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Chapter Thirty-Two
The following day, Evelina claimed to have taken ill, and was allowed to linger in her quarters long into the afternoon. She took her meals in bed, and a physician was called for against her protests.
“You don’t appear to be feverish,” the physician said, removing his hand from her forehead as Matilda looked on from the corner.
“It is my stomach,” Evelina complained, wishing the physician would just leave her be so that she could quit telling even more white lies.
The physician nodded importantly. “If your staff has ginger on hand, I would advise taking some with your next meal, provided you can stomach it. Take care to drink plenty of water as well.”
Evelina nodded and turned her face toward her pillow, feigning exhaustion. Matilda, bless her, took the initiative to show the physician out.
“Walk me through your symptoms again, My Lady?” Matilda said with a lifted eyebrow upon her return.
“Why, you were present for the entire conversation with the physician. Surely you weren’t tuning us both out?”
“It merely interests me that your stomach has apparently been upset since this morning, yet you had no issues eating a full breakfast and mid-day meal.”
Evelina’s mouth pinched together. “You are too observant for your own good, Matilda.”
Matilda, to her credit, offered an innocent smile. “Perhaps you are too obvious for yours, My Lady.”
That, thankfully, was enough to bring a small smile to Evelina’s face. Ordinarily, she might have laughed. But it was true that she did not feel well.
Not in the way most people meant when they said they’d taken ill. Evelina’s pain laid not in her body, but in her spirit. She felt heavy on the inside, like her muscles had been replaced by stones, and like her very soul had shriveled up and dried out.
She felt stupid. Embarrassed.
How could she have ever gotten so involved with Thomas, that she had committed herself to a separate engagement, only to be so thoroughly blindsided?
Have I always been this naïve, and simply failed to realize it?Evelina wondered. Even Matilda had been able to see through her charade just now.
Perhaps it was just as well that she was marrying Jerome. She’d thought herself intelligent, learned, quick on her feet when it came to decisions and conversation. Yet now, with this betrayal—this devastating lack of perspective on her part—Evelina was questioning the most basic facts about herself.
Perhaps she had always been the young, starry-eyed damsel her family and the rest of the ton seemed so convinced she was.
“You are thinking grim thoughts,” Matilda commented.
It was true. Evelina had disappeared so far down the whirlpool of her darkest fears and shames, she’d completely forgotten Matilda was in the room. “I’m sure there are plenty of other tasks that require your attention.”
Matilda shrugged. “None so pressing as keeping an eye on you, My Lady.” Shrewdly, she added, “Especially when last night, you were out and about in the gardens, setting yourself up to catch cold.”
Though Evelina had been laying still in bed, each and every one of her muscles clenched.
She stared at Matilda, shocked.
“Think nothing of it,” Matilda said, as though ‘it’ was not an inescapable, undeniable, social catastrophe waiting to happen. “Nothing need be said. My true concern is merely ensuring you are all right.”
Slowly, Evelina began to relax, but she found she could not release her tension in its entirety. “That’s…thank you.”
“Do you…wish to talk about anything?”
Evelina wondered if perhaps she should. She certainly could not talk about what had happened with Thomas with her parents, or even Diana. Matilda, for whatever reason, seemed committed to keeping her trust.
Yet in that moment, Evelina did not feel like talking. She felt like disappearing into the folds of her blankets and never emerging again. After all, what was the point of talking, if there was no solution to be found from such a discussion?
“That’s all right,” Evelina said. “I shall rally myself in time.”
In time, as it turned out, was later that evening, after Father had most likely retired from work. Evelina slipped herself into the most basic garments suitable for perusing about the house and set out for his study, meaning to return the ledger she’d borrowed last night and kept hidden beneath her bed.
