Eadgith finds herself ridiculous

Eadgith’s head hung over her needlework, and her right hand rose slowly away from her left and sank slowly back to meet it again, over and over, as she stitched the embroidered panel to the backing.

She had finished the dragon, his tail, and his flames, and there remained only to sew up the cushion and, once she had returned to the castle, to stuff it. But all of the pleasure had gone out of it for her.

The night before, as she lay in her bed in the pale blue nightgown that her mother had said brought out the blue of her eyes, she had tried to comfort herself with the fact that her hair was quite a bit darker than her mother’s, and her face less starkly freckled, and that she was not a talkative girl at all but rather shy, and that sometimes she did feel a little tired and ill…

But it was hopeless. More than that – it was, as her father would have said, ridiculous. She was as ridiculous as her mother. And, oh! to think of her mother “panting for” her cousin, since long before she herself had even been thought of! It only made her feel all the more ridiculous.

It was not what her father had said that troubled her. She did believe that she was a rather pretty girl, questions of individual taste aside. Nor was it the fact that his individual taste would not have found her so. That had bothered her only a while, until she considered the matter more deeply, alone in her bed.

No, what was hard to accept, what was humiliating, was that she had to admit to herself now that she… that she…

Oh, she couldn’t even admit it, not quite. It was ridiculous in too many ways.

He was twenty years older than she, for one thing. And she had once scorned Leila for being twenty years younger than her father! She should rather thank her for giving her some hope that such things were possible… but it was a dreadful sort of hope. It meant wishing herself in Leila’s position, for he was not only twenty years older than she, but married also. And wishing him otherwise were a worse sort of sin.

Now, of course, she knew that he had never and would never see her in that way. Her hair was only a dark sort of blonde, her eyes were blue, and her cheeks were speckled with brown – he would never even have noticed she was a woman.

At best, he had noticed she was a girl – the daughter of his friend – a little girl whom he had once bounced on his knee – a young girl to whom one would speak gently and kindly, and whom one might even playfully flatter, though certainly Alred did so more often and more adroitly than Sigefrith ever did. And the fact that Alred did at all proved that it meant nothing from either man.

She did not doubt that, once she was out of sight, he thought of her no more. She did not doubt that he had not thought of her once while he was away. And she had thought of nothing but him!

She was ridiculous. She was a little fool. She was only thankful that he would never know.

Oh, she would still finish the cushion. There was nothing untoward in giving a gift in thanks for a gift given. The fact that the dragon she had embroidered was the image of the dragon on the brooch he had given her was explanation enough. And he was a man – he would never give her work the close attention that would be required to see the spot where a tear had fallen and, before it dried, had carried a bit of the green of his fur onto the orange of his scales.