Ruby Red

Ruby Red Plot Summary

Introduction

In the sterile halls of St. Lennox High School, sixteen-year-old Gwyneth Shepherd was nothing more than ordinary—until the moment she felt the world tilt beneath her feet. What should have been a simple trip to buy sherbet lemons became a violent plunge through time itself, landing her on cobblestone streets where horse-drawn carriages clattered past and gas lamps flickered in the fog. The family secret that was meant for her perfectly prepared cousin Charlotte had chosen Gwyneth instead, marking her as the final piece in an ancient puzzle that powerful men had died to complete. For centuries, the Guardians had waited for twelve time travelers whose blood would unlock the ultimate mystery. Count Saint-Germain, a figure of legend who claimed to have walked through history itself, had orchestrated this grand design from beyond death. Now Gwyneth found herself thrust into a world where Victorian drawing rooms concealed deadly conspiracies, where her own ancestors might be her greatest enemies, and where a dangerous young man named Gideon de Villiers held the key to both her survival and her heart. But in the shadows of time, other forces were stirring—forces that would stop at nothing to claim the power that her blood could unleash.

Chapter 1: The Unexpected Inheritance: When Time Claims Its Traveler

The plate of mashed potatoes crashed to the floor as Gwyneth's world spun like a broken carousel. For a moment, the school canteen dissolved into a dizzy blur before snapping back into focus, leaving her staring at the mess splattered across her uniform. She had felt this sensation before—a roller-coaster plunge in her stomach—but never with such violent intensity. That afternoon, walking toward Selfridges through the rain-soaked streets of London, the feeling struck again. This time there was no recovering, no catching herself before the fall. The familiar shops and traffic lights blurred into a gray river, and when her vision cleared, she stood on cobblestones beneath flickering gas lamps. Vintage automobiles puttered past where modern cars should have been, their brass headlamps cutting through the gloom. Panic clawed at her throat as she realized the impossible truth. She had traveled back in time—not her cousin Charlotte, who had been prepared for this moment since birth, but Gwyneth herself. The family gene that everyone expected Charlotte to inherit had chosen the wrong girl entirely. When she finally returned to her own time, materializing on the familiar doorstep like a ghost returning from the grave, Gwyneth faced a terrible choice. She could pretend nothing had happened, let Charlotte claim her destiny as planned. Or she could admit the truth and shatter everything her family believed about their carefully orchestrated future. The decision was torn from her hands when the dizzy sensation struck again that very night, hurling her through time like a rag doll caught in a storm.

Chapter 2: Entering the Circle: Secrets of the Guardians and the Chronograph

In the labyrinthine chambers beneath the Temple, Gwyneth discovered a world that existed between the pages of history books. The Guardians had waited centuries for this moment—the arrival of the twelfth and final time traveler, the Ruby, whose blood would complete their sacred Circle. Thomas George, a kind-faced man with twinkling eyes, explained what she had become. Twelve time travelers scattered across history, each carrying a genetic gift that defied explanation. Count Saint-Germain, the legendary figure who had founded their order in 1745, had mapped their births with mathematical precision. Isaac Newton himself had calculated Charlotte's expected arrival, but somehow the calculations had gone wrong. The chronograph sat before her like a jeweled music box, its polished wood surface inlaid with precious stones and intricate clockwork. This device could control her wild journeys through time, sending her to safe periods where she could elapse for a few hours before returning home. Without it, she would continue to vanish unpredictably, possibly landing in plague years or battlefields where death waited around every corner. Gideon de Villiers emerged from the shadows like a green-eyed predator, beautiful and dangerous in equal measure. At eighteen, he had already mastered time travel, spending his nights in the safety of 1953 while his days belonged to the present. His contempt for Gwyneth was immediate and cutting—she was unprepared, untrained, a liability to everything they had worked toward. But when Dr. White drew her blood and fed it into the chronograph's hungry mechanism, the device hummed to life with a sound like distant music. The Ruby had found her place in the Circle at last.

