The Ninth Letter

She fidgets with the frayed edges of the ribbon binding the bundle of letters held in her lap. His strong, masculine handwriting on the top envelope as familiar as the words written inside. Memorised and tucked away in her heart.
“My dearest Isolde, I long for the day we can be together,”
For eight years, on the day of her birthday, she would wake to find the letter slipped under her cottage door. Each year the message is the same, “it will be soon… her health is failing…. We can be together, just you and I… Be patient… just a while longer.”
The ninth letter never came. Her birthday come and gone three days hence.
Wagon wheels and footsteps approach outside her door. Her pulse quickens, then falters, as she recognizes Sebastian’s carriage. The wagon carries a shrouded coffin. Black clad mourners move slowly towards the cemetery, where bells have begun to toll.
Has his wife died? Is this why the ninth letter never came?
Nine years she has waited, while youth and beauty slip foolishly by. His infrequent visits had become the only real pleasure she had left in life, since he’d moved her to the cottage, when Uncle Shamus died in the civil war, leaving her with no family, no money, shunned by the townsfolk, and nowhere else to go.
Would he honour his promise and make her his wife?
The carriage draws close. Curtains part and a familiar face stares out at her, malevolent in haughty victory.
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