Ruby Red

Author:Kerstin Gier
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Great Britain - History, Europe, Social Issues, Love & Romance, Families, Family Life - London (England), London (England), Juvenile Fiction, Family Life, Fantasy & Magic, General, Great Britain, Family, Historical, England, People & Places, Fiction, Secret Societies, Time Travel, Adolescence
ISBN: 9780805092523
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2010-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

“I THOUGHT Sir Isaac Newton was one of the Guardians?” I asked.

“Indeed he was!” Mr. George replied.

“But Newton died in 1727.” I surprised myself by coming up with that fact. Lesley had told me when she phoned yesterday, and for some unfathomable reason, it had stuck in my mind. I wasn’t as stupid as this Gideon said after all.

“Correct,” said Mr. George, smiling. “That’s one of the advantages of traveling in time. You can make friends in the past as well as the present.”

“And what’s the secret behind the secret?” I asked.

“The Secret of the Twelve will be revealed when the blood of all twelve time travelers has been read into the chronograph,” said Mr. George solemnly. “That’s why the Circle has to be closed. It is the great task that we must perform.”

“But I’m the last of the Twelve, right? So this Circle should be complete with me.”

“And so it would be,” said Dr. White, “if your cousin Lucy hadn’t taken it into her head to steal the chronograph seventeen years ago.”

“Paul stole the chronograph,” said Lady Arista. “Lucy only—”

Mr. de Villiers raised his hand. “Yes, well, let’s just say they stole it together. Two children who had been led astray. They wrecked the work of five hundred years. The mission was on the point of failing, and the legacy of Count Saint-Germain would have been lost forever.”

“So this legacy is the secret?”

“Luckily there was a second chronograph within these walls,” said Mr. George. “It wasn’t expected ever to be used. It came into the hands of the Guardians in 1757. After centuries of neglect, it was defective, and the valuable jewels had been stolen from it. But after two hundred years of laborious work, the Guardians succeeded in—”

Impatiently, Dr. White interrupted him. “To cut a long story short, it was repaired, and it really was capable of working, although we couldn’t check that until the eleventh time traveler, Gideon here, reached the age of initiation. We’d lost the first chronograph and with it the blood of ten time travelers. Now we had to start all over again with the second.”

“So as to—er—get at the Secret of the Twelve,” I said. I’d almost said “reveal.” I was beginning to feel as if I’d been brainwashed.

Dr. White and Mr. George nodded solemnly by way of an answer.

“Okay, so what sort of a secret is it?”

Mum began to laugh. It was totally out of place, but she laughed with a gurgle, like Caroline when Mr. Bean is on TV.

“Grace!” hissed Lady Arista. “Pull yourself together!”

But Mum just laughed even more. “A secret is a secret is a secret,” she got out between two bursts of laughter. “That’s always the way.”

“Just as I said: hysterical females, the whole bunch of them!” growled Dr. White.

“I’m glad you can see a funny side to all this,” said Mr. de Villiers.

Mum wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes. “I’m sorry. It just suddenly came over me. To be honest, I feel more like crying, I really do.

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