The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [140]
“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