Chapter 3: Reluctant Partners: Navigating the Past with Gideon

Madame Rossini's skilled hands transformed Gwyneth into an eighteenth-century lady, complete with whale-bone corset and silk brocade gown. The pale blue fabric swirled around her like captured sky as she prepared for her first controlled journey through time. Despite her elaborate costume, she felt naked and vulnerable, thrust into a world where a single misstep could mean death. Gideon's arrogance proved both infuriating and oddly comforting as they materialized in the torch-lit corridors of 1782. He moved through the past like he belonged there, speaking passwords to armored guards and navigating political intrigue with casual expertise. His every gesture reminded Gwyneth of how unprepared she was, how little she understood about the forces that now controlled her fate. The Temple's past incarnation buzzed with activity as Guardians in powdered wigs and embroidered coats went about their mysterious business. These men had dedicated their lives to protecting time travelers and preserving ancient secrets. They spoke of the Circle of Twelve with religious reverence, as if the completion of this mystical pattern would reshape the world itself. But beneath their scholarly pursuits lay something darker. Gwyneth glimpsed it in whispered conversations and worried glances—a fear that not everyone wanted the Circle completed. Someone had already stolen one chronograph, taking with it the blood of ten time travelers and decades of careful work. The thieves remained at large somewhere in the past, armed with power they barely understood. As Gideon guided her through corridors thick with intrigue, Gwyneth began to realize that her greatest danger might not come from the past's diseases or primitive medicine. It might come from the very people who claimed to protect her.

Chapter 4: The Count's Shadow: Encountering Saint-Germain and Hidden Dangers

Count Saint-Germain received them in Lord Brompton's elegant drawing room like a spider welcoming flies to his web. Despite his aged appearance—parchment skin and powder-white wig—his dark eyes burned with an intensity that made Gwyneth's flesh crawl. This man had supposedly walked through centuries, accumulating knowledge and power that no mortal was meant to possess. His companion, Miro Rakoczy, lounged in the corner like a predator at rest. The Transylvanian's black eyes held no reflection, no spark of humanity. When he mentioned his homeland, something hungry stirred in those dead depths. Gwyneth recognized him for what he was—a creature that had traded its soul for immortality, bound to the Count through bonds darker than friendship. Lord Brompton, their unwitting host, treated the entire affair as elaborate theater. He laughed at tales of the twenty-first century, dismissing them as clever fiction. But when Gwyneth produced her mobile phone and showed him his own photograph captured in its glowing screen, his amusement died. The impossible had become real before his eyes. The Count's true nature revealed itself when the others couldn't hear. His voice echoed inside Gwyneth's mind while his lips never moved, and invisible fingers closed around her throat from across the room. The sensation of choking on empty air left her gasping and terrified. This was no parlor trick—it was a demonstration of power that transcended physical laws. In that moment, she understood why her mother had begged her to stay away from Saint-Germain. The man was not just a time traveler or scholar of ancient mysteries. He was something far more dangerous—a creature who had learned to bend reality itself to his will, and who saw other people as nothing more than tools to be used and discarded.

Chapter 5: Blood and Betrayal: Ambushes, Ancestors, and Ancient Conspiracies

Hyde Park became a killing ground beneath the innocent summer sun. Three men in black emerged from the shadows like ravens, their swords singing as they cut through the air toward Gideon's throat. The attack was perfectly coordinated—someone had known exactly where they would be, exactly when they would arrive. Poor Wilbour, their coachman, lay sprawled in the sandy path with half his face blown away by a pistol shot. His remaining eye stared sightlessly at the sky while blood soaked into his yellow coat. Gwyneth had never seen death before, never understood how final and grotesque it could be. Gideon fought like a man possessed, his blade weaving patterns of light and steel as he parried thrust after deadly thrust. But even his skill could not overcome three opponents indefinitely. When she saw him stagger, blood flowing from a wound in his arm, Gwyneth acted without thinking. The sword felt impossibly heavy in her hands until the moment it slid between her attacker's ribs. She expected resistance, the grinding of bone, but instead the blade passed through flesh like a knife through butter. The man's eyes went wide with shock before he crumpled to the ground, his life spilling out onto the grass. The remaining assassin broke under Gideon's renewed assault, begging for mercy as steel pricked his throat. But before they could learn who had sent the killers, the familiar dizziness swept them away. They materialized back in the present, leaving behind a mystery that would echo through the centuries. In The Annals of the Guardians, James Wilbour's death was already recorded—a historical fact that they had witnessed and participated in, their own actions woven inextricably into the past's dark tapestry.

