The Flight of Gemma Hardy_ A Novel - Margot Livesey [72]
I walked downstairs as if I were balancing a book on my head. The library door was ajar. I knocked and, when a voice called “Come in,” stepped inside. A man was standing at the bay window, gazing out at the garden.
“The stealthy cyclist,” he said, turning to greet me. “Otherwise known as Gemma Hardy.”
“The inept tyre changer.”
He did not move but stood looking at me across the length of the room, and I looked back at this man who controlled my future. Vicky had said he was handsome, but to my mind his forehead was a little too low, his eyebrows a little too heavy to deserve that adjective. His hair, longer than I’d ever seen a man’s, almost touched the collar of his white shirt. He wore a blue pullover and dark corduroy trousers. His beautiful shoes were gone, replaced by soft suede ones.
“How do you do, Mr. Sinclair?” I said, advancing with outstretched hand.
“Forgive me,” he said, raising his bandaged fingers. “Only a sprain. The doctor claims I’ll be fine in a week or so. Meanwhile I must refrain from being polite, which isn’t usually a hardship. I thought you were bringing Nell.”
“I’m afraid she’s done a disappearing act.” I spoke lightly, trying to suggest that this was a trivial matter. “We went to the Sands of Evie for a picnic. She took her bike and came home early.”
“In other words you did something that made her take umbrage. Well, she’ll show up unless the mermaids steal her. She’s a mercenary brat, and she knows me as a bringer of gifts. Tell me, how are her lessons going? Is she making progress?”
He went over to a trolley that had been empty the day before and which now held a dozen cut-glass decanters and bottles. While I registered the phrase “mercenary brat”—this was not the fond guardian of my imaginings—he poured himself a tumbler of amber-coloured liquid and sat down in the chair I had come to think of as mine.
“On the principle that I ought not to encourage underage drinking,” he said, “I won’t offer you anything. Sit down. Talk to me.”
I said firmly that I wasn’t underage, which was now true, and that I didn’t drink.
“At least not often,” Mr. Sinclair amended. “Last night, when you held the torch for me, I could swear I smelled beer on your breath.”
To hide my confusion I went over and closed the door. Then I slid shut the window where he’d been standing. “Your niece,” I said, “is an ardent eavesdropper.”
I sat down in the opposite chair with my hands in my lap and my feet together, Claypoole fashion, and gave a brief report of how Nell had first shunned me and then capitulated. “We made a bargain. She does lessons every day and I read to her from whatever book she chooses. She’s been poorly schooled, but she’s bright. She’s beginning to read. She knows her multiplication tables through times six. And we’re studying nature and Scottish history. Until this afternoon things were going well.”
He raised his glass and swirled the liquid, as if it were something to admire rather than drink. I saw how dark his eyelashes were and that if he grew a beard it too would be dark. His mouth was the same shape as Nell’s. “Vicky says that too,” he said, “and she says Nell likes you. But you’re wrong about one thing. She hasn’t been poorly schooled; she hasn’t been schooled at all. Her mother had some romantic notion about teaching her at home, but she didn’t have the patience.” He shook his head and, at last, drank. “Enough of Nell. She will speak for herself when she shows up. Where did you come from? What are you doing here?”
I told him I had been at Claypoole School, and answered Vicky’s advertisement. “Yes, yes,” he said, waving away my answers. “I know all that—your youth, your flimsy credentials. I was asking a more existential question, if you know what that means.”
“Concerned with existence.” I gazed resolutely at