The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [38]
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
PUCK
I’m still shaking and coughing by the time I get into the yard. Dove spooks at every shadow, her every movement as jerky as a puppet’s. Even the sound of the gate closing behind her sends her dashing farther into the paddock, her haunches tucked underneath her. I’m lucky she’s not lame.
I close my eyes. I’m lucky she’s not dead.
It only took moments for the stallion to overpower us, and in another moment, I would’ve been under the water for good.
I lean on the gate, waiting for Dove to calm down enough to pick at her hay — she doesn’t — until I’m too cold in my wet clothing. Inside, I peel off my layers and replace them with new ones, but I’m still frigid.
She could’ve died.
In the kitchen, I eat an entire orange and a piece of bread slathered with quite a bit of our precious butter. The price of an orange is so dear that normally I would have borrowed one of Mum’s techniques for making each fruit go as far as possible. With a few oranges, Mum would make an orange cake, flavor butter or icing for a treat, and simmer some marmalade with the rest. If we did eat an orange just as an orange, we’d share the sections among us.
But I eat the entire thing, and by the time I get to the end of it, I’ve stopped shivering. My head still thuds dully from where the capall uisce’s knee hit it.
I suck on my index finger to get the last of the orange flavor, but all I taste is salt from the ocean, which makes me even more irritable. My first day on the beach with Dove and all I have to show for it is sand in every crevice of my skin and a kick in the head.
I couldn’t even make it one day without being rescued.
I keep trying to put Sean Kendrick out of my head, but my mind keeps conjuring up images of his sharp face and the sound of his voice made hoarse by swallowing the sea. And every time I relive the moment, my face flushes hot with embarrassment again.
I run a hand over my forehead, which is gritty with salt, and sigh a long, shuddering breath.
Keep your pony off this beach.
I want to give up. I’m doing all this to win just a few bare weeks with Gabriel on the island. And for what purpose? I haven’t seen a hair on his head since I announced I was racing. My plan seems suddenly foolish. So I’m going to make an idiot of myself in front of the entire island and possibly get myself and Dove killed for a brother who can’t be bothered to come home anyway.
The idea of throwing in the towel is simultaneously relieving and discomfiting. I can’t bear the idea of going back to the beach. But I can’t even imagine telling Gabe that I changed my mind. It’s hard to think that I have enough pride left to damage, but there it is.
There’s a knock on the door. I don’t have any time to make my hair look better — actually, I don’t think there is a way to make it better; it has that greasy, thick feeling of hair bathed in salt water. My heart feels leaden inside me. I can’t think of anyone positive who knocks on the door.
The door opens and it’s Benjamin Malvern. I know it’s Benjamin Malvern because there’s a signed photo of him on the wall behind the bar at the Black-Eyed Girl. I once asked Dad why it was there, and he said that was because Benjamin Malvern had given a lot of money to the pub so it could open. But I still didn’t see why that was a good reason to have someone’s signature on your wall.
“Gabriel Connolly here?” Malvern asks as he comes into the kitchen. I’m left holding the door open. The richest man on Thisby stands in our house with his arms crossed, his gaze shifting from the cluttered kitchen counter to the collapsed pile of wood and peat by the sitting room fireplace to the saddle I’ve perched on the back of Dad’s armchair. He wears a V-necked wool sweater and a tie. He’s got gray hair and is not good-looking. He smells nice, which I resent.
I don’t close the door. It seems like closing the door would be like saying that I invited him in, and I didn’t.
“Not at present,” I say.
“Ah,”