Sapphire Blue (23 page)

The room began going around and around, then I was blinking at a bright light, swaying slightly on my feet, and Mr. Whitman said, “Ah, there you two are.”

Gideon put his flashlight on the table and cast me a brief glance. Maybe I was imagining it, but this time I thought there was something like sympathy in his eyes. I surreptitiously wiped my face once more, but all the same, Mr. Whitman could see I’d been crying. There was no one else here. Xemerius had probably felt bored and gone away.

“What’s the matter, Gwyneth?” asked Mr. Whitman, in the kindly tone he used to suggest that he was a teacher to be trusted. “Is something wrong?” If I hadn’t known better, I might have been tempted to indulge in more tears and pour out my heart to him. (“Horrible, horrible Gideon has been so, soooo nasty to me!”) But I knew him too well. He’d sounded just the same last week when he asked us who had drawn the caricature of Mrs. Counter on the board. “I’d certainly say that the artist has talent,” he had said, with a smile of amusement. So Cynthia (of course!) told him Maggie had done it, and Mr. Whitman had stopped smiling and entered a bad mark against Maggie’s name in the class register. “I meant it about the talent, by the way,” he had added. “Your talent for getting yourself into trouble, Maggie, is truly remarkable.”

“Well?” he said now, with the same sympathetic and trustworthy smile. But I definitely wasn’t falling for that one.

“A rat,” I muttered. “You said there weren’t any … and then the lightbulb gave out, and you hadn’t given me a flashlight, and there I was all alone in the dark with that horrible rat.” I very nearly added “I’m going to tell my mum,” but I managed to stop myself just in time.

Mr. Whitman looked a little distressed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We’ll remember that next time.” Then he went back to his usual instructive teacher’s tone. “You’ll be taken home now, and I recommend you go to bed early. Tomorrow is going to be a strenuous day for you.”

“I’ll take her to the car,” said Gideon, picking up the black scarf that they always used to blindfold me. “Where’s Mr. George?”

“In a meeting,” said Mr. Whitman, frowning. “Gideon, I think you should consider your conversational tone. We let a good deal pass, because we know you’re not having an easy time at present, but you ought to show a little more respect for the members of the Inner Circle.”

Gideon’s face gave nothing away, but he said politely, “You’re right, Mr. Whitman. I’m sorry.” Then he held his hand out to me. “Coming?”

I almost took it, too. A pure reflex action. And it gave me a pang to think I couldn’t do it without losing face. I was on the point of bursting into tears again.

“Good night,” I said to Mr. Whitman, staring at the floor as hard as I could.

Gideon opened the door.

“See you tomorrow,” said Mr. Whitman. “And remember, both of you, plenty of sleep is the best preparation.”

The door closed behind us.

“All alone in a dark cellar with a horrible rat, were you?” said Gideon, grinning at me.

I could hardly make any sense of it. Nothing but cold looks from him for the last two days—and in fact for the last couple of hours, glances that almost made me freeze as stiff as a board, like those poor animals in the postwar winters. And now this? A joke, as if everything was the same as before? Maybe he was a sadist and couldn’t smile unless he’d been horrible to me first?

“Aren’t you going to blindfold me?” I wasn’t in any mood for more of his silly jokes, and I wanted him to know it.

Gideon shrugged. “I imagine you know the way by now. We can forget about the blindfold. Come on.” Another friendly grin.

This was my first sight of the cellar corridors in our own time. They were neatly plastered, with lights let into the walls, some of them with movement detectors. The way up again was well lit.

“Not very impressive, is it?” said Gideon. “All the corridors leading out of the cellars have special doors and alarm systems fitted, and these days it’s as safe as the Bank of England down here. But none of these security devices were fitted until the 1970s. Before that, you could go through half of London below the ground starting from here.”

“I’m not interested,” I said sullenly.

“What would you like to talk about, then?”

“Nothing.” How could he act as if nothing at all had happened? His silly grin and all this small talk made me truly furious. I walked faster, and although I kept my lips firmly compressed, I couldn’t keep the words from tumbling out of me. “I can’t do it, Gideon! I can’t make out the way you kiss me one moment and then act as if you loathed me like poison the next!”

Gideon said, after a brief pause, “I’d much rather be kissing you the whole time than loathing you, but you don’t exactly make it easy for me.”

“I haven’t done anything to you,” I said.

