it is here that you set out to visit him.” She began doing up the little hooks behind my back.
“The same applied to keeping that letter from being delivered,” I contradicted her. “That didn’t have to be done today, either. Gideon could have hit himself over the head on Tuesday, for instance, or in August next year—it would have come to the same thing. Apart from which, Lady Tilney has taken charge at her end.”
“It always makes me feel dizzy when you lot bring up these ideas,” complained Raphael.
“I simply wanted to get it done and over with before we next meet Lucy and Paul,” said Gideon. “Surely that’s not so hard to understand.”
“And I want to get vaccinating James over and done with,” I said, adding in dramatic tones, “then if anything happens to us, at least we’ll have saved his life!”
“Are you two really going to disappear and reappear in front of all these people?” asked Raphael. “Don’t you think it’ll get into the newspapers and people will want to interview you on TV?”
Lesley shook her head. “Nonsense,” she said firmly. “We’re a good way from the path, and they won’t be gone long. Only the dogs will notice anything.” Xemerius’s snoring changed pitch.
“But remember to start back from exactly the same place where you landed,” Lesley went on. “Tell you what, mark the place with one of these nice shoes.” She handed me one of the shoes that Raphael had been wearing, and beamed at me. “This is fun! I want to do it every day from now on, please!”
“I don’t,” said Raphael, looking down for a moment at his socks, wiggling his toes gloomily, and then staring back at the path. “My nerves are stretched to breaking point. In the Tube just now, I was sure we were being followed. It would be only logical for the Guardians to have someone shadowing us. And if anyone comes along to take the chronograph away from Lesley and me, I can’t even kick him properly with no shoes on!”
“He’s a bit paranoid,” Lesley whispered to me.
“I heard that,” said Raphael. “And it’s not true. I’m only being cautious.”