“Is it the freedom? Don’t bother with the race. Come back to the States with me, and I’ll make you partner in my stables. Not head groom. Not head trainer. Come and go as you please.” When I still don’t speak, Holly says, “Now, there, you see? So you were lying to me when you told me it was the freedom you wanted. We’ve discovered it’s not about the freedom at all. I call that progress.”
I turn my face away. Downstairs, I hear the commotion of the yard on race day, and me not among it.
“So it’s about that red stallion, then, you say? You will lose the race and lose him in one swift stroke of Malvern justice? But you’ve won four years out of six, haven’t you, and aren’t those good odds? So I think it’s not about that, either.”
I open my eyes. Holly shifts his weight under my gaze; the crate creaks beneath him.
“Twice I’ve lost to Ian Privett on Penda. The third year he fell and lost Penda and this year he has him again. Blackwell has Margot —”
“— she’s a fast bitch —” notes Holly, my words in his mouth.
“— and there is that piebald. I don’t know her. I think we should all be afraid of her. I think I could lose it all.”
Holly scratches his neck and looks at the shadows beneath my narrow bed. “This ‘it all’ seems to be the heart of it to me.
When you say ‘it all,’ do you by any chance mean Kate Connolly? Ah, I see that you do.”
I say, “Myself I can be sure of.”
“Hmm,” he says.
“Don’t say ‘hmm’ to me, Mr. Holly. You can’t come in here with your red hat and those shoes and play the wise man.”
“Yes, says the man wearing no shoes at all,” says Holly. He stands and takes the step that brings him to my stove. “How do you live here, Sean? How do you make a cup of tea without burning your johnny? If you rolled over in your bed, you’d end up in the sink. Every morning is breakfast in bed because there’s no floor to speak of.”
“It’s tolerable.”
“Hmm,” says Holly again. “Tolerable covers a wide range of situations. If you win, this is what you come back to?”
“My father’s house is an hour’s walk from here, on the northwestern cliffs. If I was free to live anywhere, that’s where I’d live.” I can’t quite remember living in my father’s home, though I’ve ridden by it before. My memories of the space inside are fragmented: me in bed, me at a window, my mother in a chair. It’s quite run-down now. It’s still in my name, but it’s too far to serve me well working for Malvern.
“That’s where you would keep the broodmare I just bought until she had a lovely red colt by your stallion?”
I reach for my socks on the radiator and the boots beneath them. “I didn’t say I would start a yard.”
“You didn’t have to. I’ll come back next year and you’ll have a nest of horses outside your window and Puck Connolly in your bed and I’ll buy from you instead of Malvern. That’s your future for you.”
“The future sounds much kinder in your accent.” I sigh and reach for my jacket.
“Where are you going? I’m not nearly done with my prognostication.”
I shoulder on my jacket. “To the beach. You’ll never get that colt of yours if I don’t win Corr.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
PUCK
In the night, I’ve shrunk and everyone else on the island has grown. They’re all nine feet tall and men and I’m four feet and a child. Dove, too, is a toy or possibly a dog as I lead her through the throngs of people. The cliff road is already seething; the early races began hours ago and fifths are running the short skirmishes down on the sand. I hear groans and laughs from the spectators on the cliff. The wind tears at us all.
I peer up at the clouds, but they’re lackluster clouds, the sort that stay for a moment, not a day. I’m relieved; I’d thought it might be as ill as the day that we’d found Tommy dead on the beach. It is cold, but it’s November. I expected cold.
Everyone’s watching me and I keep hearing my name, or keep thinking that I hear it, anyway. Someone spits at Dove’s hooves, or maybe my feet. I hear exclamations in broad mainland accents and comments about my breeding in Thisby’s clipped one. I feel, strangely, like I’m the stranger and the tourist, come to visit a friendless island. Everyone’s touching Dove, and she’s flighty and uncertain. At one point, she lifts her head and whinnies, though there’s no one on this side of the island to answer her. Far down on the beach, a capall uisce screams back. Dove shivers and drags me at the end of the lead; it takes my heels several feet to find traction again.
I hear laughter and someone asks if I need help, not in a nice way. I snarl, “What I need is for your mother to have thought a little harder nine months before your birthday.”
“She bites!” says someone.
I seal my mouth shut and push farther on. Somewhere in this mess is Gabe, possibly, with my colors, and Finn, possibly, with my lunch.
“Kate Connolly, do you mean to change the establishment?”
I blink and step backward. There’s a man directly in front of me, dressed in a brown suit that looks like it cost more than our house, and he holds a notebook. Behind him stands a photographer with a massive flashbulb. There is an edge of people behind me and Dove. I feel cornered.
“I’m not trying to change anything but my own situation,” I say.
“So you wouldn’t say you were inspired by the women’s suffrage movement?”
I crane my neck around, looking for my brothers or for Dory Maud or for anyone that I know. I’ve never seen so many bowler hats in my life. “I’m just a person with a horse, same as anyone else on this island. Do you mind? You’re making my horse nervous.”
The reporter asks, “What would you say to those on Thisby who say you don’t belong in the Scorpio Races?”
“I don’t have a clever answer for you,” I say crossly.
“Just one more, Miss Connolly. Where do you think you’ll end up? Do you think you stand a chance of finishing?” They trot to keep up with me as I turn Dove’s shoulder toward them. I’m oddly undone by the reporter and the photographer, more than anything I’ve encountered so far. I hadn’t considered eyes on me, much less eyes all the way from a mainland newspaper.
I scowl at him. “Go ask at Gratton’s. They know everything.”
I try to turn Dove again, to push them away from me.
“Puck!”
I turn in the direction of my name, my insides raw, and there is Sean. Unlike me, who had to push through this crowd, he cuts neatly through the people. They make room for him as if unaware that they do. He is in only white shirtsleeves and he’s out of breath, which is to say that for a moment I cannot believe it’s him.
He comes in close, turning his back to the reporter, and ducks his head to me. I’m very aware of all the eyes on us, but Sean seems oblivious. He asks, “Where are your colors?”
“Gabe went looking for them.”
“They’re down on the beach,” he says. “You’ve got to pick them up down there.”