The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [115]
“Your aunt is a strong woman,” George Holly says to me.
“Dory Maud?”
“That’s the one.”
If Dory Maud has told him we’re related, I might take up spitting again. “She’s not my aunt.”
He is graciously apologetic. “Oh, I’m sorry. You seemed so familiar with her. I didn’t mean to overstep.”
“Everyone on Thisby is familiar,” I reply. “Stay here for a month and she’ll be your aunt as well.”
This makes Finn smile at the floor.
“My,” says George Holly. “What a laden promise that is.”
We move forward in line. Finn’s head is going back and forth like an owl’s from tray to tray as he weighs the merits of the different possibilities.
“Mr. Kendrick tells me that your pony has quite a set of legs on her,” Holly says conversationally. I hear someone behind the counter say bright red hat.
“Horse.”
“Hmm?”
“She’s fifteen-two hands. Horse. He said that?”
“Oh, excuse me, madam,” Holly says. This is because Mary Finch has just squeezed between him and a shelf to get to the window, and her hand went somewhere untoward on his person, a most fortunate accident on her part. Holly moves toward the counter and gathers his dignity back up to himself before he turns back to me. “Word on the beach is he said that if your pony — horse — goes straight while the capaill uisce go right, you might get somewhere.”
I wonder if Sean really believes this. I wonder if I really believe that. I must, or else why am I doing this? “I reckon that’s the plan. If we’re being familiar, how well is it you know Sean Kendrick?”
Mary Finch squeezes back by George Holly and his eyes go round for a moment as he receives some more Skarmouth hospitality. I try not to laugh.
“Oh,” he says. “Oh. Well, I was here to look at Malvern horses and we met. He’s a strange old bird, which is to say that I like him quite a bit.”
Finn taps on the counter to draw Holly’s attention to the cakes they’ve just set out under the glass. For a brief moment, their faces wear the same boyish, wistful longing, longing that’s not tempered by the knowledge that the line until they get to the cakes is only six feet long.
“In the interests of familiarity,” Holly says, “how well do you know him?”
My cheeks redden, which infuriates me. Curse this ginger hair and everything that comes with it. My father said once that if I didn’t have my mother’s ginger hair, I wouldn’t blush or curse as easily. Which I thought was unfair. I hardly ever curse or blush, even though I’ve had plenty of days that required both. I’m a quite level person, I think, given the circumstances.
Finn’s eyeballing me, too curious about the answer to Holly’s question. I say, “A little. We’re friendly.”
“Like you and your aunt?” Holly asks. When I scowl at him, he suggests, “Like cousins? Like siblings?”
“I don’t know him as well as Mary Finch knows you,” I tell him. When he looks perplexed, I make a little pinching motion and he winces as if his underparts feel her attentions once more.
“Fair enough,” Holly says.
We stand at the counter and Bev Palsson swaps money for cakes. Finn buys an obscene number of cinnamon twists with Dory Maud’s money. Once we actually have them in our hands and stand outside the door where Dove is tied, Finn makes George Holly unwrap one of the cakes so that Finn can observe his reaction. Holly takes a bite, honey slipping over his lip, and closes his eyes in pleasure so pronounced that it’s hard to tell if it’s exaggerated for Finn’s benefit.
“I’m told,” Holly says, “that food tastes better in your memories. I don’t see how I can improve on this in a memory.”
Finn is pleased by this. It’s as if he made them himself. I see something bittersweet in Holly’s expression, though; I think, possibly, that this island has begun to get its hooks into him, and this makes me like him even more. Anyone Thisby chooses to seduce can’t be half-bad.
Holly asks, “Finn, would you be so kind as to ask them for another bag so we can separate these into two parcels? And if I give you this, would you fetch me another