Love Letters by Emily Murdoch Page B

it a cooler breeze that would allow her to walk throughout the day, rather than lie in a cool room at the peak of the heat. Eorwine had walked back into the house.
    It was not Hilda. She was standing in the Great Hall, trying to explain to a troupe of musicians that although their presence was definitely required that evening to entertain the king, they would not be the only ones there to offer their gifts. Their reply – that they were the best musicians in all of England, and if there was any other entertainment that night then they would take it as a personal insult against their craft – was the problem that Hilda was attempting to solve. Hilda was not aware of her daughter’s whereabouts.
    It was not Ælfgard, who was striding across his land barking orders to his thanes. They were being tested on what was and what was not permitted to be talked about during the feast that evening. Topics involving Normandy and the Queen’s inability to have children were primarily the ones that Ælfgard was desperate to avoid, and he pushed his greying hair back nervously. Offending the king would not be endearing, and would probably begin a feud that would outlast the children of his child. The lord and his thanes continued around the field. This entertaining of the king, of receiving him into their home, was the chance that he had been waiting for. There are only so many times that one can go to court and be ignored. This was their chance to catch the king’s attention, and he was not going to let it slip through his fingers. Ælfgard was not looking at Catheryn.
    It was a very different pair of eyes that gazed upon Catheryn’s sun-drenched form. The body that they belonged to was not concerned with heat, or musicians, or the king’s arrival that evening – although the latter should probably have concerned him. For it was a him: he was Ælfgard’s steward, and his name was Selwyn.
    His blond hair shone in the sunlight, but a bemused smile covered his face. He looked down at the girl that had become a woman that winter, and almost couldn’t believe how beautiful she was.
    It had been years since he had last seen her – four or five summers at least. It seemed like an age since they had laughed together, played together in that very same field. Strange how childhood friends could become strangers as soon as adulthood was reached. They had named the field their fortress, and even though Selwyn was the elder, it had been Catheryn that had always taken charge. And now she had grown.
    She shared his light tone of hair, but from what he had seen when her veil escaped her control, hers had grown longer and more tousled than his, with a curl that seemed to speak wild abandon as well as calm wonder. Her face had captured the best parts of both mother and father, and yet was something completely new.
    Selwyn knew that he should join the rest of the thanes and his lord. He was getting left behind, and it would not do to be noted as the only one that was not paying attention. He was meant to be in that group, to listen to Ælfgard and learn what was and what was not said to the King of England, how to bow to the queen, and how to speak to her in a way that was respectful and yet welcoming. But once again, as he had been so often over these last few months, Selwyn had been distracted by the daughter of the house.
    Their last meeting had been a bittersweet one; Selwyn, as the orphan of Ælfgard’s steward, had been raised as a child of the house but had at some point had to leave and be trained. There was no family honour to protect him, or gold to secure him with friends. He needed a skill, something to take him through life – but that would take him away from the family. Catheryn had cried, and gave the biggest tantrum that her parents had ever seen, but her father was adamant: Selwyn would not be able to grow into a man in the presence of a girl – a girl, moreover, that was of a higher rank than him, and would undoubtedly mock him