Ruby Red (10 page)

Of course, what did I expect? Of all the rooms up here, they had to choose the one where I was hiding.

“Leave me alone,” said the girl’s voice.

“I
can’t
leave you alone,” said the man. “Whenever I leave you alone, you do something rash without thinking first.”

“Go away!” said the girl again.

“No, I won’t. Listen, I’m sorry that happened. I ought not to have allowed it.”

“But you did! Because you had eyes only for
her
!”

The man laughed a little. “You’re jealous!”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Oh, great! A couple in the middle of a lovers’ tiff. This could go on forever. I’d be kicking my heels behind this curtain until I traveled back and suddenly materialized in front of the windows in Mrs. Counter’s geography lesson. Maybe I could tell her I’d been doing a physics experiment. Or I’d been there all the time and she just hadn’t noticed me.

“The count will wonder where we are,” said the man’s voice.

“Then he can just send his Transylvanian friend looking for us, that’s what your count can do. He’s not even really a count. His title’s as much of a fake as the rosy cheeks of that … what was her name again?” The girl gave an angry little snort through her nose as she spoke.

Somehow or other, I knew that sound. I knew it very well. I cautiously peered out from behind the curtain. The two of them were standing right in front of the door, with their profiles turned to me. The girl really was only a girl, wearing a fantastic dress, midnight blue silk and embroidered brocade, with a skirt so wide she’d probably have trouble getting through a normal doorway in it. She had snow-white hair piled up into a strange sort of mountain on top of her head, with ringlets falling to her shoulders. It had to be a wig. The man had white hair too, held together with a ribbon at the nape of his neck. In spite of having hair like senior citizens, they both looked very young and very attractive, especially the man. He was more of a boy, really, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old. But staggeringly good-looking. A perfect masculine profile. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I leaned much farther out of my hiding place than I really meant to.

“I’ve forgotten her name already,” said the boy, still laughing.

“Liar!”

“The count’s not responsible for Rakoczy’s behavior,” said the boy, serious again now. “He’ll certainly be reprimanded for that. You don’t have to like the count, you only have to respect him.”

The girl snorted scornfully again, and again it sounded strangely familiar. “I don’t
have
to do anything,” she said, abruptly turning toward the window. That meant turning to me. I wanted to disappear right behind the curtain, but I froze mid-movement.

This was impossible!

The girl had
my
face. I was looking into my own startled eyes!

She seemed as surprised as I was, but she got over her shock faster. She made a movement with her hand.

Hide!
her gesture clearly said.
Disappear!

Breathing hard, I put my head back behind the curtain. Who was she? There just couldn’t be such a likeness between us. I simply
had
to look again.

“What was that?” I heard the boy saying.

“Nothing!” said the girl. Was that by any chance also
my
voice?

“At the window.”

“Nothing, I said.”

“There could be someone standing behind the curtain listening to…” Whatever he was saying was cut short by his sound of surprise. Suddenly there was silence. Now what had happened?

Without thinking, I pushed the curtain aside. The girl who looked like me had planted her lips right on the boy’s mouth. He took it passively at first, then he put his arms around her waist and pulled her closer. The girl shut her eyes.

Suddenly there were butterflies dancing in my stomach. It was odd, watching yourself kiss someone. I thought I did it pretty well. I realized that the girl was kissing the boy only to take his mind off me. Nice of her, but why was she doing it? And how was I going to get past them unnoticed?

The butterflies in my stomach turned to a flock of birds in flight, and the picture of the couple kissing blurred before my eyes. And then, suddenly, I was in the Year Six classroom with my nerves in shreds.

All was still.

I’d expected an outcry from all the students when I suddenly appeared, and someone—maybe Mrs. Counter—falling down in a faint with the shock of it.

But the classroom was empty. I groaned with relief. At least I’d been lucky this time. I dropped into a chair and put my head down on the desk in front of it. What had just happened was more than I could take in for the moment. The girl, the gorgeous guy, the kiss.…

The girl hadn’t just looked like me.

The girl
was
me.

There was no possible mistake. I’d recognized myself, beyond any shadow of doubt, by the little birthmark in the shape of a half-moon on my temple, the one Aunt Glenda always called Gwenny’s funny little banana.

There couldn’t be two different people who looked so much alike.

The first pair Opal and Amber are,

Agate sings in B flat, the wolf avatar,

A duet—
solutio!
—with Aquamarine.

Mighty Emerald next, with the lovely Citrine.

The Carnelian twins of the Scorpio sign,

Number Eight is
digestio,
her stone is Jade fine.

E major’s the key of the Black Tourmaline,

Sapphire sings in F major, and bright is her sheen.

Then almost at once comes Diamond alone,

Whose sign of the lion as Leo is known.

Projectio!
Time flows on, both present and past.

Ruby red is the first and is also the last.

F
ROM THE SECRET WRITINGS OF

C
OUNT
S
AINT-
G
ERMAIN

SIX

NO. IT COULDN
’
T HAVE
been me.

For one thing, I’d never kissed a boy.

