The Time Tutor (4 page)

She was still and silent for a moment, and very lovely; he was going to enjoy teaching her.

But then she spoke. “That's your plan?” She wasn't getting up from his lap, but the sarcasm was unmistakable.

Well, nothing for it but to soldier on. Flattery. Flattery was always a good weapon. He rolled it out. “Yes,” he said. “You are too brilliant, too great a talent, to be wasted on the Guild. They have taught you nothing, and they never will. It is always a promise that she dangles like candy, but Hannelore hasn't taught anyone to jump in decades. They will suffocate you with their rules, waste your youth and your beauty with their nipcheese regulations. Join us. Experience the power, unfettered.”

He smiled at her for a moment more, concentrating on ignoring how comfortable she felt, balanced on him, how lovely she smelled.

Then he gasped.

She was insinuating one hand between them, and quick as a darting minnow, she found the fall of his breeches.

“What are you doing?”

“Hm,” she said, her fingers working at the buttons as her gaze melted into his. “I don't know. What am I doing?” She opened one side of the fall, and her hand found its way inside. He leapt to meet her, and was in her hand. “So,” she said, holding him firmly. “You weren't going to seduce me like a lover?” She squeezed. “How about now?”

Dar blinked. “No, no . . . I only wanted to offer my services . . .”

“As a time tutor?” She smiled pityingly into his face. “Don't you know the Guild thoroughly educates those of us it raises into its upper ranks?”

“I know that they don't. You haven't been taught anything . . . ah!”

She stroked her fingers up, and pressed against the sweetest spot with calm deliberation. “I am quite well educated enough, Mr. Vogelstein.” She withdrew her hand, leaving him in full Tower of Pisa glory, then nimbly buttoned his fall. “I believe we are finished here.” She got off his lap. “It is my belief that you are mad. But perhaps you are merely so blind as to think that you can delude a fully grown woman, a woman near the pinnacle of Guild power, with costumes and stories that would not fool a child of seven. Whatever you hoped to teach me here today, I have learned the only lesson I need. And it is this. You called me here because of Bertrand Penture.”

“No, no, not at all—”

“What this leads me to deduce is that you are, indeed, Ofan, as you claim, and that Bertrand is an Ofan spy. Bertrand's infatuation with me has you worried. You hoped to lure me away from the Guild with nursery tales, in order to leave the path clear for him to continue his work at the very heart of the Guild's eighteenth-century operations.”

It was as if he could actually feel the scales falling from his eyes. How could he possibly have underestimated this glorious creature? With each passing second she grew more more magnificent.

“Your efforts, if we may call them that, have been in vain,” she continued. “I
know
Bertrand is a spy.” She looked down and seemed to notice that her skirts were still in contact with his feet. She swept them aside as if he were something filthy. “Hannelore told me of Bertrand's treachery a few days ago, and asked me to find the evidence. Your behavior this evening may well be the proof that Hannelore is waiting for.”

She paused as if she expected him to say something, but what was there to say? She had thoroughly trounced him, not that it was much of a contest, since she was right: He, Lord Dar, was a pillock. If his ignominy weren't so complete, and if her revelation about Bertrand weren't such desperately bad news, he would be on his feet, applauding and cheering. And then on his knees, begging her hand . . . in his trousers and perhaps even in marriage.

She looked him up and down. “No wonder the Ofan are nothing more than an annoyance to the Guild, no more real than a ghost story.” She turned in a swirl of fabric, and exited the shop on a lightning-studded cloud of righteousness, like a Valkyrie.

Dar stared after her for a long time before he even noticed the exquisite aching sensation somewhat to the north of his knees and south of his navel. He was still as hard as a rock, and he doubted he would ever return to a state of decency. By all the wounds of Saint Sebastian, she was a complete and utter goddess.

