Chapter 4

The Duke of Christleton strode into the room with arms clasped behind his back. He wore black and regarded Selina from the summit of his emaciated height and haughty beak of a nose. Thin lips gave the pretense of a smile as her father introduced him as the man she would marry.

"No!" Selina cried; the words torn from her before she could stop them.

"No?" said the Duke, tilting his head to one side before looking past her to Maximilien Voss.

Selina turned to her father, face imploring.

"Please, father. You cannot make me do this!"

Maximilien Voss, already possessed of a red face, was turning puce. When his lips curled from bared teeth, Selina knew that a rage was in the offing. She turned back to see the man who had been introduced to her as her fiancée had stepped closer, glaring down at her. The first blow struck her across her left cheek, delivered in a casual backhand swipe.

"You dare offer insult to me and to your father. Your father who feeds and clothes you. I offer you title and respectability. You offer nothing. You are nothing. You have no right to refuse!"

The second blow struck her right cheek and carried her off her feet. Her hands slapped against the cold marble floor of the Great Hall at Sawthorne Manor. It was the house in which she had grown up, a place of chill fear. A place of anger and dominance. Her father was shouting at her, standing away and making no attempt to defend his daughter. Her face was numb, and her hands stung where they had taken her weight.

"There is no solution for a wayward mare except the whip," the Duke of Christleton said with icy fury frothing in his voice.

"A beating will quell this impudent spirit," her father agreed.

When Selina looked up, the Duke was suddenly holding a riding crop and was raising it above his head. His eyes were alight with mania and his thin lips drawn back from gritted, yellow teeth. She screamed, raising her hands to protect herself, closing her eyes tightly. But the blow never landed. Instead, she heard the sound of a blow and a body crashing to the floor. She opened her eyes and Arthur was there.

He did not have the dark brown hair that she remembered, the hair that turned pale in the sunlight. He had a mane of jet-black hair that tumbled wildly about his face. His face was harsh and angular, not like Arthur's gentle tender looks. A scar ran across his jaw. Nevertheless, in Selina's mind, he was Arthur. Unquestionably. He had the riding crop in his hand and the Duke was lying on the floor, his nose streaming blood. Maximilien strode forward, mouth open angrily, but Arthur froze him to the spot with a pointed finger.

"Do not move, blackguard! And as for you!"

He rounded on the Duke who was scrambling back on his back, eyes wide with terror. Arthur lashed him once, twice, three times and the man started blubbering and stammering.

"Get out, snake!" Arthur raged, snapping the crop across his knee and throwing the two pieces away, "both of you! Get out!"

The Duke and Selina's father ran, feet slipping and sliding on the marble floor. Selina looked up into the handsome face, the impossibly handsome face of her white knight. No, not a knight. For she had remembered a game they had been fond of playing as children. A game in which Arthur was King and Selina the Lady of the Lake.

"My King," she whispered as he reached for her.

Arthur knelt and picked her up. She gazed at him as he carried her from the room. The dimple on his chin, the coal black hair, and eyes that practically glowed. She ran a hand through the tight black curls of his hair and then noticed the faint white line that ran along the left side of his sharp jawline.

"I don't remember this," she said.

"A battle with a Reiver over a flock of sheep," he said, "the dastardly clansman got a lucky blow with his dirk."

"It doesn't matter," Selina said.

Then they were no longer in the house. Nor were they in the grounds of Sawthorne. He carried her through a copse of oak, the ancient trees thick-boled and as craggy as stone. Their canopy cast a deep shadow over the ground and the air was cool and green. A stream tumbled through hummocks and roots, loud and boisterous. Occasional bars of golden light broke through the oaks that roofed the little dell. Arthur was lowering her to a bed of thick, soft moss.

Above her head was a fissured, lichen-covered stone. And on its face was carved the cryptic message that two lovestruck youths had worked out, one hot summer day. Selina reached out, running her fingers over the chiseled letters, rendered into an indecipherable code of Latin, French, and English. Arthur was kneeling beside her. His fingers joined hers in tracing the letters as his lips mouthed the words silently. Selina looked up at him and her eyes were drawn to the line on his jaw.

For some reason, it bothered her. Arthur had always been perfect, with nothing marring the natural beauty of his looks. To Selina, he was an Olympian. The white scar was alien. It should not have been there. Then, Arthur was over her and his lips against hers. She forgot the scar as she sank back into the moss. His lips were a source of fiery heat against her own. It became the focus of her senses until his hands touched her. One hand stroked the side of her face and then her bosom before traveling down her rear.

She caught the hand and lifted it to her neck, gently pressing his fingertips to the sensitive skin there. It had always been one of her favorite places to be touched. He should have known that from long experience, but she'd had to remind him. The thought skated across her consciousness before melting away into waves of pleasure. The tantalizing touch at her throat made her squirm against his lean, muscular body. Was he more muscular than she remembered? How had the youth who had loved art and poetry so much become a man with the body of a warrior and the scars to match?

Again, thoughts dissolved into an ocean of pleasure. Arthur's body was atop her own and his loins pressed against hers. She gasped into his kisses, moaning his name. He bit gently at her lower lip, drawing it out and producing exquisite stabs of pleasure. Her moans were long, drawn out and shuddering as his lips replaced his fingers at her neck. He bit and sucked, and she wrapped her arms tightly around him. She wore a light, cotton dress, barefoot and without underskirts.

The dress felt like an inadequate barrier against his powerful masculinity. He pressed her down and her cry of pleasure echoed around the dell. She parted her legs, attempting to wrap them around his slim waist, but her skirt hampered her. Arthur solved the problem. Seizing the hem of her skirt in both hands, he tore it apart. The rip traveled up the skirt, getting wider and wider. It revealed her knees, then her thighs. Then it revealed her naked womanhood to him.

She yearned for him and reached for his body, wanting to pull him down on top of her once more. But Arthur resisted. He sat back, hands on her knees, holding her legs apart. He ripped the dress further, exposing her stomach, and then her breasts. Finally, she lay on the remains of her dress as though it was a cotton blanket. She was naked before him. She raised her arms above her head and writhed at the waist, enjoying the widening of his eyes as he looked at her breasts.

Planting her feet flat on the ground to either side of where he knelt, she lifted her hips. Her breath was coming in pants, lust was making her heart hammer in her chest. She felt as though her entire body was aflame. Slowly, she pushed her hips upward so that Arthur's hands slid from her knees to travel down her pale thighs. He let them travel to the top of her legs until they framed her womanhood. Then, with a slight smile, he lowered his head to kiss, first her inner thigh, then traveled up to her loins.

Selina's eyes shut tight, and she dug her fingers into the thick moss, tearing out handfuls as she cried out her lover's name to the ancient copse around them.