Evie

Lifting up my skirts to cradle a bunch of freshly plucked wildflowers, I splash through puddles, my bare toes sinking a bit in the cold mud, grasping for purchase as I hurry through the forest. I’m running late. It’s nearly breakfast time, and Stepmother gets harsh with the servants if I’m not there to serve her. She’s just as harsh if I am, of course, but at least then her temper is directed at me, and I don’t have to face the servants’ ire afterwards.

My father, the Lord Mayor of Mistleton, named me Evangeline Stuart; only my mother called me Evie, though it is the name I prefer. She died nineteen years ago, when I was four years old. They say she fell down the stairs while carrying me, that she might have even survived the fall if she hadn’t used her body to shield mine.

Though I remember her only in vague impressions and images, I miss my mother keenly, and grieve her to this day. She was the only person to ever sacrifice herself for me, and probably the one person in all this world to ever truly love me.

After a very short window of mourning, my father remarried my Stepmother Laura and had another daughter, Yelena. Five years my junior, Yelena is everything I am not. Chubby cheeked and adorable, a perfect beauty with ash brown hair and eyes of palest gray, she is small, delicate and well-mannered, the apple of my father’s eye. Meanwhile, I—

“Evangeline!” A man’s voice halts me in my tracks and I spin, realizing that in crossing this lonely country road on my way back to the house, I’ve also managed to cross my father.

No longer handsome or desirable at age sixty, the only thing Lord Mayor Dennis Stuart has to recommend him now are his title and wealth. His sharp face is pinched by a permanent scowl, his belly spreads over his belt as he eyes me from the top of a weary looking horse.

“Look at you, you’re filthy! What have I told you about running through the woods like a wild woman?” he demands. “Aren’t you ashamed? This is why no man will have you…”

I’m not ashamed, and I’m not looking for a man. Every man that gets close to me forgets I exist the moment my sister walks in the room. Yelena takes everything that is mine, even the men I’ve fancied myself in love with. But she can’t take the woodlands from me.

Out here amongst the hills and the trees is where I belong. Here wonders great and small await me at every turn; a spotted fawn sleeping in the tall grass, the rainbow flash of a trout as it leaps from the stream, the tender shoot of a newly sprung up flower amidst a bed of moss…

This is my home, the one place where I feel welcomed and loved, even if it is only by the soft blades of grass that cushion my bare feet. And no one, not even Father, is taking that from me.  

Of course, I can’t defy him outwardly. But fortunately, there are a wealth of resources in the woods behind our home, and I am the only one suited to navigating this land and bringing them back to the house. I disguise it as a chore, but in truth, nothing makes me happier than being sent on errands like the one I’m on this morning.

“Stepmother told me to bring back wildflowers,” I answer innocently, showing him the blossoms I have nestled in my skirt. “She wants me to weave the flowers in Yelena’s hair for the May Day festival.”

Father snorts disapprovingly, but he cannot refute me. “Well, hurry back to the house,” he snaps. “They’ll want them soon, the festivities begin at noon in the town square.”

“Yes, Father,” I answer automatically, and turn again to continue toward the house.

Just like this, I steal these precious hours to myself in my forest haven. Flowers, mushrooms, berries, nuts, there’s always something to be collected. Even in the wintertime I go out to collect ice from the lake to chill Mrs. Agate’s desserts. They’re jobs no one else wants to do, and so I get the whole forest to myself most days, except in the fall, when I must be mindful of hunters with their awful noisy guns.

Back at the house, the kitchen’s a flurry of activity with everyone running this way and that in preparation for the May Day festivities.

“I’m here!” I announce breathlessly as I wipe my feet on the rough woven mat and slip them into my only pair of well worn shoes. “Let me just put these flowers in water—I’ll take that breakfast tray to Mrs. Stuart, Maddie, you can set it down.”

“Anyone would think you’re a servant with all the work you do around here, young miss,” Mrs. Agate observes with her back to me as she labors over a hot stove.

“That’s not true—servants get paid,” I answer lightly, letting my gaze fall on Stepmother’s breakfast tray. “Maddie, you forgot the toast.”

“My goodness, you’re right!” the scattered servant exclaims. “I’ll make it right away!”

“That’s alright, I’ll get it,” I say, turning from my work with the flowers to wash my hands. Stepmother is very particular about her toast being sliced to a precise thickness—last time Maddie made the toast, I got it thrown back in my face for daring to present it to her as edible fare.

While I prepare the bread knife and cutting board, I find myself listening idly to the servant’s gossip.

“Did you hear Mr. Livingston will be at the festival today?” Maddie talks breathlessly with the scullery maid, young Sara.

I’ve heard; the poor man’s all anyone’s talked about for days. Actually, I feel a bit sorry for him. Since moving to Mistleton and taking up residence at Silvertree hall, he’s become an overnight celebrity, with everyone gossiping about him and people even trying to sneak up to his house in hopes of glimpsing his figure through the windows. Of course, when a bachelor of his age and distinction suddenly decides to take up residence in a mid-sized town like Mistleton, what else can he expect?

Slicing the bread to the appropriate thickness, I pass the pieces to Mrs. Agate to toast in the oven.

“My auntie saw him the night he moved in—she said he was young and very handsome!” Sara confides the news in whispers as though it’s some great secret and she hasn’t already told us each ten times already.

“Is it true he fought alongside General Blackburn in the war? He must be very skilled.”

“Auntie says he’s a peerless swordsman, second only to the general himself!”

“But isn’t Mr. Livingston very wealthy? With his connections, he shouldn’t have had to join the war effort. Such a dangerous, filthy setting hardly seems appropriate for an aristocrat.”

“They say he joined out of duty, that he couldn’t sit idly by while his country was suffering.”

“How gallant,” Maddie sighs. “Mr. Livingston must be the perfect man.”

I guess we’ll find out at the May Day festival he’s supposed to attend today. It will be his first public appearance since moving into Silvertree hall—till now not even Father has met him. Even so, that hasn’t stopped the more fanciful members of our staff from planning out the man’s entire future for him.   

“Such a perfect man surely deserves a perfect bride,” Sara says dreamily.

“And who is more perfect than our own Miss Yelena?”

“Do you suppose he will notice her at the festival today?”

“He will if she becomes May Queen.”

“And how could she not? Our beautiful Yelena, she is as sweet tempered as she is lovely. She will steal Mr. Livingston’s heart with a single glance.”

“And they’ll be married and go to live at Silvertree hall together. And then she’ll bring me along as her lady in waiting,” Maddie sighs again as she daydreams about these future prospects.  

“There’s your toast,” Mrs. Agate hands me the bread with tongs and I arrange it on Stepmother’s breakfast tray. Then she rounds on the girls with a scowl. “Haven’t you two got anything better to do than gossip? Maddie, weren’t you meant to be steaming the young mistress’s gown? Sara, hurry up with your chores so you can help the young mistress with her bath.”

“Yes, Mrs. Agate!” the girls scurry to obey before the cranky cook really lets loose on them. Taking up the tray, I’m on my way out of the kitchen before she can scold me too.