| |
I AM MEANT TO BE RIDING out behind Everleigh on the hunt, in case she needs anything, but I have cried off. I sent the little maids to sort her out this morning and I am hiding away. My friend is with me and we are chatting away in a nook above the stables.
He’s nagging me for more details and since I have told it at all, I see no harm in telling him some more. And as I gossip I feel like a traitor.
I tell him everything I know, in detail, even the stuff I’ve already said.
I tell him about the wise woman and how Everleigh made the river rise. I tell him how I watched with my own eyes the way she made the birds fly onto her hand. I tell how I saw her do it again with Addyson there, with the butterflies.
He asks if Addyson knows and I say no.
He asks if she has shown her powers to either of her brothers. I don’t think she has, though I can’t say for sure. I reckon Millard upset her last night, talking about how little time she had left. You could see that hurt her feelings. If he knew her secret, he wouldn’t be saying things like that. I don’t see her telling one but not the other. She loves them both so much.
Does the King know?
By the gods, he is like an old woman today, full of questions. Like he’s writing a play, or something.
Who knows, who’s seen, who has she told. Does anyone suspect, blah, blah, blah. He’s getting on my nerves. I might have been wrong to tell him about Everleigh’s secret, but he is a pain in the backside talking of nothing else.
We are in the stable, and the hunt has left so I feel safe enough talking to him about her, but would rather he held me and kissed me and told me he loved me.
No girl wants to spend all her time talking about another girl. I may not be high born or fancy or a Kingmaker but I’m still a girl and I’m getting fed up of hearing her name!
Ooh, isn’t that awful of me. Sometimes I despair. Cook’s right – a handmaiden with no proper schooling will never amount to anything. I haven’t even got the decency I was born with.
Poor Everleigh.
I know the only thing I can do now – I will stay out of her way, tell Cook I am ill and hide from Everleigh till after the death day when it all comes out about her living and being Queen. Then I will try to find work with another family. I cannot stay here, facing her daily, knowing what I did.
And all for a few kisses off a handsome boy.