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But the door opens, and when we push inside, I’m surprised to find both Dory Maud and Elizabeth there, as well as a handsome blond man who is exclaiming over a stone grave pillow that Martin Devlin found in his field last year when he was digging for potatoes.
“— really put the head on this at burial!” he says.
Finn gives me a look. I eye the stranger. He’s a foreigner and in his thirties, maybe, but in the best possible way. I think the word for it is dashing or dapper or something like that. He holds a red flat cap in his hands.
“Ah, Puck,” says Dory Maud. “Puck Connolly. ”
Finn and I exchange another look.
“Pleased to meet you,” I say to the stranger.
“Oh, but you haven’t met,” Dory Maud says. “Mr. Holly, this is Puck Connolly. Puck, this is Mr. George Holly. ”
“Now I’m pleased to meet you,” I say crossly. “I was just dropping Finn off here and —” Elizabeth sidles up to me and places her claws in my skin.
“Just a moment! I need to steal her,” Elizabeth chirps. She whisks me into the back room and shoves closed the door behind us. So it is just us and four chairs and a table bigger than the floor and an audience of boxes filled with Dory Maud’s love letters to sailors. We are nose to nose and Elizabeth smells like a shipload of English roses. “Puck Connolly, you be your absolute level best to that man. ”
“I was being nice. ”
“No, you weren’t. I saw your face. I’m no fool! We need to encourage him. That American is richer than the Queen and we think he means to take a piece of Thisby back with him. ”
I hope he’s taking the fertility statue. “What is it you’re trying to shove off on him?”
Elizabeth leans against the door to ensure no one interrupts. “Annie. ”
“Annie!”
“If you’re going to repeat everything I say, I’ll give your tongue to him as well. ”
“Does Annie know about this?”
“If only you had the brains to match your looks. ” Elizabeth realizes she’s still holding my arm and releases me. “Now you go out there and be charming. As you can. ”
I scowl and follow her back into the main room. All eyes turn toward me. Finn has somehow ended up holding the stone burial pillow.
“Done, ladies?” Dory Maud asks. I can’t think of the last time she’s used the word ladies to refer to something other than our chickens. “Mr. Holly was just expressing interest in you, Puck. ”
Perhaps my alarm is written upon my face, because Holly adds quickly, “Sean Kendrick’s spoken of you. ”
“You didn’t mention that before,” Dory Maud says, looking at me. “Puck, do you know what would be a wonderful thing, is if you took Mr. Holly and found him some breakfast. ”
“Oh —” Holly and I protest at the same time.
“I have Dove outside,” I say.
Holly glances at me and says meaningfully, “And I was going to go watch the training. ” I decide that I like him. It helps that he’s dapper, but the clever cinches it.
“Then you should take him by Palsson’s to get him one of the November cakes. Of course Annie knows how to make them as well, even better than Palsson’s,” Dory Maud says. “She was just saying that she’d like to make them for you, Mr. Holly, but of course there’s been no time. If you get them at Palsson’s, you can carry your breakfasts with you. ”
Holly’s smile lights the room; Dory Maud and Elizabeth are both blown back fairly by the sheen of it.
“Will you let me buy you one of these things, Miss Connolly?” Holly asks. “And your brother, too?”
I think I may die from the stinging power of the knowing gaze Elizabeth wields. It is a gaze that says, I told you he was a rich American with money to spend. I glare at her and Dory Maud. “Certainly. And Dory, if you give me a bit of change, I’ll buy some extra … for Annie. ”
We momentarily battle with our eyes, and then Dory Maud relents and gives me a few coins. And so it is two triumphant Connollys who lead George Holly from Fathom & Sons, Finn on one side and me on the other. Holly watches me untie Dove with great interest, and I watch him watching me with even greater interest. The way his eye travels along Dove — hock to stifle placement to topline to shoulder angle — tells me that he’s not just a casual tourist. I wonder how well he knows Sean.
“You know,” Finn says on the way back to Palsson’s, cheerful now that he’s getting food, “that Annie is blind, right?”
“Not entirely,” Holly corrects him. “Not entirely blind, I mean. ”
“Is that what they told you!” Finn exclaims. I stare at them. Who is this person who can make Finn so loud so quickly?
“It is,” Holly says warmly. He inclines his head toward Finn and asks, “Now, what, exactly, is a November cake?”
He asks it with such genuine curiosity that of course Finn has to speak even more, describing the moist crumb, the nectar that seeps from the base of it, the icing that soaks into the cake before you can lick it off. It is probably the kindest thing I have ever seen in my life, George Holly asking my brother about baked goods. When Holly glances to me, I give him a sharp look, which I realize might not fall under being as charming as possible. But I’m not sure that clever, kind George Holly could possibly be played as easily as Dory Maud and Elizabeth think.
Together we stroll into Palsson’s. I try to maintain an air of dignity but it’s difficult to not be overcome by the odor that hangs in the air. It is all cinnamon and honey and yeast. Palsson’s is on a corner and made of windows and light. The walls are lined with unstained wooden shelves with open backs, so the sunlight comes unimpeded through the glass panes and makes big squares of gold across the floor. Every shelf towers with bread and cookies, cinnamon twists and November cakes, scones and biscuits. The only wall not so anointed is the back wall behind the counter, which is lined with sacks of flour waiting to become bread. I can smell even the flour, because there’s so much of it, and it’s sweet and palatable all on its own. Everything is golden and white and honey and nectar in here and I think that possibly I could live in this building and sleep among the flour sacks.
Palsson’s is crowded today, as always, with both customers and housewives who hold better conversations near someone else’s baking. George Holly gathers stares and whispers as he and Finn move among the shelves and then into the long line. He fits in perfectly, as blond as a November cake himself.
“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 wonde
r 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 twist to take back to my room? Get another one for yourself, too, so your other hand doesn’t feel empty. ”
Once Finn is dispatched, Holly says, “Puck, I’m stepping so badly over the line here that I might never return. But there’s quite a few people who don’t care to have you on the beach. I’m not sure if you’ve heard. ”