...What could I say?
Five years ago, at nineteen, I had suddenly found myself independent. My uncle died, leaving me his inheritance and I found that no more did I have to do the sewing and mending that had given me subsistence. My parents were gone, my brother at sea, and so it was just myself that kept our family’s cottage together. Before the inheritance, my brother sent whatever he could, which was slim on a sailor’s wages, but with my uncle’s benefits I became free. My freedom meant that if I chose, I need not belong to any man, work the long hours that had kept me from the sunlight before, or deny myself any small luxury that I desired. It was possible that if I invested well, I might travel, might live the life that I had dreamed of and described to Evaleah.
There were many in the village that thought it shameful for me to live alone, a young woman my age. But they soon forgot and I lived in peace. When suddenly one day Evaleah told me that she would be marrying, I trembled for her.
She had not chosen one of the mild, steady sons of the village, but Matthew Craigg, the lone blacksmith who had lived in a broken down shed at the end of the mill road, but who now would be moving in to her cottage. Where he had come from or who his family was, no one knew, and I didn’t like it.
“Evaleah…” I pleaded with her to wait, “Your parents are gone now, just as mine are. I know that you don’t want to be alone, I didn’t at first, but Evaleah— choose carefully!”
She sat very still in the rough wood chair at her hearth. Her eyes, as pale and blue as a clear morning, stared straight into mine and the soft golden locks that framed her face waved gently in the breeze that entered the doorway beside her.
“I couldn’t be more sure, Elise. I’ve loved him for a very long time. I met him four summers ago in the north wood just beyond Ivy Manor’s Pond. I was there hunting berries, and he passing through.” She smiled with remembrance. “We started to talk, somehow… He’s gruff in his own way, not the most sociable in his manners, but…he truly loves me.”
And so I stood beside her in the church. I dared not look past her to the tall, swarthy, muscular man who loomed on the other side of my frail, gentle friend. My heart ached and I wondered what her life was to be.
That next year I didn’t see much of Evaleah. She lived quietly as Mrs. Craigg and they didn’t invite friends to visit.
I knew that I would always be welcome to Evaleah, but I feared her husband with the rough soot-stained hands.
(to be continued)
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