Read Online Sapphire Blue (The Ruby Red Trilogy) by Kerstin Gier - Free Book Online Page B

St. Lennox, too. She won’t be leaving until the end of this year because the war got in the way.”
    “Aunt Maddy? I didn’t know that.”
    “All the Montrose girls go to St. Lennox. Lucy too. She had the same school uniform as you. Maddy’s is dark green and white, and the skirt is checked.…” Lucas cleared his throat. “In case you’re interested … but we’d better concentrate on working out why we’re meeting here. So assuming you wrote that note—”
    “Will be writing it!”
    “—and you’ll be leaving it for me on one of your future time-travel trips, why do you think you did it?”
    “You mean why will I be doing it?” I sighed. “It must make some kind of sense. You can probably tell me a lot. But then again, I don’t know.…” Baffled, I looked at my young grandfather. “Do you know Lucy and Paul well?”
    “Paul de Villiers has been coming here to elapse since January. He’s grown two years older in that time, which is rather creepy. And Lucy came for the first time in June. I usually look after them both when they visit. As a rule, it’s very amusing. I can help them with their homework. I must say, Paul is the only de Villiers I’ve ever liked.” He cleared his throat again. “But if you come from the year 2011, you must know them both. Funny to think they’re nearly forty by now.… You must give them my regards.”
    “I can’t do that.” Oh, dear, this whole thing was so complicated. And I probably ought to be careful what I said, when I myself didn’t really understand what was going on. My mother’s words were still ringing in my ears. Trust no one! Not even your own feelings! But I simply had to trust someone, and who better than my grandfather? I decided to stake everything on a single card. “I can’t give Lucy and Paul your regards. They stole the chronograph and traveled back into the past with it.”
    “What?” Lucas’s eyes were wide behind his glasses. “Why would they have done that? I can’t believe it. They’d never … When is this supposed to have happened?”
    “Nineteen ninety-four,” I said. “The same year I was born.”
    “In 1994 Paul will be twenty, and Lucy eighteen,” said Lucas, more to himself than to me. “In two years’ time, then. Because now she’s sixteen and he’s eighteen.” He smiled apologetically. “Well, of course I don’t mean now , I only mean their now when they come to this year to elapse.”
    “I haven’t had much sleep the last couple of nights, so I get the feeling my brain is nothing but candy floss,” I said. “And I’m useless at arithmetic anyway.”
    “Lucy and Paul are … Oh, what you’re telling me makes no sense. They’d never do anything so … so outrageous. ”
    “But they did. I thought you might be able to tell me why. In my own time, everyone keeps telling me that they’re wicked. Or crazy. Or both. Anyway, dangerous. When I met Lucy, she said I ought to ask you about the Green Rider. Okay. So who or what’s the Green Rider?”
    Lucas stared at me, baffled. “You met Lucy? But you just said she and Paul had disappeared the year you were born.” Then something seemed to occur to him. “If they took the chronograph with them, how can you travel in time at all?”
    “I met them in the year 1912. At Lady Tilney’s house. And there’s another chronograph that the Guardians use for us.”
    “Lady Tilney? But she died four years ago. And the second chronograph isn’t capable of working.”
    I sighed. “It is now. Listen, Grandpa”—that word made Lucas jump—“this is all much more confusing for me than you, because until a few days ago, I hadn’t the faintest idea about it. I can’t explain anything to you. I’ve been sent here to elapse, for heaven’s sake, I don’t even know how to spell the stupid word—I heard it for the first time yesterday. This is only the third time the chronograph has sent me back to the past. I traveled back uncontrolled three times before