“I . . . I wanted to get away . . . from someone. It was the only way I could think of to disguise myself.”
He just stared, not saying anything.
Sabina was standing just behind him. She took hold of his arm. “Let’s go, Westley.” Her voice had a distinct note of disgust. “You don’t deserve to be lied to.”
Sabina tugged on his arm, and he walked away with her.
Evangeline sank down on the ground and put her head in her hands.
“Now do you think it’s time to go back to Berkhamsted? Now that you know Westley le Wyse is not going to marry you? Sabina will have dragged him to the church altar to say his vows before you can even speak another word to him.” Muriel’s arms were crossed over her chest, looking down at her.
“Do you hate me so much?” Evangeline was too miserable to even cry.
“I don’t hate you, as I told you before, but I am worried about you.” Muriel knelt beside her. “You are a gentle-hearted maiden who has never had to live in the world. I underestimated you, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought you would hate the hard work. I thought you would work half a day and beg me to take you back to Berkhamsted. In fact, I did not imagine you would walk so far. But you’ve worked hard, taken your blisters, and hardly complained.” A wistful smile quirked the corners of her mouth. “But you still don’t want to leave Glynval, do you?”
Evangeline shook her head.
“What are you planning to do?”
“I don’t know.”
Seeing Westley walk away from her with Sabina . . . Was there any way Evangeline could get forgiveness from Westley and show him that she was not a bad person? For a long moment Muriel said nothing. Then, “I will help you fight for him, if it’s him you want.”
“Fight for him?” Evangeline shook her head. “He is not a laurel wreath or a piece of money. He is a human being.”
Muriel shrugged. “If you want to let Sabina have him, that is all very well. Just as you choose.”
She certainly did not want Sabina to have him. And she certainly did want to marry him herself. But the thought of “fighting for him” did not feel right either. “I don’t plan to ever go back to Berkhamsted, Muriel. I’ll do anything to keep Richard from finding me and forcing me to marry Shiveley. But to marry Westley, a good and noble person who could choose anyone as his wife . . . Well, if that were to happen, I would believe anything in life was possible, and that God was on His throne, granting miracles to His children.”
Muriel sighed. “And if you don’t get what you want? Does that mean God is not on His throne and that He is not granting miracles to His children?”
Evangeline sighed. “I suppose that is not very good reasoning, is it?”
“Perhaps it is not for mortal man to reason out such things.”
“I’m sure Sabina is praying she will be the one to marry Westley. But hopefully Westley is praying he doesn’t marry someone unkind.” Evangeline picked the tiny wildflowers on the ground around her. “I don’t want to fight for him. That sounds low and common. I do want to gain back his favor, though.”
“That won’t be easy. He was very disappointed to find that we had lied to him.”
Her stomach twisted.
“But that is also a good sign, a sign that he has some feelings for you. If he did not care, he would not have been so disappointed.”
“I hate to think of him feeling disappointed in me.”
She should never have deceived him, even if she did have a good reason.
That evening Westley wandered out into the garden behind his family’s home.
Would Evangeline come for their Bible reading now that her secret was discovered, now that he knew she had lied and deceived him?
He shouldn’t even allow her near his family’s Bible. If she came thinking he did not care that she had lied to him, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to control his temper.
He kept glancing behind him at the back of the house. Then he walked along the row of trees at the edge of the garden. He still had a clear view of the house.
He had talked to her like a friend, had helped her and been kind to her, had told her all about the worst time in his life, the Peasants’ Uprising, and all along she had been pretending she couldn’t speak. He even got the wax tablets just so she could communicate with him, and it had all been fake. She must have been laughing at him, at so easily making a fool of the lord’s son. So why was he looking for her, half disappointed not to see her there?
The sun had just sunk behind the trees, spreading its last fingers of light through the sky. Westley trudged back to the house.
“Good evening.”
Eva stood in the shadowy area near the back door. Her voice was smooth and feminine and more sophisticated than the village maidens of Glynval—and he hated himself for noticing.
“I wanted to say again that I’m sorry we deceived you about my being able to speak.”