Captives by Emily Murdoch Read Free Book Online Page B

admitted, “for she is my second soul in this world, and we do adore each other. It is just… difficult.” Her gaze suddenly focused back on Catheryn. “Do you have a sister?”
    Catheryn shook her head, and plucked some grass from the ground. She twirled it between her fingers as she spoke. “I was the only child of my parents.”
    Emma’s eyes widened. “Just you, alone?”
    “Yes, but we had a large household, so I was never lonely. In fact, one of the boys I grew up with eventually became my husband.”
    “I could not imagine being a child alone in a family,” Emma confessed, and added in a whisper, “although sometimes I wish I was.”
    She looked up at the older woman nervously, but Catheryn laughed.
    “I think all of us ladies wish that, at one point or another. Tell me about your family.”
    Happiness spread across Emma’s face as she considered her beloved family. “Well…”
    “Emma?”
    A voice rang out over the field, and both Emma and Catheryn turned to see from whence it came. The figure of a woman, draped in a blood red dress, was hurtling towards them from the castle.
    “Emma!”
    As the figure drew nearer, it became clear to Catheryn that the woman running towards them in such disarray was none other than Adeliza. Catheryn turned to the girl that she had been comforting.
    “Is that…?”
    Emma sighed deeply, and nodded.
    By this time, Adeliza had reached them.
    “Emma, my darling, Isabella has told me –”
    But Adeliza stopped short. Her eyes flew between her daughter and the woman who had arrived to be their prisoner. It was clear that they had been talking, and the tears on her daughter’s face which she had rushed to dry were already gone.
    “My lady Adeliza,” Catheryn quickly rose, and smiled at her hostess – or jailor. “We were just discussing your family. Emma tells me that she has some wonderful siblings. You must, of course, take the credit for that family bond.”
    Adeliza’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.
    Emma, in her turn, rose also. “I must apologise, my lady mother, for not coming to you about this. I needed somewhere to be alone, and then this woman –”
    “I see,” Adeliza cut her daughter’s apologetic speech off, but Catheryn was relieved to see that she was smiling. “Run back home, my love, and speak to your sister. She is almost as repentant as you are.”
    The mother and daughter smiled at each other, and then moved together quickly for an embrace.
    Emma ran back to the castle, skirts flying in the breeze – leaving Catheryn and Adeliza to a slightly awkward silence.
    Catheryn waited and waited, but Adeliza said not a word. Both of them had turned to watch Emma go, but Adeliza did not move to face Catheryn after Emma was out of sight. Catheryn was not sure whether it was worth raising her voice; but then she did not know the Norman customs. Was it permissible for her simply to walk away?
    “My youngest,” Adeliza said suddenly, still facing away. “You think that you have learned everything that you can, and yet each one continues to surprise you.”
    “You are blessed,” Catheryn said. “I had but two children, one daughter, one son, and both as different from each other as summer and winter.”
    Adeliza swivelled on the spot, and Catheryn saw that she was smiling.
    “It is so often the way,” she said. Then her smile faltered. “You say that you had two children?”
    A fist of iron clenched around Catheryn’s heart, and she felt her legs shake. She sat down – out of desire or out of necessity, she knew not which.
    Something passed across Adeliza’s face that Catheryn had never seen before. It was not until the woman she had barely spoken to before knelt to sit down with her that she realised what it was: tenderness.
    “You lost a child?”
    The voice that Catheryn expected to be full of disdain and indifference was instead a strange combination of interest and respect. Adeliza looked sad, and yet embarrassingly