Young Sherlock Holmes_ Death Cloud - Andrew Lane [35]
‘I – I was looking for Mr Crowe,’ he said, feeling himself blush at the unevenness of his voice. He desperately wished that he could sound as confident and as uninterested as Mycroft effortlessly seemed to manage.
‘My father is out,’ the girl said. Her voice had the same twang that Amyus Crowe’s had – an American accent? – making the sentence sound more like mah father is aowt. Whatever it was, it gave her an exotic appeal. ‘Can I tell him who called?’
Sherlock found that he couldn’t pull his gaze away from her face. She was about the same age as him. Her hair was long and reddish-gold, cascading and curling around her shoulders like a copper waterfall hitting rocks and splashing upward. Her eyes were a shade of violet that Sherlock had only ever seen before on wild flowers, and her skin was brown and freckled, as if she spent a lot of time outdoors.
‘I’m Sherlock,’ he said. ‘Sherlock Holmes.’
‘You’re the kid he’s tutoring.’
‘I’m not a kid; I’m just as old as you,’ he said with as much bravado as he could summon up.
She stepped forward into the sunlight, and Sherlock could see that she was wearing tight brown riding breeches, more appropriate for a boy than a girl, and a linen shirt that emphasized the shape of her chest.
‘I’ll tell Father you were here,’ she said as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘I think he went over to your uncle’s house to look for you. He was expecting to see you today.’
‘I got distracted,’ Sherlock found himself explaining. A thought occurred to him, prompted by her riding breeches and the horse in the nearby paddock. ‘You’ve been watching me!’ he blurted out without thinking, feeling a sudden flush of embarrassment and vulnerability.
‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ she said. ‘I saw you a couple of times while I was out riding, is all.’
‘Where were you riding to? There’s nothing past the manor house except open countryside.’
‘Then that’s where I was riding.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you ride?’
Sherlock shook his head.
‘You should learn. It’s fun.’
Remembering the figure that he’d seen in the distance, he said: ‘You ride like a man.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When I’ve seen women riding they turn sideways on the saddle, with both legs on one side of the horse. Sidesaddle, they call it. You ride like a man, with one leg on each side of the horse.’
‘That’s the way I was taught.’ She sounded angry. ‘People here laugh at me for riding that way, but if I rode the way they wanted then I’d fall off if I went any faster than a trot. This country is strange. It’s not like home.’ She pushed past him, the door swinging shut behind her, and strode away from him, towards the paddock. He watched her retreating back.
‘What’s your name?’ Sherlock called.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘So I don’t have to keep thinking of you as “Amyus Crowe’s daughter”.’
She stopped and spoke without turning. ‘Virginia,’ she said. ‘It’s a place in America. A state on the Eastern Seaboard, near Washington DC.’
‘I’ve heard of it. Is that near Albuquerque?’
She turned, and her expression was somewhere between contempt and amusement. ‘Nowhere near. Thousands of miles away. Virginia is mostly forests and mountains, but Albuquerque is in the middle of a desert. Although there are mountains there as well.’
‘But you come from Albuquerque.’
She nodded.
‘Why did you leave?’
Virginia didn’t answer. Instead, she turned away and continued walking on towards the paddock. Sherlock followed, feeling strangely like a puppet being jerked around by its strings, unable to follow his own desires. He glanced around, hoping that Matty wasn’t there to witness what was going on, but the boy and his bicycle were absent.
‘Don’t you want to tell someone where you’re going?’ he asked as Virginia stepped up into one stirrup, grasped the front of the saddle with