The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [39]
“Kate Connolly,” I clarify, with as many bristles as I can manage.
“Yes. I think we should have some tea.”
He sits at our table.
“Mr. Malvern,” I start, sternly.
“Good, you know who I am. That saves us some trouble.
Now, I wouldn’t presume to tell you your business, but it’s cold out there and an open door makes a very poor windbreak.”
I shut it. I shut my mouth as well. I start to make some tea. I’m equal parts offended and curious.
“What brings you this way?” I ask. I’m unhappy about how polite I sound.
His eyes were on my saddle but he shifts them to me when I speak. I’m intimidated by them, a little. The rest of him looks like a moneyed old man, but his eyes are clever.
“Unpleasant business.” But he says it pleasantly.
“I would have thought that you have people to do your unpleasant business for you,” I say, and feel cheeky. “Sugar or milk?”
“Butter, milk, and salt, please.”
I turn to Malvern, sure I’ll see humor on his face. But there isn’t any. I’m not sure, now that I think of it, that it’s a face I could imagine humor on. It’s more like a face I can imagine on a pound note. I hand him his cup of tea, a saltshaker, and our little butter bowl. Sitting down with the milk jug opposite, I watch him slice a small piece of butter into his tea, add a healthy dose of salt, and top it all up with milk before stirring it thoroughly. The liquid has a froth on it. It looks like something I saw come out from under a cow once. I don’t think that he’ll drink it, but he does.
Malvern braces his fingers on the edge of his teacup. “Is that your pony outside?”
“Horse,” I say. “She’s fifteen hands.”
“You’d get better performance out of her with better food,” Malvern tells me. “Switch her from that poor hay and she’d have more energy. Less of a hay belly.”
Of course she’d have more energy on better hay and grain.
I’d have more energy if I were eating something besides beans and apple cake, too, but we’re both going without better for the same reason.
We drink our tea. I think about Finn coming home right now and finding Malvern at our kitchen table. I sweep some crumbs into a pyramid behind the butter bowl.
“So your parents are dead,” Benjamin Malvern says.
I set my teacup down.
“Mr. Malvern.”
“I know the story already,” he interrupts me. “I don’t want to talk about that. I want to know what comes after the story. What are you three — it is three, isn’t it? — doing with yourselves?”
I try to imagine how my parents would handle this situation. They were unfailingly polite and private. I am good at one of those things. Uncomfortably, I say, “We’re getting along. Gabe works at the hotel. Finn and I do odd jobs. Paint things for tourists.”
“Making enough for tea,” Malvern says, but his eyes are on the pantry door. I know he saw its lack of contents when I took out the butter bowl.
“We’re getting along,” I repeat.
Malvern swallows the last of his tea — how he’s managed to drink that concoction so fast and without holding his nose is beyond me — and rests his crossed arms on the table. He leans toward me so I smell his cologne.
“I am here to evict you.”
For a moment, it doesn’t mean anything, and then I scramble to my feet. My head pounds like the surf where the water horse struck it. I keep replaying that sentence.
He continues, “No one has made payments on this house for a year, and I wanted to see who lived here. I wanted to see your faces when I told you.”
I think, just then, that in an island populated by monsters, he’s more monstrous than any. My tongue takes a long time to unstick. “I thought the house was paid for. I didn’t know.”
“Gabriel Connolly knew better, and has for quite a while,” Malvern says. His voice is calm. He’s watching my reaction carefully. I cannot believe that I’ve served him tea.
I look at him and smash my lips together. I want to be sure I don’t say something I will regret. I am struck, more than anything, by the sense of betrayal: that Gabe knew that we were living in a ticking time bomb and didn’t tell us. Finally,