Evie’s Choice

‘We have to try everything,’ I said, and I felt him nodding.

‘We will.’ He paused, then went on, ‘Evie, I know she’s closer to you than your own family, but trying to absorb Lizzy’s unhappiness won’t ease it for her. Can you imagine how cross she’d be if she knew you were spending your days worrying and crying over something you have no power to change?’

I drew back, suspicious. He sounded awfully selfish, and it surprised and unsettled me. He frowned, then realised what was going through my mind and shook his head. ‘I’m not suggesting you forget about her, that you ignore your feelings or that you be cheerful for anyone’s sake but your own, and hers. All I’m saying is that, when you write to her, you hold on to that determination we all love about you, and don’t show her a moment’s doubt. Do your crying with me, cry all the time if you need to.’ He touched my cheek, and his face was earnest, and more than a little helpless. ‘I don’t want to see you sad, but if you must be sad with someone, let it always be me.’

That afternoon when I returned home, I wrote to Uncle Jack, and then to Lizzy, keeping Will’s words in mind and forcing my determined cheerfulness onto the paper.

‘Dearest Lizzy. I have written to Uncle Jack in the hopes he may help secure your release, I don’t know how, but he does seem to know some terribly important people. I await his response, but will write to you immediately as soon as I hear he is on his way, for I am sure he soon will be!

Yr loving friend,

Evie.’

As I reread the words before sliding the paper into the waiting envelope, I felt them wrap themselves around the despair in my heart and soothe it; there was nothing more I could do, but Uncle Jack would ride to the rescue, there was no question about it. Lizzy’s fate now lay in his hands, and my own rested in mine and Will’s; it had come as a breathtaking shock to discover how suddenly everything could change, and I realised I must treasure every fleeting and fragile moment of joy while it was still within reach.

The spring of 1913 was dull and wet, and gave way to an equally dull, but dry summer. Will and I continued to meet each Sunday; it was difficult to find any more time since mother had realised I would soon be turning nineteen, and was in danger of becoming the spinster of the parish. Of course, the loss of the Kalteng Star was having an effect on the number of potential husbands that crossed the threshold of Oaklands Manor, but there were still plenty for Mother to urge in my direction, and to question me over after I had returned from whichever dinner or party I had been whisked away to.

I played my part, of course. I danced with fathers, spoke glowingly to mothers of their sons’ fine qualities, befriended sisters and curtseyed to grandmothers. I laughed with suitors and allowed a brief brush of lips on my gloved hand when we parted, and told Mother I’d had a wonderful time and would very much like to see that young man again. Then I went to my room, dismissed Ruth, and lay in the dark thinking of Will.

The day after a particularly excruciating party was a Sunday, and despite a strong breeze it was a rare sunny one. With Orion loosely tethered to a bush and munching at the grass, I climbed onto the high rock and looked across the valley to see Will, striding up over the hill with that eagerness he never tried to hide. His dark hair blew back from his face, showing strong, clean lines of jaw and cheekbone, and I enjoyed watching the unconsciously graceful ease with which he moved across the uneven ground towards me.

I stood up and waved, the wind whipping at my skirts and threatening to tug me right off the rock, and he shouted at me to sit down before something awful happened but instead I began to dance from foot to foot, just to make him walk faster. It worked; he began to run, laughing, until he was able to spring up beside me and press his smiling mouth to mine.

He tasted cold and fresh after his walk, and his skin was flushed with good health and contentment. I could tell he was going to say something momentous and romantic, and I waited with impatient and growing anticipation, while he searched for the right words.

Eventually he took my hand, and fixed his eyes tenderly on mine. ‘You’ve got a hole in your jacket.’

I blinked at him, then gave him a look of mock annoyance. ‘And here I was thinking you were about to declare your endless devotion.’

‘Oh, that too,’ he said with a grin, and tugged my hair gently. ‘Ruth not up to Lizzy’s standard then?’ My humour faded, and I sat down. He sat beside me and put an arm around my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to remind you.’

‘It’s never far from my mind anyway. I do wish Uncle Jack would write back, no one’s heard from him since the turn of the year.’

‘Do you think he’ll be able to help?’

‘I’m sure he will. He must be owed a favour or two, after all he’s always shooting off at a moment’s notice and it can’t be all his own choice.’

‘And Ruth?’ He waggled his finger through the hole in my jacket pocket.

‘She’s a disaster, of course. She might have been a good kitchen maid but her skills don’t extend any further than that, and she doesn’t seem at all disposed to learning. She doesn’t have Lizzy’s deftness of touch, and doesn’t notice when something needs doing. I have to ask her half a dozen times at least.’

He grinned at my grumpy tone. ‘But is she as cold as ever?’

‘More so, I would say.’ But I didn’t want to waste our time talking about Ruth. ‘I’m thinking of telling Mother I don’t want a maid at all.’

