“This confounded curse again, eh?” Marcus said, as he carefully lifted the woman from Dai’s arms.
“Aye, that’s it. Curse. Don’t want anything to do with it, see.” After those words, his face suddenly grew solemn. “You just look after her, mind.”
Marcus gave him an earnest nod.
Then the old man was hurrying away into the storm-tossed night, drawing the horse away after him.
“I’ll put the horse in the stables for you. Shouldn’t be out on a night like this,” he called over his shoulder.
A peal of thunder followed hot on the heels of a stuttering surge of lightning. Marcus ducked, despite himself, and retreated from the main doors. As they slammed closed behind him, the woman stirred. She was beautiful, with a pale heart-shaped face and a pretty snub nose. Her skin was soft, and her hair dark with water. Her lips were pouted and seemed lush and inviting.
For a moment, Marcus just stood, his back to the doors, and stared at her. She was light in his arms, her body deliciously feminine. As he looked, her eyelids fluttered open for a moment.
“Arthur… Thank God. I found you,” she murmured.
Then exhaustion overcame her once more and her head lolled back, eyes closing.
CHAPTER2
For a long moment, Marcus had just stood with the woman held in his arms. He barely noticed the burden. Looking at her peaceful heart-shaped face, he found himself captivated.
What has brought you to my door, I wonder? And on a night like this.
It was only when she murmured in the depths of her unconsciousness that he was recalled to himself. He jerked his head up, looking around, though there were no servants abroad at this time of the night. That was a standing order. Marcus found sleep difficult and had a tendency to wander the castle late into the evening. He abhorred the thought of servants seeing him and speculating on his behavior. If it were possible to own a great house such as Valebridge and have no servants, he would do so.
Marcus strode down the long, high-ceilinged Great Hall, past portraits of Valebridge Dukes dating back to the reign of the first King Edward. He climbed the broad stairs at the end of the Great Hall, to the first landing and the long defunct guest wing. There, he kicked open the first door and walked through a sitting room and small dressing room, before finally entering a bedchamber. As gently as he could, he placed the young woman on the plump but bare mattress.
The bed had not been made – he did not receive visitors often, not at all in fact. Standing straighter, he looked around, feeling that he could not leave the young woman lying uncovered in her damp clothes. Seeing no bedclothes and not knowing where the servants kept such things, he instead went to the window and seized one of the thick, velvet curtains. A single, strong pull tore it from its rings and the heavy material thumped to the floor.
Marcus gathered it and carried it to the bed, carefully draping it over the young woman.
She called me Arthur. She thought I was my brother.
But after all, that is what he wanted everyone to believe when he had returned from Cumbria at the behest of his father, only to find him deceased that very day. Left behind were two letters. One, incomplete and clutched in his father’s cold dead hand had told him of Arthur’s fall into degradation but ended there. The other, in an unfamiliar hand and signed only‘A’,told him that none in the house knew the face of Arthur Roy, that none would know if Marcus took on the name and the title. Told him that Jeffrey Roy had allowed the world to believe that he had only one son, Arthur.
So, Marcus Roy became Arthur Roy. The title passed to him, the family solicitor not questioning his identity, seeing only the characteristic black hair, dimpled chin, and sharp cheekbones of the Roy line. Now, someone had come who seemed to know Arthur, and the deception had worked. Marcus wondered if it would continue once the woman awoke. Perhaps she had been an old friend of Arthur’s.
Or a lover? That would put my illusion to the test. Perhaps I should absent myself, allow the servants to take care of her.
But Marcus was intrigued by this golden-haired angel. For that is how she seemed to him as she lay in peaceful repose. Pale-skinned and with hair the color of sunlight. He had briefly glimpsed pale eyes in the dim lamp light by the front door. Blue or gray perhaps. Her features were delicate, fine-boned but with sensuous lips and a firm chin that seemed to speak of strength. She was slim, he could tell from the way her clothes clung to her bosom and hips. Her femininity was decently covered now but he had been very aware of it as he had carried her up the room.
He ran a hand through his tight, black curls and stroked his chin.
A doctor should be summoned, and I cannot leave her to wake alone in a strange room. It could cause her more distress and I do not know her state of mind to begin with. If she was riding alone on a night like this, I cannot imagine it was well-balanced and, in any way, typical. She must have been running from something. Or, running to something. Or someone.
Observing the woman’s steady, deep breaths of sleep, he decided to break his cardinal rule and summon Thomas Beveridge, Valebridge’s butler. He could have one of the grooms awakened and sent out to fetch Doctor Fuller from the nearby village of Folkington. In the meantime, one of the chambermaids could be awakened to watch over the young woman. Marcus felt an urge to take on that task himself, wanting to remain by her side.
It might frighten her to awaken and see a strange man in the room. Except she does not see me as a stranger, but as Arthur.
He left the chamber and briskly strode to the servant’s quarters to wake Tom, resolving to return to her as soon as he could.
* * *
Selina awoke from turbulent dreams, half-remembered but more as vague impressions than specific recollections. Her mouth was dry, and she felt hot. A thick and immensely heavy blanket lay across her and she pushed at it. Opening her eyes, she saw by the dim glow of candlelight, a large room with a high ceiling. A window to her left had one half of a set of curtains and a young woman in the black and white of a maid sat dozing in a chair next to the bed.
Selina pushed at the remarkably heavy blanket before realizing that it was, in fact, the other half of the curtains. For a moment she had no memory of where she was or how she had come to be here. In fact, she wondered if this were simply another dream brought on by the fear and exhaustion of her flight.
That’s right! I fled from my father’s house on Wind, and I came to…I came to…
