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It was much heavier than I’d expected, but I immediately felt better. True, I had no idea how to handle a sword, but it was certainly sharp and pointed, I knew that all right.
The fighting carried on. I risked a glance around the coach and saw that the two men had managed to force Gideon back against it on the other side. Some strands of his hair had worked free from the ribbon holding it back and fallen over his forehead. One of his sleeves was ripped wide, but to my relief I saw no blood. He was still uninjured.
I looked all around one last time, but there was no help in sight. Weighing up the sword in my hand, I stepped firmly forward. At least the sight of me would distract the two men. I might be able to give Gideon an advantage that way.
Instead, the opposite happened. The two men were fighting with their backs to me, so they didn’t see me, but Gideon’s eyes widened in horror when he caught sight of me.
For a fraction of a second, he hesitated, and that was long enough for one of the black-clad strangers to score another hit on him, just next to his ripped sleeve. But this time blood flowed. Gideon fought on as if nothing had happened.
“You can’t last much longer!” cried the man triumphantly, attacking Gideon with more force than before. “Pray if you can, because you are about to meet your maker!”
I clasped the hilt of my sword in both hands and ran at him, ignoring Gideon’s shocked expression. The men didn’t hear me coming. They didn’t notice me until the sword had sliced through the black coat that one of them was wearing and slid soundlessly into his flesh. For a frightful moment, I thought I must have missed—maybe I’d run the sword through the gap between the man’s body and his arm. But then his breathing slowed. He let go of his weapon and dropped to the ground like a felled tree. I couldn’t bring myself to release the hilt of the sword until he was lying there, nearly dead.
Oh, my God.
Gideon used the other man’s momentary alarm to thrust at him so hard that he too fell to his knees.
“Are you out of your mind?” Gideon shouted at me as he kicked his opponent’s sword aside with his foot and put the point of his own blade to the man’s neck.
The other man collapsed entirely. “Please … please, let me live,” he said.
My teeth were beginning to chatter.
This can’t have happened. I didn’t really just run a sword through a man’s body—did I?
The man I’d attacked let out another gurgling breath. The other one looked as if he was about to burst into tears.
“Who are you, and what do you want from us?” asked Gideon coldly.
“I was only obeying orders. Please don’t!”
“Who ordered you to do what?” A drop of blood formed on the man’s throat where the point of the sword met it. Gideon’s lips were tightly compressed, as if he could only just manage to keep the blade still.
“I don’t know any names. I swear I don’t. ” And then his face, distorted by fear, began to blur in front of me. The green grass of the park spun around and around. I closed my eyes, almost relieved to fall into the whirlpool.
THIRTEEN
I’D MADE A SOFT landing in the middle of my own skirts, but I was in no fit state to stand up. Every bone in my body seemed to have dissolved, I was trembling all over, and my teeth were chattering frantically.
“Get up!” Gideon held out his hand to me. He had put his sword back in his belt. I saw, with a shudder, that there was blood on it. “Come on, Gwyneth! People are already looking at us. ”
It was evening, and it must have been dark for some time, but we’d landed under a streetlight somewhere in the park. A jogger with headphones on glanced at us in surprise as he ran past.
“Didn’t I tell you to wait in the coach?” I didn’t react, so Gideon took my arm and pulled me to my feet. His face was completely drained of color. “That was incredibly reckless and … dreadfully dangerous and…” He swallowed hard and stared at me. “And, dammit all, rather brave of you. ”
“I thought when the blade struck a rib I’d feel it,” I said, my teeth still chattering. “I didn’t expect it to be like … like cutting up a cake. Why didn’t that man have any bones?”
“I’m sure he did,” said Gideon. “But you were lucky and thrust the sword somewhere in between them. ”
“Will he die?”
Gideon shrugged. “Not if it was a clean wound. But eighteenth-century surgery can’t really be compared with an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. ”
If it was a clean wound? What did that mean? How could a wound be clean?
What had I done? I might have just killed a man!
The full realization of that almost made me sink to the ground again. But Gideon was holding me firmly. “Come on, we have to get back to the Temple. The others will be worrying. ”
He obviously knew exactly where we were in the park, because he led me purposefully on along the path, past two women walking their dogs who stared at us curiously.
“I’m a murderer,” I whispered.
“Ever heard of self-defense? You were only defending yourself. Or rather me, come to think of it. ”
He gave me a crooked smile, and it occurred to me that only an hour ago, I’d have sworn he would never admit to such a thing.
And sure enough, he didn’t.
“Not that it was at all necessary,” he added.
“Oh, so it wasn’t necessary? What about your arm? You’re bleeding. ”
“It’s nothing. Dr. White will see to it. ”
For a while, we went along side by side in silence. The cool evening air felt good. My pulse gradually slowed down, and my teeth stopped chattering.
