Love Letters by Emily Murdoch Read Free Book Online Page B

and her parents had kept the entire household up late in their wish to discuss it. What she hadn’t expected was to find Selwyn awake also – but then, she chastised herself, she should have. As the steward, Selwyn was generally up first and to bed last.
    He was laying the fire in the centre of the Great Hall. Catheryn sat quietly on a bench, but she wasn’t subtle enough to escape his notice.
    “Good morning, my lady,” he said with a smile.
    “Good morning.”
    “Did you sleep well?”
    “I’m afraid that I did not,” confessed Catheryn. “I could not get out of my mind who this poet is.”
    Selwyn hid a smile behind a large log he was placing in the centre of the grate. His joke had given way to a surprising amount of pleasure for him.
    “You do not think that it is Cuthbert?”
    Selwyn rose, and adopting a rather brutish air, strode towards her.
    “M’lady,” he said, imitating Cuthbert’s brisk tones. “I wish to court you. Be my wife, and never think again.”
    Catheryn collapsed into giggles.
    Selwyn couldn’t continue, but joined in her laughter, leaning against the table before her. “Are you not impressed with my jape?”
    Catheryn nodded, not trusting her voice at present.
    Selwyn’s broad grin soon faded as his body reacted to the closeness of hers. He had to remain focused – that line of thinking, of feeling, did not lead anywhere.
    “What about Deorwine?” Catheryn said, her giggles subsiding.
    Selwyn frowned. He found it difficult to talk about Deorwine – there was something very distasteful about him, and he had still not forgive him, or Catheryn, for the way that they had walked off without him that first day he and Catheryn had talked.
    “Good morning, my child.”
    Hilda’s airy voice entered the room, and Selwyn self-consciously took three steps away from her daughter.
    Catheryn smiled, and put out her arms to her mother. “Good morrow, my lady mother.”
    She turned to continue speaking to Selwyn, but he had disappeared.
    In the corridor, Selwyn took a deep breath. Selwyn himself could not believe how much of his time was being taken up with Catheryn; talking to her, walking with her, thinking up excuses to go and talk to her. It was not until Catheryn said something seemingly trivial that he realised the main problem with his plan.
    “It’s strange, isn’t it,” said Catheryn as they rode through a small wooded copse near her home. “I received two notes relatively close together – and now a fortnight has gone past, and I have not received a third.”
    Selwyn bit his lip at his own mistake. He had become so engrossed with trying to lead Catheryn along a path, guessing as to who her admirer was, that he had forgotten to play the part of the admirer. It had not even entered his mind that he would need to send another love note to her in order to keep up the pretence.
    “Perhaps he is nervous,” Selwyn said, with the air of trying to guess another man’s secret. “Perhaps he expected some sign from you as to your own affections.”
    Catheryn snorted. “Then he is even more of a fool than we expected. How on earth am I meant to give my anonymous romancer a sign of my feelings? The entire problem is that we do not know who he is!”
    She collapsed into fits of giggles, and Selwyn could not help but laugh with her. Her voice lilted up when she laughed, and the sunlight that fell through the branches lit up the tendrils of her hair that escaped her veil. After they regained their calm, he spoke again.
    “And you really have no idea who it is? After all of this time?”
    “Really, Selwyn,” Catheryn rolled her eyes at him in a manner that was becoming quite endearing to him. “Do you think I would be going to all this trouble trying to work it out if I knew who it was? Once I know his identity…well. Then the decision can be made.”
    “Decision?”
    “You do not think that once I know who has romantic feelings for me, I should do something about it?”
    Selwyn