Page 53 of The Girl Out of Time
“So, would you mind explaining what happened in a slightly less enigmatic manner?” Theo said.
“I have the ability to create passages to different time periods. Apparently.” She tore a blade of grass and started picking at the fluff. “We went to a time before the castle burned down—which would’ve been a few decades ago, as Daniel told me.”
Theo grimaced at the mention, then cleared his expression. “You mean we were in the seventies, eighties?”
“Probably.”
“The cotillion,” he whispered, more to himself. “But what was that about Lady Scarlet and the man who challenged us for a pendant?”
“That’s a whole other story. Literally.” She skipped ahead so she could look at him while they walked. “You know the book I brought you,Dark and Stormy? The duke lent me another by the same author, in which the heroine—Lady Scarlet—has the power to blink into different eras. Exactly like me.”
“But it’s a fictional book?”
“I don’t think all of it is fictional. What we experienced back there was real.”
“But how do we know it was real and not a shared hallucination from inhaling something within the ruins?”
Because I’ve done it before. Andthisis definitely not a hallucination.“Trust me, okay? And listen.”
He weighed his head. “Go on.”
“Obviously, her real name is not Lady Scarlet, but shewasa real person, and somehow the author knew her and wrote a book about her. Lady Scarlet was trying to find a lost treasure, something she called Starry Night, and this man called de Villiers—not his true name, either—was also after it.”
“Have you finished the book yet?”
“Yes. De Villiers never found Starry Night. Lady Scarlet hid it in a box in the castle on the night it burned down.”
Theo narrowed his eyes. “Was that why you were investigating the ruins so intensively?”
She bit her lip. “I thought I’d try! If one thing was true—Lady Scarlet’s abilities—then why wouldn’t the treasure also exist?”
“But we cannot know which part of it is fiction and which isn’t.”
“Unfortunately. But a larger part of the story might be truer than we think.” Oh, this was so exciting! She couldn’t wait to get back home and examine the book again. She’d scour it for any hidden meaning, double-check every word for any hint it might contain. Theo could help if he wanted, too.
“But de Villiers …” Theo shook his head. “That man, he didn’t know what Starry Night was when you mentioned it. He only said he was after a pendant.”
“Then perhaps it is a pendant. It would make sense. It would be small enough for Lady Scarlet to hide it in a jewelry box.”
“Why did they both want it so much?”
“Treasures are usually valuable, aren’t they? Lady Scarlet said the material was special. That it had captured space itself, whatever that means.”
“Perhaps they thought it came from there.”
“What do you mean?”
“As in, a meteorite. It’s a rather new theory—that the rocks we sometimes discover, in craters and such, are not from Earth, but from space.”
“I knowthat,” she said. “Although I’ve never seen one. Would they look different?”
“It’s hard to say. I’ve never seen one, either. I assume they wouldn’t make for particularly spectacular jewelry, though. At least not what people usually consider spectacular.”
“I wouldn’t mind it,” she said, and he smiled. “And when I wouldn’t be wearing it, I’d have it on display, so I can tell the visitors about my wonderful space ro—” She stopped.
Theo made a few more steps before he realized she wasn’t catching up.
“The duke!” She sprung back into motion and circled him, jumping up and down. “It’s the duke, Theo, it’s him!”