 • • • 

Alva allowed herself a few moments to savor her victory over that dark-eyed rogue back in the shop, but then, when her mind turned to the matter of Bertrand and what she had learned, she shut the thinking down. She managed to make it home in the litter without reflecting on much of anything. Instead she stared at the city outside the window, so much larger and louder and dirtier than anything she could have imagined before her jump. It was drizzling, and it was that hour of transition between day and nighttime. She was being carried down to the Guild's mansion near the river. On rainy evenings like this it seemed to her that the rising tide of the Thames had secretly washed over the city, and no one had noticed that suddenly they were all mermaids and mermen, living their lives in a dark and wavering underwater metropolis. The eyes of people and horses glimmered in the light of flambeaux, and as they passed through the finer neighborhoods, the gaudy silks of both men and women sparkled dimly, like scales.

Alva closed her eyes, trying to feel the movement of time in this ancient city. She knew that when she learned to jump in time, it would be because Hannelore would teach her to feel the River of Time all around her. Swinging and bumping along in the litter through the light rain, she felt a slight sensation at the back of her skull. She thought she could almost, just almost, sense the River's currents all around her. It was as if she were groping, blindly, for her own high purpose in life, and that purpose was being held just past the ends of her desperate fingertips. Hannelore could teach her . . . but would she? Only when—if—Alva delivered up the spy.

And the spy was Bertrand. Hannelore suspected it, and Alva now had proof, or close enough.

She shook her head sharply. She could not bear to think about that yet.

When she got back to her suite in the Guild mansion, Alva distracted herself further by calling for her maid to undress her. Once her gown was off, she stood in her shift and watched the girl bend, neat in blue and white, to build up the fire. Susan, who had tended her for more than a year now. “Where are you from?” she asked.

Susan stood, and turned slowly. “Why do you ask, miss?” There was something in her dark eyes that Alva didn't understand. Something wary. Then that gaze dropped.

“I would like to know,” Alva said, wondering why she had never asked before. “I am from Sweden.”

“Yes, miss.” Susan curtsied.

“You hardly have an accent. Much less than I do. From which year did you jump?”

The eyes darted up again, and down.

“I jumped from 1348,” Alva said.

“Yes, miss.” It was clear that Susan already knew these facts about Alva; everyone did, for Alva was not only a Favorite, but a favorite Favorite. Why couldn't Alva know the same things about Susan?

Alva opened her mouth, and shut it again. The maid was standing with her hands clenched before her, looking as if she was waiting to be struck.

“I'd like my hair dressed simply this evening,” Alva said, defeated.

“Yes, miss.”

She caught sight now and then of Susan's face in the mirror as the girl worked on her. She was pretty, but not as young as Alva had always assumed. In fact, she might be as much as ten years older than Alva. And there was something in the way that she held her mouth. It would be a prettier mouth if she would relax, but Alva realized now that Susan never relaxed.

All the servants in the house were Guild members; they had all jumped from some other time. But none of them were Favorites. They looked and behaved and were treated just like all other eighteenth-century servants. What must that be like, Alva wondered, even as she reveled in the delicious feeling of having her hair brushed and styled. What was the difference between Susan from nowhere, in the year nothing, and Swedish Alva from 1348? Why had Hannelore lifted Alva up so high, and assigned Susan to servitude?

When the maid was gone, Alva sank back into a comfortable chair. An hour before dinner. An hour of privacy. She stared at the fire. It was finally time to think. Indeed, the thinking was begging to be let out. So she whispered, no more loudly than the hissing of the logs, welcoming the problem into the room: “Bertrand is Ofan. Bertrand is a spy. What am I going to do?”

She thought about her carefree friend. They had come into Hannelore's favor together, a little over a year ago. They had playfully competed for Hannelore's attentions. And Hannelore loved them both, loved their banter, their beauty, their eagerness to please. She called them “my brave twin sparrows,” and other, mostly avian nicknames, always pairing them. “Goosey and gander.” “My pullets.” “You are my robin,” to Bertrand, “and you are my pretty little raven,” to Alva, “in spite of your golden hair.” When challenged that ravens are not usually considered pretty, Hannelore had frowned. “Look more closely at a raven, next time it is your privilege to meet one.”

And now Bertrand and Alva were lovers, or at least, they had slept together once. Thank God Bertrand had kept his passion to love letters and swooning looks over dinner in the refectory, and hadn't come knocking at her door in the intervening days. Because now, since her visit to the time tutor, she wouldn't know what to say to him.

