PUCK

My mother always told me that you should wear your best clothing when you are angry, because it would scare people. I’m not angry, but I’m in the mood to be terrifying, so I take great care in the morning after the races. I spend an hour before my mother’s oval mirror in her room, turning my ginger hair around a brush and twisting the curls with my fingers. I keep an image of Peg Gratton’s hair in my head as I sort it all out. There turned out to be much less of it when it was all going in the same direction, and when I pin it back, I see my mother’s face in the mirror.

I go to her closet and look at her dresses, but none of them look like they would scare anyone. So instead I find a collared shirt and put on a pair of breeches and my boots after I polish all of the beach that was caked on them. I borrow her coral bracelet and her matching coral necklace. Then I step out into the hall.

“Kate,” Gabe says, startled. He sits at the kitchen table and stares. I heard him packing last night. “Where are you going?”

“I am going to the Malvern Yard.”

“Well, you sure do look nice.”

I open the door. Outside, the morning is pastel and mild, scented with wood smoke, as soft as yesterday was hard. “I know.”

I strap my schoolbag over my back and take the bicycle because Dove has earned a day off if she’s earned anything, and I bike through the benevolent day to the Malvern Yard.

As before, when I get to the yard, it is bustling with activity. Grooms with horses going out to pasture, riders taking thoroughbreds out to the gallops for their run, stable boys sweeping down the cobbles.

“Kate Connolly,” says one of the grooms. “Sean’s not here.”

I didn’t think he would be, but I don’t like to hear it anyway. Still, I say, “I’m looking for Benjamin Malvern, actually.”

“He’ll be up at the house — is he expecting you?”

“Yes,” I say, because if he wasn’t expecting me before, he’ll be expecting me when I walk in.

“Well, then, let me,” says the groom. He pulls open the gate for me and my bicycle.

I thank him and walk my bicycle up to the Malvern house. It sits behind the stable and is a big, grand old thing. Like Malvern himself, it’s impressive and powerful-looking but not particularly handsome. I lean my bicycle against the wall and walk to the front door and knock.

For a long moment there is no answer, and then Benjamin Malvern opens the door.

“Good morning,” I say, and I step past him into his center hall. It is a naked thing, just wide-open ceiling and a little drawing-room table against the wall. I see a sitting room beyond it and a single cup sitting in the middle of a white tablecloth.

“I was just having tea,” he says.

“Good timing, then,” I reply. I don’t wait for him to invite me and instead step into the sitting room. Like the center hall, it’s nearly empty. Just a round table in the middle of a high-ceilinged room with nothing but brass sconces on the walls. It seems rather lonely. I wonder if he was just sitting in here wondering if the sea would ever spit out the piebald or Mutt Malvern again. I sit in a chair opposite to the one already ajar.

Malvern’s mouth works. “Milk and sugar?”

I fold my arms on the table and eye him. “I’ll have what you’re having.”

He raises an eyebrow before making me a cup of his odd tea. He pushes it to me and settles down opposite, crossing his legs and leaning back.

“What brings you blowing into my house like a hurricane, Kate Connolly? It’s quite rude.”

“I expect it is. I’ve come for three things, really,” I say. I tip the cup against my lips and he watches me. I close one eye. The tea is almost precisely like drinking a scone or licking the carpet. “Three things I’d like.”

“That’s quite a lot of things to like.”

I reach into the schoolbag and place a small stack of notes on the tablecloth. “The first thing I’d like to do is pay everything owed on the house.”

Malvern eyes the money but doesn’t touch it. “And the second?”

I take another big drink of tea for emphasis. It requires quite a bit of heroics on my part but I manage. “I’d like you to give me a job.”

He sets down his teacup. “And what is it you think you’ll do in this job?”

“I think I’ll probably muck stalls and ride horses and push wheelbarrows, to start, and I think I’ll be good at it.”

Malvern considers me. “Jobs are not the easiest thing to be had on this island, you know.”

“So I’ve heard,” I reply.

Benjamin Malvern rubs his fingers over his mouth and looks up at the empty ceiling high above us. There’s a bit of a crack in the plaster and he frowns at it. “I think I could manage that. And what is your third thing you’d like?”

I set down my teacup and look at him, quite hard. If I am ever to look terrifying, this is the moment. “I would like you to sell Corr to Sean Kendrick even though Sean didn’t win.”

Malvern makes a face. “We had a bargain, he and I, and he knew it.”

“That horse is useless to you, and both of you know it. What is it you think to do with him?”

He opens one of his hands skyward.

I say, “So you might as well sell him. Unless you just fancy tormenting Sean Kendrick.” I consider adding like your late son fancied but figure that might be more foul than the situation requires.

“Did he ask you to ask me?”

I shake my head. “He doesn’t know I’m here. And he might feel a little odd if he knew that I was.”

Malvern looks into his tea. “You two are a strange pair. You are a pair, aren’t you?”

“We’re in training.”

He shakes his head. “Fine. I’ll sell him. But the price isn’t changing just because the horse stands on three legs instead of four now. Is that all from you?”

“I said three things and that’s what I gave you.”

“Indeed it is. Well, then, leave me to my tea. Come back on Monday and we can talk about your wheelbarrow.”

I stand up, leaving the notes sitting untouched on the table, and head out into the yard. The breeze runs long and low across the ground, sweeping up the sea and the island grass and the hay and the horses. I think it’s the best smell in the world.