He stopped. “Oh, come off it, Gwyneth! You don’t seriously believe I’m swallowing that story about your grandfather? As if he just happened by chance to be in the room where you were elapsing! It’s as unlikely as Lucy and Paul just happening to be at Lady Tilney’s. Or those men attacking us in Hyde Park by chance.”

“Oh, of course, I fixed all that in person, because I’d always wanted to stick a sword through someone. Not forgetting that I wanted to see what a man looks like with half his face shot away!” I snapped.

“What you may do in the future, and why—”

“Oh, be quiet!” I cried, angrily. “I’m sick and tired of all this! Ever since last Monday, I’ve felt like I was living in a nightmare that’s never going to end. When I think I’ve woken up, I find I’m still dreaming. There are millions of questions that no one will answer going around in my head, and everyone expects me to do my best for something I don’t understand one little bit!” I was walking on again, almost running, but Gideon easily kept up with me. There was no one on the stairs to ask us for the password. Why bother, if all the ways in and out were as secure as Fort Knox? I went up the stairs two steps at a time. “No one asked me if I wanted to be involved in this at all. I have to be pestered by crazy dancing masters and have my dear cousin show me all the things she can do but I’ll never be able to learn, and you … you…”

Gideon shook his head. “Hey, can’t you put yourself in my position for a change?” He was losing his own temper now. “It’s the same for me! How would you act if you knew for certain that sooner or later, I was going to make sure someone attacked you and hit you over the head with a heavy instrument? In the circumstances, I don’t suppose you’d still think I was lovable and innocent, would you?”

“I don’t anyway!” I said firmly. “You know something? By now I could well imagine bringing that heavy instrument down on your head myself.”

“Well, there we are!” said Gideon, grinning again.

I just snorted angrily. We were passing Madame Rossini’s sewing room. Light fell out into the corridor from under the door; she was probably still at work on our costumes.

Gideon cleared his throat. “Like I said, I’m sorry. Can we talk to each other normally again?”

Normally!
That was a joke.

“So what are you planning to do this evening?” he asked in his best casually friendly tone.

“Oh, practice dancing the minuet, of course, and just before I go to sleep, I’ll think up sentences that don’t contain words like
Hoover
,
jogging
, and
heart transplant
,” I replied caustically. “How about you?”

Gideon looked at his watch. “I’m going to meet Charlotte and my little brother and then … well, we’ll see what we do. After all, it’s Saturday evening.”

Of course. They could do anything they liked. I’d had it up to here.

“Thank you for escorting me upstairs,” I said in as chilly a tone as I could muster. “I can find my way to the car by myself.”

“As it happens, I’m going the same way,” said Gideon. “And you can stop running. I’m supposed to avoid too much exertion. On Dr. White’s instructions.”

Even though I was so cross with him, my conscience did prick me, just for a moment. I took a surreptitious look at him. “Well, if someone hits you on the head with something around the next corner, don’t go saying I lured you that way.”

Gideon smiled. “No, you wouldn’t do a thing like that
yet
.”

I wouldn’t do a thing like that ever
was the thought that shot through my head. However badly he’d treated me. I would never allow anyone to hurt him.

The arched gateway ahead of us was lit briefly by the flash from a camera. Although it was dark, there were still a number of tourists out and about in the Temple. The black limousine I already knew was standing in its usual parking slot. When he saw us coming, the driver got out and opened the door for me. Gideon waited until I was in the car and then bent down to me. “Gwyneth?”

“Yes?” It was too dark for me to see his face properly.

“I wish you’d trust me more.” That sounded so serious and honest that, for a moment, it deprived me of speech.

Then I said, “I wish I could.” Only when Gideon had closed the door and the car was moving off did it occur to me that I’d have done better to say, “I wish you’d do the same with me.”

*   *   *

MADAME ROSSINI’S
eyes shone with enthusiasm. She took my hand and led me over to the full-length mirror on the wall so that I could see the result of her efforts. At first glance, I hardly knew myself. That was mostly because my hair, usually straight, had been curled into countless ringlets and pinned up into a towering pile on top of my head, like the way my cousin Janet had her hair done for her wedding. Single strands corkscrewed down to my bare shoulders. The dark red of the dress made my skin even paler than usual, but not as if I were sick; I looked radiant. Madame Rossini had discreetly powdered my nose and forehead, and rubbed a little rouge into my cheeks. Thanks to her skill with makeup, I had no shadows left under my eyes, even though I’d been up so late last night.

