The Hardie Inheritance Read Online Free PDF Page B

put everything back exactly as I found it.’
    He looked steadily into her eyes. Two hours ago they had been strangers, and yet there was a feeling of sympathy between them. It had something to do with honesty. Grace Hardie was a straightforward person. But there must be something more than that to make him hope so strongly that she would agree to let him return and do his work at leisure.
    It didn’t very often happen that Ellis liked a woman at first sight and felt a wish to make her a friend. Some womenfrightened him; others he scorned. This one, whom most men might have dismissed as eccentric, was curiously to his taste. Perhaps it was because with her cropped hair and her boiler suit she looked and behaved more like a man than a woman. And yet there was nothing unfeminine about the smile she gave him as she made up her mind.
    â€˜All right,’ she said. ‘When do you want to come?’
    â€˜I could do a little preparation today and come back tomorrow. Not because I want to hustle you, but to be sure that you really do leave all the uncovering to me, and don’t start rushing around yourself. And I have got all my equipment in Oxford with me, though I didn’t want to startle you by turning up on your doorstep with a full load.’
    â€˜How long will you need?’
    â€˜I shall need a whole day of good weather to do the outside, so that I can move round with the sun. And a second day for the interiors.’
    â€˜Would you like to stay here for a couple of nights, then, with Trish? Not tonight, but after you return. If your wife can spare you.’
    Ellis glanced towards the far end of the studio and saw that Trish was still there, out of earshot.
    â€˜My wife – well, we’re divorced – lives in Ireland. I haven’t seen her for four years,’ he said and then paused, amazed by an unexpected wish to confess to something he never normally talked about. It must have been Grace’s own candour about her poverty which made him wish to offer a confidence in return. ‘We only married in order that the child should be legitimate. It was a mistake even before the wedding day.’
    Even to someone whom he would like as a friend he was not prepared to give further details of the seduction – very nearly the rape – in which he had been the victim and not the aggressor. He had been mistrustful of women even before that appalling night, and ever since had felt nothing but disgust at the thought of their sexual avarice, their hot, fat, damp bodies, their possessive attempts to control the time and the actionsand even the thoughts of any man who fell into their power. Grace Hardie seemed to have little in common with Moira Murray, who had been so determined to become Moira Faraday; but she was a female and would take the female side of the argument if she were to be told the details.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to pry. I only thought – well, if you’re free to do so, please do stay. All these bedrooms, and nobody except my youngest brother ever comes. All we need is a little time to see that they’re aired.’
    â€˜You’re very kind. We shall be delighted. And now we’ve kept you from your work long enough. Trish! Come along, my darling. We’re off now.’
    â€˜There’s one more thing,’ Grace said as they made their way outside. ‘I don’t know if it showed on the plans you’ve seen. But as part of the landscaping of the site your father designed a lodge cottage to provide a vista. I’ll walk down and show you. I mean, it’s a perfectly ordinary gardener’s cottage inside, but there’s a false wall on the north side, so that when you look from the house you’d think there was a kind of monument there. More like a temple than a lodge. You wouldn’t have noticed it coming in from the road.’
    How curious it was, thought Ellis as they once more took