“Where am I?” she croaked.
The maid started from her slumber, head lifting from where it had been resting on her chest. Selina swallowed, licked her lips, and spoke again, sounding more human this time.
“Excuse me? Where am I?” Selina asked, trying to lift herself into a sitting position. But she was too weak. Her head felt like lead and her limbs like water.
“Begging your pardon, my lady, but you are in Valebridge Castle. If you will excuse me, His Grace asked to be informed the moment you awoke.”
She promptly left the room. Selina let her head fall back, the room had begun to spin about her, and she lacked the strength to hold it up. Minutes later, the door opened again, and a man walked in. Selina turned her head and smiled. He looked just like she remembered, if older. The same dimple in the chin. The same tight dark curls. The same high cheekbones and infinitely dark eyes. He stopped just beyond the threshold, staring at her.
Once more, Selina tried to push herself upright, but her arms were not up to the task. After raising her body a few inches, she fell back. The man moved quickly to her side.
“Arthur,” Selina gasped, “I was almost afraid that I had been dreaming. But it really is you…”
She reached up with a trembling hand to stroke his face. There was a fine white line along the left side of his jaw. She ran her fingers along it. The touch sent a thrill through her and brought back memories of intimate moments together in the dark, lonely woods that filled the myriad of dells and valleys of the Downs, when they were merely children. He smiled, such a familiar sight, and yet…
He has aged. There is an aspect to his face that I do not recognize. It is the effect of passing years. Doubtless, he feels the same.
“I am here,” he whispered.
His voice was accented strangely. She could not place it, but it was not the sound of Sussex that she had expected. But it hardly mattered. He tentatively put his hand to hers and smiled. His touch was strong, yet tender. She immediately felt safe and protected.
“What on earth were you doing, riding alone in this weather?” he asked softly.
“I had to get away,” Selina replied, still gazing into those familiar and yet strange, dark eyes.
“From what?” he asked.
But Selina’s head was swimming, her eyelids felt heavy, though she did not want to close them. She wanted to gaze upon the long-missed face of her childhood sweetheart. The boy whom she had befriended on many summer visits to her grandmother in Wilmington. The tall, gangly boy who had become a lean youth with coal-black hair and eyes that smoldered when they rested on her. They still did.
She pulled her hand from his and ran her fingers across his lips. He pursed them, kissing her fingertips and Selina smiled, closing her eyes.
“Will you help me, Arthur?” she whispered.
“Of—of course. Just tell me how,” he replied earnestly.
But fatigue and fever had swept consciousness away from Selina. Her last memory before blackness rolled over her was the feel of Arthur’s lips against her fingertips, as he held her hand to his mouth.
CHAPTER3
Marcus held the mysterious young woman’s hand to his lips. It was wildly inappropriate, but he could not help himself. When she had touched his lips, it had taken all he could do not to kiss her. Instead, he held her soft fingers to his mouth, breathing her in, tasting her.
She must have been a sweetheart of Arthur’s. She could probably tell me a lot about him that I do not know, but that would involve revealing that I am not who she thinks I am.
That thought was anathema to him. He did not want to lose the feeling of a racing heart and shortness of breath that he found himself experiencing in her company. Did not want to lose her company. No woman that he could recall had been able to affect him so, particularly after such little time. He frowned, trying to puzzle out what it was about her that enthralled him so. A tap at the door disturbed his reverie.
He placed her hand by her side and returned the curtain to its position over her body, standing and hurrying from the room. Opening the door of the chamber’s sitting room, he saw, not the aged physician that he had expected, but Luke Livingston.
“Luke? What the devil are you doing here?” Marcus said in hushed tones.
“I am responding to a distress call, old man. I am assisting Doctor Fuller with a view to taking over his practice in a year or two. When your boy arrived, I persuaded him to let me attend instead of him. Will I do?”
Luke was a little shorter than Marcus but of an age with him, both in their mid twenties. Luke had a shock of unruly, fiery red hair and a broad face, spattered with freckles with bright green eyes. The accent of Cumbria was thick on his voice.
“You didn’t tell me you were going into practice in this neck of the woods,” Marcus said.
“Wanted to surprise you, Arthur, old boy,” Luke replied, “…and looks like I arrived just in the nick of time. What seems to be the trouble.”
Marcus ushered him into the room, checked the hallway outside, and then closed the door.