“Like Snow White in ze fairytale,” said Madame Rossini, dabbing her eyes with a scrap of fabric. “Red as blood, white as snow, black as ebony. Zey will be cross with me if you look like ze dog’s breakfast. Show me your fingernails—
oui, très bien
, clean and short. Now, shake your ’ead. No, shake it ’arder. Zis ’airstyle must last all evening.”

“Feels a bit like wearing a hat.”

“You will get used to it,” said Madame Rossini, as she fixed the pile of hair with yet more spray. As well as about eleven pounds of ordinary hairpins holding it in place, there were some just for show, decorated with the same little roses as the neckline of the dress. They were cute! “There. Ready, my leetle swan-necked beauty! Shall I take photos again zis time?”

“Oh, yes please!” I looked around for my bag with the mobile in it. “Lesley would murder me if I didn’t put this on record!”

“I’d like to take some of you both,” said Madame Rossini, after she’d snapped me from all sides about ten times. “You and zat badly be’aved boy, just to show ’ow perfectly and also discreetly ze costumes match! I ’ave refused to argue about ze need for colored stockings again. Enough is enough!”

“The stockings I’m wearing aren’t at all bad,” I said.

“Zat is because zey may look like stockings of ze time, but elastane makes zem far more comfortable,” said Madame Rossini. “In ze old days, a garter like zat probably cut your thigh in ’alf. Of course I ’ope no one will look under your skirt, but if zey do, zey cannot complain,
n’est-ce pas
?” She clapped her hands. “
Bien,
now I will call zem upstairs and say you are ready.”

While she was phoning, I stood in front of the mirror again. I was feeling excited. I’d tried to put Gideon firmly out of my mind since this morning, and I’d been fairly successful, but only at the price of thinking about Count Saint-Germain all the time. My fears of meeting the count again were now mixed with excitement as I looked forward to the soirée, a feeling that I couldn’t really explain to myself.

Mum had said Lesley could sleep over with us last night, so somehow it had turned into a nice evening. Analyzing what had happened in detail with Lesley and Xemerius had done me good. Maybe they were saying it only to cheer me up, but neither Lesley nor Xemerius thought there was any reason for me to jump off a bridge into the Thames because of unrequited love. They both said that considering the circumstances, Gideon’s reasons for behaving the way he did had been justified, and Lesley said that in the interests of sexual equality, boys should be allowed their own bad moods, and she felt sure that deep down inside, he was a really nice guy.

“You don’t know him!” I had shaken my head. “You’re only saying that because you know I want to hear it!”

“Yes, and because I also want it to be true!” she had said. “If he turns out an absolute bastard in the end, I’ll go and see him and beat him up in person! That’s a promise!”

Xemerius had been late coming home, because I’d asked him to shadow Charlotte, Raphael, and Gideon first. Unlike him, Lesley and I didn’t think it was at all boring to hear what Raphael was like.

“If you ask me, that lad is a little too good-looking,” said Xemerius critically. “And doesn’t he just know it!”

“Well, he’s in good hands with Charlotte,” said Lesley, satisfied. “So far our Ice Princess has managed to take the joys of life out of everyone.”

We’d perched on my big window seat while Xemerius sat on the table, curled his tail neatly around him, and began on his report.

First Charlotte and Raphael had gone out for an ice, then to the cinema, and finally they’d met up with Gideon in an Italian restaurant. Lesley and I had wanted to know every tiny detail, from the title of the film to the pizza toppings, plus every word they had said. According to Xemerius, Charlotte and Raphael had insisted on talking at cross-purposes the whole time. While Raphael wanted to know the differences between French and English girls and how far English girls would go, Charlotte had droned on forever about the winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature over the last ten years, with the result that Raphael had been visibly bored and occupied himself with ostentatiously looking at other girls. And at the cinema, much to the surprise of Xemerius, Raphael didn’t even try making a grab at Charlotte. Far from it. After about ten minutes, he fell fast asleep and stayed asleep. Lesley said that was the best thing she’d heard in a long time, and I entirely agreed. Then, of course, we wanted to know whether Gideon, Charlotte, and Raphael had been talking about me in the Italian restaurant, and Xemerius—slightly reluctantly—had regaled us with the following conversation. I did a kind of simultaneous translation of it for Lesley.