Well, not really. Not like that. There was that boy Miles in the year above ours. I’d gone out with him last summer. Not so much because I was in love with him as because he was best friends with Max, Lesley’s boyfriend at the time, so it seemed kind of convenient. But Miles wasn’t really into kissing. What he liked was leaving love bites on my throat to distract my attention from his creeping hand. I had to go about with a scarf around my neck when the temperature was ninety degrees in the shade, and I was constantly trying to keep Miles’s hands out of my shirt. (Especially in the darkness of the cinema, where he seemed to grow at least three extra.) After two weeks and a half day, our so-called relationship was terminated by mutual consent. I was “too immature” for Miles, and Miles was too … well, let’s say affectionate for me.

Apart from him, I’d only kissed Gordon, on our class outing to the Isle of Wight, but that didn’t count because it was (a) part of a game called Truth or Kiss (I’d told the truth, but Gordon had insisted it was a lie) and (b) not a real kiss. Gordon hadn’t even taken his chewing gum out of his mouth first.

So except for the love-bite affair, as Lesley called it, and Gordon’s pepperminty performance, I was entirely unkissed. And possibly also immature, as Miles claimed. I knew that at sixteen and a half, it was getting late, but Lesley, who had stayed with Max for a whole year, thought kissing in general was overrated. Maybe she’d just had bad luck, she said, but the boys she’d kissed so far definitely did not have the knack for it.

Kissing, said Lesley, ought really to be taught as a school subject, preferably instead of religious studies, which nobody needed.

We often discussed what the ideal kiss would be like, and there were any number of films we’d watched over and over again just because of the good kissing scenes in them.

“Ah, Miss Gwyneth. Will you condescend to speak to me today, or are you going to ignore me again?” James saw me leaving the Year Six classroom and came closer.

“What’s the time?” I was looking around for Lesley.

“Do I look like a grandfather clock?” James was indignant. “You ought to know me well enough by now to be aware that time means nothing to me.”

“How true.” I went around the corner to take a look at the big clock at the end of the corridor. James followed me.

“I’ve only been gone twenty minutes,” I said.

“Gone where?”

“Oh, James! I think I was in your father’s town house. It was really lovely there. Gold all over the place. And the candlelight—it was so soft and glowing.”

“Yes, not dismal and tasteless like all this,” said James, with a gesture that took in the mainly gray corridor. I suddenly felt very sorry for him. He wasn’t all that much older than me, and his life was already over.

“James, have you ever kissed a girl?”

“What?”

“I asked if you’d ever kissed a girl.”

“It’s not done to talk about such things, Miss Gwyneth.”

“So you’ve never kissed anyone?”

“I’m a man,” said James.

“What kind of answer is that?” I couldn’t help laughing at James’s expression. “Do you know when you were born?”

“Are you trying to insult me? Of course I know my own birthday. It’s on the thirty-first of March.”

“What year?”

“1762.” James thrust out his chin challengingly. “I was twenty-one three weeks ago. I celebrated at length with my friends in White’s Club, and my father paid all my gaming debts in honor of the day and gave me a beautiful bay mare. And then I had to get that stupid fever and go to bed. Only to find everything different when I woke up, and a pert minx telling me I’m a ghost.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “You probably died of the fever.”

“Nonsense! It was only a slight indisposition,” said James, but there was a look of uncertainty in his eyes. “Dr. Barrow said it was not very likely that I’d have caught the smallpox at Lord Stanhope’s.”

“Hm,” I said. I’d have to Google smallpox to find out more about it.

“
Hm
? What do you mean,
hm
?” James looked offended.

“Oh, there you are!” Lesley came running out of the girls’ toilets and flung her arms around my neck. “I’ve been dying a thousand deaths.”

“Nothing too bad happened. I did end up in Mrs. Counter’s classroom when I came back, but there was no one there.”

“Year Six are visiting Greenwich Observatory today,” said Lesley. “My God, am I glad to see you! I told Mr. Whitman you were puking your guts up in the girls’ toilets, and he said I should go back to you so I could hold your hair out of your face.”

“Disgusting,” said James, holding his handkerchief to his nose. “Tell your freckled friend that a lady doesn’t talk about such things.”

I took no notice of this. “Lesley, something kind of funny’s happened … something that I can’t explain.”

“I believe you.” Lesley held my mobile out to me. “Here. I took it out of your locker. Call your mother now, right away.”

“Lesley, she’s at work. I can’t just—”

“Call her! You’ve gone back into the past three times now, and I saw you do it with my own eyes the third time. All of a sudden you simply weren’t there! It was really
terrible
! You must tell your mum, this minute, so that nothing else awful will happen to you. Please.” Did Lesley actually have tears in her eyes?

“That freckled girl is in a dramatic mood today,” commented James.

I took the mobile from Lesley and breathed deeply.

“Please,” Lesley begged.

My mother worked in the administrative office of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. I dialed the number of her direct line, looking at Lesley.

She nodded and tried to smile.

“Gwyneth?” Mum had obviously recognized my mobile number on her display. She sounded worried. I’d never, ever called her from school before. “Is something the matter?”

“Mum … I’m not feeling too good.”

“Are you sick?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you’ve caught that cold that’s going around at the moment. I tell you what, go home, go to bed, and I’ll leave work early today. Then I’ll squeeze you some fresh orange juice and make a warm compress for your throat.”

“Mum, it’s not a cold. It’s worse. I—”

“Maybe it’s the smallpox,” said James.

Lesley looked at me encouragingly. “Go on!” she said under her breath. “Tell her.”