‘You’d want one if Lizzy was still here,’ he pointed out.

‘She was very good, but I miss her friendship more than her skill with a needle. Besides, I can dress myself. And,’ I added drily, ‘I could mend my own clothes a sight better than Ruth Wilkins. I can’t help feeling it’s time to let go of all that nonsense.’

‘So you’re still convinced everything is going to change,’ Will said, staring out over the hills. Then he swung back to face me and stared at me closely. I was ready for him to tell me I had a smudge on my nose, or a leaf in my hair, but instead he said, ‘I want to marry you, Evie. One day. When we can, without upsetting your family. Will you let me?’

I felt a smile creep across my face and saw it answered in his own. ‘Never mind my family,’ I said, ‘it’s not them you’re marrying.’

‘What sort of an answer is that?’

‘It’s a resounding, thunderous yes!’ I stood up again and cupped my hands to my mouth, bellowing down the valley in a most unladylike manner, ‘Mother, can you hear this? I’m going to marry the butcher’s boy!’

I turned back, still laughing, but Will had stood too, and was looking at me oddly. He folded his arms across his chest, tucking his hands into his armpits, but it seemed less as a way of keeping warm than of keeping his distance.

My own laughter died. ‘What is it?’

‘Why did you say “yes”, Evie?’ he asked quietly, his words almost whipped away in the summer wind.

‘What do you mean? I said it because I want to marry you!’

He blew out a breath and looked down at his feet, and I could see he was struggling with something he didn’t want to say aloud, but felt he must. Eventually he looked back at me, and there was a confused kind of hope in his expression.

‘Are you sure you’re not saying it just to upset the apple cart, and you’ll change your mind later?’

‘No! Why ever would you ask such a thing?’

‘In the market, when I gave you the rose, I thought it was sweet and funny that you put it in your hat-band and said it would annoy your mother. I told myself it was because you were, I don’t know…’ he shrugged, embarrassed, ‘a little bit moved, maybe, and couldn’t think of anything else to say.’

‘I was! That was exactly it. Will, don’t –’

‘No, listen. Just now, when you agreed to marry me, shouldn’t your first reaction have been to come to me? To kiss me? But no, you stood up and, well yes, gloated that you were going to marry the butcher’s boy. Not me, not Will Davies. The “butcher’s boy”.’

Remorse struck me as I stared at him, at his usually open, cheerful face, now tight-jawed and frowning. I couldn’t blame him for his anger. I wanted to go to him, as I should have done before but it would just look false now – it was far too late. I simply didn’t know what to do.

I looked at him helplessly, hoping my regret would show through my wordless inability to move. He looked back, his face pale, his own silence begging me to contradict what he’d said, but I couldn’t find anything big enough, and significant enough, to say. The feelings were swelling inside me, but they couldn’t find a way to be expressed. Eventually I found a tiny voice and managed, ‘Do you still want to marry me?’

He let his arms drop, but he didn’t hold them out to invite me closer. ‘Of course I do,’ he said, gently enough, then went on in a firmer voice, ‘but I won’t be your toy, a means of annoyance to your mother.’ He shook his head, his expression touched with exasperation now. ‘I don’t understand you sometimes. You clearly love her, but you have this need to push her to the limit of her endurance. I can’t just be another weapon in your armoury.’

That stung. ‘This is about you and me, Will, no one else.’

‘And what of your mother?’

‘Well, of course I love her, even though she’s sometimes hard to love.’ I saw a way to convince him then, and hurried on: ‘And yet I’m prepared to risk hurting her to be with you. Doesn’t that tell you all you need to know?’

‘You torment her at every chance,’ he pointed out, but he had softened his stance and now took a hesitant step closer. ‘Look, I know you’ve always been a bit of a tearaway, but you’re growing up fast, and Lady Creswell needs to get to know the young lady you’ve become. She’ll never like me, I understand that, but when she sees you’re serious she might give us her blessing.’

I shook my head. ‘She won’t. And it’s not because of who you are, because if she knew you she would love you as much as I do. It’s because of who you’re not.’

He slumped a little then, but my words seemed to reach him and he accepted my tentative embrace. We stood for a while, on top of the rock, while our first ever moments of discord gradually slipped away into the breeze, and began to appreciate, once more, this precious time alone together.

I ran a finger over the back of one of his hands, noting the slender strength of his fingers and remembering their dexterity with the paper sculptures. ‘You never did tell me: how did you end up working for Mr Markham? And what do you want to do, really?’

‘I suppose if you’re going to marry me you ought to know something about me,’ he conceded. ‘I have no deep, dark secrets, but you’re right, butchery was never my first choice.’ He jumped off the rock and turned to me, hands outstretched to help, but I’d been jumping off this rock for years and, with a withering look at him, I managed it quite well again today without his help. He grinned and took my hand, tucking it around his arm as we walked up towards the big quarry pit that lay over the hill.