"…Selina," Marcus warned, his breath hot against her ear as he struggled to maintain some semblance of control. "I can't…hold on much longer."
"Neither can I," she admitted, her voice barely above a breath.
With one final, desperate burst of energy, Marcus sat up slightly, pulling Selina closer to him as their slippery bodies strained together. He bit down gently on her neck, leaving a tiny mark that would later remind her of this night. The volcano within surged and roared as Marcus’ body thrust against hers, harder and with more ferocity than before. Every fiber of her being was aflame, every sense heightened.
And then the volcano erupted and every muscle tightened, liquid pleasure surging through her, making her feel faint. Marcus’ head fell back with power as he spilled his seed inside her, and Selina shuddered through her climax once more, clinging to him for dear life. Then her limbs were water and she was limp, Marcus sweating and panting below her, their limbs intertwined, bodies joined.
As the storm outside raged on, Selina collapsed onto Marcus' chest, feeling his heart pounding against her ear like a wild drumbeat. She smiled deliriously, reveling in the heavenly sensation of their shared release, and knew without a doubt that she had found something truly special with this man – something that transcended time, space, and even the darkest corners of their pasts.
CHAPTER25
The rain intensified or Marcus could have comfortably remained naked with Selina in that ramshackle old farm cottage. As more and more cold water splashed over their bare skin, they scrambled for the cover of their clothes. Selina’s were no longer worth calling clothes, for which Marcus felt somewhat guilty. She instead buttoned her coat over her bare upper body. They nestled together under the last remaining section of roof, the area with the fewest drips. Marcus put his arms around her and relished the feel of her nuzzling into his embrace. Selina lifted her head to bestow soft, loving kisses on his face and neck, barely touching him with her lips.
“Do you still want to marry me?” he asked.
“Yes, but I have a condition,” Selina murmured.
“And that is?”
“That it is a marriage in full. Not a pairing of convenience, to avoid a scandal or to polish a reputation,” Selina said firmly.
“I am not Arthur. You still wish to enter fully into marriage with me?” Marcus persisted.
“It was you that I agreed to marry, not Arthur,” Selina replied, “I know that sounds nonsensical as I believed you were Arthur at the time. But, it was you that I wanted to marry, the man that you are. Whether your name is Arthur or Marcus or George or even Napoleon. It is only a name. I came to know the man that you are. The man who watched over me for two whole days while I was bedridden, and then saved me from scandal and my father’s schemes.”
Marcus nodded, not wanting to speak while she was teasing him with her butterfly touch kisses. The sensations that came from her lips with each of those precious touches were just too intense to be spoken over.
“The only reason for the subterfuge was that it was the only way to inherit. I wanted to make something of Valebridge. My father had run it into the ground. His reputation was monstrous and he did not care. My family has existed for centuries and we have a proud history. I thought I could be a good Duke.”
“What kind of Duke was Arthur?” Selina asked.
“I do not know. My father paints a picture of a demon and I believe that Arthur was the one that had my mother committed to the care of an asylum. That does not seem to me to be a good man. But, I did not know him.” Marcus sighed, frustrated at the opaque veils of the past.
“Is there no one you can ask? Someone who knew Arthur and…oh, of course not,” Selina pressed her face into Marcus’ neck and he could almost feel the heat of her blush.
He chuckled, stroking her hair.
“You see my predicament. Only Beveridge knows the truth because he left Valebridge with me when I was a child. He was barely out of childhood himself at that point, his parents were my father’s driver and my mother’s maid. He came with me to serve the young lordling in Cumbria and we never saw Valebridge again.”
“How awful. He never saw his parents again?”
“No. He never speaks of it and I believe his obsession with documenting everything stems from the way my father managed to completely rip away everything he knew. Now, he makes sure nothing can be forgotten, nothing overlooked.”
“Did Arthur keep no diaries?” Selina asked, “he was a keen writer and poet when I knew him. We were young but he was already thinking that he might wish for a career in literature.”
“I have found none. That is not to say that they don’t exist. My father may have had them destroyed or Arthur may have hidden them well to prevent that, assuming such diaries existed in the first place,” Marcus said.
“I am sorry if I am just retreading old ground. This puzzle is new to me, you have probably already thought of everything that I might suggest,” Selina said.
She felt slightly despondent at the dead end Marcus, and now herself, seemed to have reached. She would not accept that Arthur had died a degenerate, ruining himself with liquor and opium. But, such things did happen from time to time and it sounded like life in Valebridge under Jeffrey Roy would have been utterly hellish. Who could have blamed Arthur for turning to such substances?
“My father will make trouble for us,” she said, her mind moving to her own devil of a parent.
“Let him try. If he tries to slander me, I will pursue him through the courts. This rank I carry like a millstone around my neck will prove useful at some point, even if it is simply to swing around for the sheer weight of it,” Marcus replied.
“That will be his approach, I think. The scandal route. He can do little else. I would not be surprised if he tries to poison the ton against us. He and Christleton are respectable enough in those circles,” Selina said.
“Far more than I am. I am a novice when it comes to such things and gladly so. If only it were possible to make a name for oneself without having to play the games of courtly intrigue and politics,” Marcus sighed.