Chapter 6: The Other Travelers: Lucy, Paul, and the Stolen Chronograph

Margaret Tilney's elegant house in Belgravia proved to be another carefully laid trap. Gwyneth's great-great-grandmother, younger than her own mother but carrying the wisdom of multiple lifetimes, had prepared afternoon tea for three—knowing somehow that they would come on this exact day, at this precise hour. Paul de Villiers emerged from the shadows with amber eyes that burned like his older brother's, but where Falk commanded through authority, Paul radiated dangerous charm. He moved with the fluid grace of someone who had spent years dodging pursuers, and when he spoke of Gwyneth's father—Nicholas, who had died when she was seven—his voice carried genuine grief. Lucy appeared like a ghost of family gatherings past, her red hair catching the light as she pleaded with them to listen. She was beautiful and desperate, a woman who had sacrificed everything for beliefs that others called treasonous. The tears in her eyes seemed real enough, but Gwyneth had learned not to trust appearances in this world of shifting loyalties. The revelation struck like lightning: Lucy and Paul had not stolen the chronograph to destroy it, but to claim its power for themselves. They needed only blood from the final two time travelers—Gwyneth and Gideon—to complete their own version of the Circle. Everything else had been misdirection, a cover story to mask their true intentions. Stillman, the butler-turned-enforcer, moved with the lethal precision of a professional killer. Only Gideon's quick thinking and quicker reflexes saved them from whatever fate awaited in that elegant drawing room. As they fled through London's busy streets, Lucy's final words echoed behind them: a cryptic reference to the Green Rider and secrets that only Gwyneth's grandfather might have known.

Chapter 7: Falling Through Time: Romance Blossoms Amid Gathering Storms

The confessional booth in Holy Trinity Church became an unlikely sanctuary as they waited for time's tide to carry them home. In the flickering candlelight, surrounded by the smell of incense and the weight of centuries, Gwyneth found herself truly alone with Gideon for the first time. His apology came haltingly, as if the words had to fight their way past pride and carefully maintained distance. He spoke of how everything had become complicated since her arrival, how she refused to follow orders like Charlotte had always done. But instead of irritation, his voice carried something that sounded almost like admiration. When he leaned forward through the confessional window and touched her face with gentle fingers, the world narrowed to just that moment. His lips found hers with a tenderness that contradicted everything she thought she knew about him. The kiss tasted of possibility and danger, of secrets yet to be revealed and battles yet to be fought. For those precious minutes, time itself seemed to pause. The grand conspiracy that swirled around them, the deadly games played by immortal manipulators, the weight of destiny that had been thrust upon her shoulders—all of it faded into insignificance. There was only Gideon's warmth against her, the rapid beating of his heart, and the knowledge that whatever came next, she would not face it alone. But even as they lost themselves in each other, the wheels of fate continued to turn. Lucy and Paul's desperate gambit had failed, but other players remained on the board. The Count's influence stretched across centuries like a spider's web, and at its center sat a secret that men had died to protect or claim. When the familiar dizziness finally claimed them, pulling them back toward their own time, Gwyneth carried with her more than just memories of the past. She carried the certainty that her story—their story—was only just beginning.

Summary

In the end, Gwyneth Shepherd discovered that being chosen by destiny was far different from being prepared for it. The time travel gene that should have blessed Charlotte had instead marked her for a life of constant danger, caught between competing forces that would reshape history itself. Count Saint-Germain's ancient conspiracy moved forward with mechanical precision, each piece of the puzzle falling into place despite the chaos that swirled around them. Yet perhaps chaos was exactly what the situation needed. Where Charlotte might have followed orders and accepted her role without question, Gwyneth brought something unexpected to the game—the unpredictability of someone who refused to be anyone's pawn. Her relationship with Gideon evolved from mutual antagonism to something deeper and more dangerous, a partnership that might prove to be either their salvation or their doom. The Ruby had taken her place in the Circle at last, but the pattern she completed would not be the one that anyone expected. In a world where the past could be rewritten and the future hung by a thread, perhaps the greatest power lay not in ancient prophecies or mystical bloodlines, but in the simple human capacity to choose love over fear, hope over despair, and the uncertain future over the weight of the past.

About Author

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Kerstin Gier

Gier explores the intricacies of identity and relationships through her captivating narratives that seamlessly blend fantasy, romance, and adventure. Her work is characterized by a strong emphasis on time travel and mystery, providing readers with witty dialogue and engaging plots. This approach has particularly resonated in the "Ruby Red" trilogy, where young adult themes are interwoven with coming-of-age journeys. Moreover, Gier’s novels often delve into family secrets and personal discovery, themes that have captivated both young and adult audiences.\n\nBy consistently crafting relatable characters, especially strong female protagonists, Gier ensures her stories resonate with a wide audience. Her ability to address complex emotional landscapes is evident in other notable works such as "For Every Solution, A Problem" and the "Silver Trilogy". The author’s early book, "Men and Other Disasters", marked the beginning of a prolific career that continues to impact the literary world with its emotional depth and imaginative storytelling.\n\nGier’s contributions have been recognized with significant awards, including the American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults Award for the "Ruby Red" trilogy. Her novels' adaptations into films further underline her influence in German and international literature, making her an author whose works inspire both entertainment and introspection. This short bio encapsulates a career that has enriched the literary landscape, offering readers not only escapism but also a profound reflection on personal and familial relationships.

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