Hannelore ran the Guild like the Sun King's palace, her courtiers all around her. She controlled them with gossip and insinuation, with smiles and special dispensations given and withdrawn. But although it felt, in any given moment, like nothing more than a game, with the stakes no higher than a seat above or below the salt on a particular evening, Alva knew that the game was played in deadly earnest. Hannelore's ambitions for the Guild were real, and she would brook no dissent, no disobedience. She held a court once a week in the old guildhall around which this mansion was constructed, with herself as judge and jury. Those who had broken the rules were disciplined, and larger infractions were punished with . . . something. At least banishment. Perhaps worse.

Alva had never seen the court in session, nor had anyone ever so much as whispered a word about what happened there, what the punishments were.

Bertrand. Alva pressed her palms to her eyes. Bertrand, whose fate was, apparently, hers to decide. How would Hannelore punish him?

She dropped her hands and stared at the fire. Why had Bertrand done it? He was young, but he was intelligent and passionate. Would he really have betrayed the Guild for someone as ridiculous as Ignatz Vogelstein with those silly costumes and see-through antics? Alva remembered the time tutor's harshly handsome face, his disarmingly roguish smile. She had immediately liked him, even in spite of his charade. Indeed, she more than liked him. He was . . . she smiled to herself . . . quite a handful.

Vogelstein must have shown Bertrand a different face than he showed Alva. A man-to-man talk; that's how it must have happened. Offering Bertrand the same knowledge he'd offered Alva, but on equal terms. No chicanery. Vogelstein would have worn that dashing smile the whole time, and talked to Bertrand about politics and philosophy. Perhaps he had actually taught him something about the talent. Maybe even taught him how to jump? She frowned. In any case, something about Vogelstein and his message had been powerful enough, thrilling enough, to make Bertrand betray the Guild and become Ofan.

Alva found herself tracing a sensual circle on the back of her left hand.
O
for Ofan. If Vogelstein had shown her who he really was, if he had spoken to her man to man, and given her a taste of what he could really teach her . . . she would be there with him now. She had always wanted to know more, to feel more, to own and control her power. It was that desire that had sent her out of Scotland on the bony back of a mule. It was that desire that thrummed in her now. That desire and a few other, less virtuous little fantasies.

Alva stood, ridding her mind of a pair of dark eyes. No more thinking; pack it all away. She glanced in the mirror. She would go down and sparkle for one more night at least, as if nothing were the matter.

Hannelore would not want to talk about anything tonight, anyway. Evenings in the Guild mansion were for Hannelore's pleasure.

Alva had a little time to make her plans.

 • • • 

It was in the break between the Mozart and the Cannabich, when Hannelore had left the great hall with three of the older Favorites for a walk on the terrace, that a footman plucked at Alva's sleeve. “Please, miss,” he said. “A message for you.” And he handed her a folded piece of paper.

Alva raised her eyes and looked instinctively at Bertrand, who was drooping like a disconsolate cupid in a chair across the room. For once he wasn't looking at her.

So it wasn't yet another love note from Bertrand. Her heart picked up its pace. Surely Vogelstein wouldn't dare . . . ?

She could feel several pairs of eyes on her as she unfolded the paper. But it was merely a note from Ed, the chef. “Apologies. If Miss would visit the kitchens, a question has arisen about a Swedish dish in preparation for tomorrow's dinner.” Ed, like all good chefs, was a perfectionist, and must be humored. Alva passed the note to the man seated beside her. “Please make my excuses to Hannelore,” she whispered. “You can see that I must do my duty.”

The man gave her a perfunctory smile. “She will forgive you anything,” he said. “At least so far.”

At least so far? Alva made her way out through the press of bodies in the great hall, smiling brightly into faces that suddenly seemed to eye her with suspicion and dislike. Had the ranks of the older Favorites always looked at her this way, or had something changed? She remembered Susan's gaze dropping, her clasped hands. Since Alva's return from the time tutor's shop, everyone who had always been so friendly seemed suddenly on edge, and everything anyone said seemed both portentous . . . and illegible.