Velvet Touch. Catherine Archer

true, Lady Mary. The matter rests little in your husband’s hands, but in King Edward’s. He has declared the marriage will take place if it can be arranged and there is naught that can be done to change it.”

      He reached inside his tunic to pull out the document that sealed Fellis’s fate. He passed the missive to the older woman, who took it somewhat gingerly. Slowly she opened the document to scan it, her expression showing her displeasure and horror, which grew steadily with every word she read.

      Thinking to give the lady an opportunity to absorb the truth with some modicum of privacy, Stephen averted his gaze to the young girl. She had stepped back into the shadows by the door, her slender body poised as if ready for flight.

      Stephen had had enough of this. She had no need to fear him. He spoke to her. “Damsel, please come forward so that we might discuss this rationally. Naught can be gained by hiding.”

      He moved across the room in long, purposeful strides and held out his hand.

      But she refused to put hers in it. After only one more brief moment of hesitation she finally did come into the room, stepping around him carefully, her shoulders squared as if fighting for courage.

      When she moved, it was with a strange halting grace that drew Stephen to watch her with interest. Slowly she came forward, pausing as she stepped beneath the direct light of the window along the outer wall. For a moment her face was profiled in a fine, clear shaft of brightness.

      It was then Stephen caught his breath.

      It was her! The sprite from the forest. There was no mistaking the fragile beauty of her profile haloed in the whitegold light. Though none of that glorious silver blond hair escaped her nunlike wimple and veil, he knew there was no mistake.

      Nothing could make him forget those moments in the forest glade and what he had seen. Each minute detail of her face and exquisite form was etched forever in his mind.

      With chagrin he recalled his resolve to find her, his plans to have her, no matter what the cost. For one long moment he knew a gripping tightness in chest, the intensity of which surprised and displeased him.

      God, to find her here. And worse yet, to know he must arrange her wedding to another man.

      But Stephen quickly quelled his reaction. He would do what he must. Even though this was the first woman he had ever felt such an intense and overwhelming desire to know, she was not for him. It was, in point of fact, ridiculous of him to even ponder such thoughts.

      He had only just set eyes on the maid this very morning. Surely he was quite mad to even concern himself with her.

      But no matter what he told himself, Stephen could not force his gaze from her.

      

      Fellis halted and glanced at the tall, imposing knight with a frown of displeasure as she passed him. What did her father mean by saying he had come here to arrange a marriage between herself and Wynn ap Dafydd? Then, as she actually looked at the knight for the first time, Fellis unexpectedly found herself giving pause, for he was devastatingly handsome with his dark auburn hair that gleamed with fiery highlights and eyes so dark a green they made her think of her secret place in the forest. Her gaze swept upward over a hard, chiseled jaw, an aquiline nose, then was caught and held by his.

      For the eternal length of that one long pulse-pounding moment, she was unable to turn away.

      There was something different about him, about the way she felt as he looked down at her. It was as if he were gazing not just at her but into her—into that place she had long buried where she was a woman with needs and desires like any other.

      Without her consent, her willful gaze slipped down from that lean-jawed face, over a corded neck and across wide shoulders encased in dark green velvet. Not even the heaviness of his tunic sleeve could disguise the power of his arms, nor of his sun-bronzed hands, with their surprisingly supple fingers. Those fingers looked as if they would be equally at home on the strings of a lute as they would be on the hilt of the sword that hung from his narrow hips by a goldbuckled belt.

      This was a man who had turned the heads of many a maid. Even to her untutored eyes there was no doubt.

      But what completely unnerved her and made it doubly difficult to catch her breath was the hunger in his eyes as he looked down at her. It was as if he were drinking in the sight of her as she was him.

      Fellis could not credit that this man with his strong, hard body and handsome face could be interested in her. The idea was unthinkable. It was simply her own reaction to his incredible masculinity that made her feel so breathless.

      She was not a woman to draw such notice. Her crippled foot set her apart from others. No man would desire a woman who was so marked, ’twas a clear sign of God’s displeasure

      Why then was he watching her with such open intensity? Then the answer flashed into her mind like a painful poke at a sore tooth. Her deformity! The man knew of her twisted ankle and simply sought to carefully study one so afflicted.

      She flushed a deep scarlet and dropped her gaze. Always it was so. They could not see that inside her she was a young woman like any other and that defect had not twisted the rest of her body and mind as it had her ankle. They did not care that inside her beat a heart like any other. And that heart was vulnerable to their stares and revulsion.

      Quickly she swung away from him, unable to face his scrutiny now that she knew the reason behind it.

      To her great distress, her limp seemed even more pronounced than usual as she made haste to seat herself at the trestle table. But she held her head high, refusing to allow the man to see how hurt she was by his appraisal.

      Her surreptitious glance darted to her parents and away. Hopefully they had not taken note of what had just occurred. She knew how sensitive they both were to people’s negative reactions to her.

      Her mother was still much occupied with reading the roll of parchment and Richard Grayson was watching his wife with undisguised longing.

      Fellis forced away her own feelings of hurt, aware of a familiar ache of sadness for her father, but knew she could do nothing to help. Her mother had long ago made her feelings on the marriage known to them all.

      Fellis was aware that the Baron of Malvern was a lonely man, yet to his daughter’s knowledge he had not taken a mistress. He still hoped for his wife to someday turn to him.

      But then, as she sighed with regret, Fellis looked to her mother again. Her gaze came to rest on the missive in the Lady Mary’s hands and her eyes opened wide as the old problems flew from her mind in the face of the new.

      It had certainly hurt for the man to stare at her so. But that was naught in comparison to what his gaze had made her forget.

      Sir Stephen Clayburn had said she was to be married.

      She longed to look at the man who had announced such incredible news. But Fellis could not bring herself to do so in the event that she might once again fall victim to that probing green gaze. Her attention focused on the whiteknuckled hands she twisted so tightly in her lap.

      Married. And to Wynn ap Dafydd, her father’s sworn enemy. She had never so much as seen him, though the deeds of his followers were well-known to her. They were wont to rob, burn and terrorize the English residing at Malvern castle at every opportunity.

      Her father had been granted custodianship of the castle twenty years ago, two years before she was even born, and Fellis knew no other existence beyond this uncertain one along the Welsh border.

      Fellis looked to her mother, who had now dropped her hand so that the parchment dangled from her fingers as she visibly fought for control. And find it she would, of that Fellis had no doubt. Mother was not one to be overset by any circumstance, no matter how disturbing. She had a way of forcing things to come out as she wished them to.

      Then Fellis realized that she need not concern herself with this marriage. Never would Mary Grayson agree to the match. She was determined for Fellis to enter the convent. In the past years her mother had managed