The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [106]
In all my daydreaming about the future I had, oddly, given this question no thought; now it drove out everything else. Even for a simple ceremony my Sunday skirts and blouses were too ordinary. Indeed every garment in my wardrobe seemed limp and unappealing. I recalled the turquoise dress Coco had worn to the dance, and ruined in the rain. Might one of the guest room wardrobes contain a dress that would serve? But I was much smaller than Coco, and I shrank from wearing a dress whose history I didn’t know. What if, unwittingly, I chose something Alison had worn right before her accident? Then I remembered the dress Matron had given me as a farewell gift. It had belonged to a prefect, one of the most elegant girls at Claypoole. I had never so much as tried it on, but I pictured the lustrous paisley fabric transforming me into a forest bride.
As soon as lessons and lunch were over I went to my room. The dress, when I lifted it down from the back of the wardrobe, was as pretty as I recalled, the delicate pattern of leaves and flowers conjuring up a lush jungle where a lyre-bird might sing. But when I pulled it over my head I could tell at once it was too large, and the mirror revealed a lost cause. The bodice gaped, the sleeves dangled, the hem drooped. Worst of all, the green gave my skin an olive tinge. I looked exactly like what I was: an orphan in a borrowed dress.
Silence greeted my knock at Mr. Sinclair’s door. He must, I thought, be out in the fields, or meeting with a neighbour. I was almost back at the far end of the corridor when the lock clicked. I turned to see him standing in the doorway. He was wearing the clothes he had worn the night before, his shirt crumpled, his trousers creased.
“Are you all right?” I said.
“I’m fine,” he said abruptly and then, as if remembering our relationship, came forward to kiss me. His eyes, I noticed, were red-rimmed and bloodshot.
“Hugh,” I said. “May I call you Hugh?”
“What else would you call me? Now out with it. You’re bursting with something.”
I repeated Nell’s question. “I know the dress is meant to be a secret from the groom but I can’t ask Vicky for help.”
His forehead grew smooth. “I’m an idiot,” he said. “Of course you must have a dress. We’ll go and buy one this afternoon.”
“But you can’t see it, not until our wedding day. That’s bad luck.” My uncle had officiated at many weddings, and I remembered the lore.
“I will drive you to the best shop in Kirkwall, hand you my wallet, and then take myself off to read the paper at the pub. I’ll be ready in five minutes.”
Startled by his alacrity, I hurried to my room to change—even to buy a dress I needed to look respectable—and then to the kitchen to ask Vicky to mind Nell. She looked up from the shell she was carefully threading with wire. “Of course,” she said. “She can help me sort the stamens. You’ll be needing new outfits now.”
Again I glimpsed a hidden meaning. “I don’t need new outfits in general,” I said. “I haven’t grown in three years, but I do want to look nice on Monday.”
Vicky’s expression softened. “I suppose you do. Will you pick me up a pair of tights, medium, not too light?”
Between morning lessons and my sartorial distraction, there had been no opportunity to ask Mr. Sinclair—Hugh—about our encounter with Nell the night before. Now, once we were safely through the gate, I said I didn’t understand why he had wanted me to question her. “And what did she mean about Seamus? Was she saying he was there when Alison died?”
“That’s what it sounded like, but I’ve asked her about that night over and over and she’s never mentioned Seamus before.”
I had always assumed Nell was afraid of Seamus—like me she tended to avoid him—but perhaps her avoidance signalled a more complicated relationship. “So were Seamus and Alison friends?” I said.
“Not really. Remember our bargain, Gemma. On our wedding night we’ll tell each other our secrets.”
For the rest of the journey he beguiled me with talk about the farm, and a client in Edinburgh he was hoping to