“My heart missed a beat when I suddenly saw you,” said Gideon at last. He had let go of my arm now. Obviously he trusted me to stay on my feet by myself.
“Why didn’t you take a pistol?” I said crossly. “The other man had one!”
“In fact he had two,” said Gideon.
“Then why didn’t he use them?”
“He did. He killed poor Wilbour, and the shot from the second pistol only just missed me. ”
“But why didn’t he shoot again after that?”
“Because back then each pistol fired only one shot, of course,” said Gideon. “Those neat little handguns you see in the James Bond films hadn’t been invented yet. ”
“But they have been invented now! Why do you take a stupid sword into the past instead of a proper pistol?”
“I’m not a professional killer,” said Gideon.
“But that’s just … I mean, otherwise what’s the advantage of coming from the future? Oh! Here we are!” We had reached Apsley House on Hyde Park Corner. People out for an evening stroll, or jogging, or walking their dogs were giving us odd looks.
“We’ll take a taxi to the Temple,” said Gideon.
“Got any money with you?”
“Of course not!”
“But I have my mobile,” I said, fishing it out of my décolletage.
“Ah, the silver shrine! I might have known it was something like that. You silly—oh, give it here!”
“Hey, that’s mine!”
“Yes, and do you know the number?” Gideon was already punching it in.
“’Scuse me, dear. ” An elderly lady was tugging my sleeve. “I just have to ask—are you from one of the theaters?”
“Er … yes,” I said.
“I thought so!” The old lady was having difficulty holding on to her dachshund’s leash. The dog was pulling hard as it tried to get at another dog only a few yards away. “It looks so wonderfully genuine! Only a good wardrobe mistress could have made that outfit. You know, dear, I did a lot of sewing myself in my young d—stop it, Polly! Don’t pull like that!”
“They’ll come and pick us up at once,” said Gideon, giving me my mobile back. “We’ll go on to the corner of Piccadilly. ”
“And where can people go to see the play you’re in?” asked the
old lady.
“Er, well, I’m afraid it was the last performance this evening. ”
“What a pity!”
“Yes, I think so too. ”
Gideon was pulling me on.
“Good-bye,” I said to the old lady.
“I don’t understand how those men could find us. Or what orders were given to that man Wilbour to get him to drive us to Hyde Park. There was no time to prepare an ambush,” Gideon was muttering to himself as he walked on. Out here in the street, passersby stared at us even more than in the park.
“Are you talking to me?”
“Someone knew we’d be there. But how did he know? And how was it possible anyway?”
“Wilbour … one of his eyes was…” Suddenly I felt my stomach heave.
“What are you doing?”
I retched, but nothing would come up.
“Gwyneth, we have to get moving! Breathe deeply, and it’ll pass. ”
I stopped dead. This was too much!
“Oh, so it’ll pass?” I made myself speak very slowly and distinctly, although I really felt like screeching. “And so if I’ve just killed a man, will that pass, too? My entire life has been turned upside down today—will that pass? Will the fact that an arrogant, long-haired, violin-playing creep in silk stockings can’t think of anything better to do than order me about, even though I’ve just saved his stupid life, will that disappear as well? If you ask me, it’s not surprising that I feel like puking. And just in case you’re wondering, you make me want to throw up too!”
Okay, so maybe my voice had risen to a bit of a screech with that last remark, but it could have been worse. All at once I realized how good it felt to get all that off my chest. For the first time that day, I felt truly liberated, and the nausea suddenly disappeared.
Gideon was staring at me with such a blank expression that I’d have giggled if I hadn’t been so angry. Aha! Just for once he seemed to be left speechless.
“And now I want to go home,” I said, trying to round off my triumph with as much dignity as possible.
Unfortunately I didn’t bring it off entirely, because at the thought of my family, my lip began to quiver and I felt my eyes filling with tears.
Dammit, dammit, dammit!
“It’s all right,” said Gideon.
His surprisingly gentle tone of voice was too much for my self-control. The tears came rolling down my cheeks before I could stop them.
“Hey, Gwyneth. I’m sorry. ” Gideon came right up to me, took me by the shoulder, and drew me close to him. “I’m an idiot. I was forgetting what this must be like for you,” he murmured somewhere just above my ear. “And I remember perfectly well how stupid I felt the first time I traveled back. In spite of all that fencing practice. And the violin lessons. …”
He stroked my hair.
I just sobbed louder.
“Don’t cry,” he said helplessly. “It’s all right. ”
But it wasn’t all right. It was all horrible. That frantic chase around the house, only last night, when they’d thought I was a thief. Rakoczy’s sinister eyes, the count with his ice-cold voice and his hand around my throat throttling me, and finally poor Wilbour and the man I’d stabbed in the back with a sword. And, most of all, the fact that I couldn’t even manage to give Gideon a piece of my mind without bursting into tears and making him feel he had to comfort me!