Love and the Loathsome Leopard by Barbara Cartland

looked down into her eyes.
    “You have to trust me.”
    “I want to,” she answered. “I want to – but I am – afraid.”
    “I can understand that,” Lord Cheriton replied, “but I promise you we will find a way out, a way to get both you and Richard to safety. You believe me?”
    “I want to believe – you,” she murmured.
    Lord Cheriton looked down at her and his lips were very near to hers.
    As if she was suddenly as conscious of it as he was, he felt her draw in her breath and yet her body did not stiffen in his arms.
    Instead it was almost as if she drew nearer to him, then his lips were on hers.
    He had not meant to kiss her, it had not really crossed his mind that he might do so until that moment.
    Then, as he felt the softness and the innocence of her mouth beneath his, as he felt a little tremor go through her, he knew that this was what he had wanted since the first moment he had seen her haloed by the sunshine.
    It was a kiss that he realised was different from any other kiss he had ever known.
    It was an enchantment that seemed to be part of her beauty and her grace. It was something intangible, which awoke feelings within Lord Cheriton that he had never known before.
    His life had been one of action and harsh reality.
    Yet somewhere in the make-up of the man, who commanded respect, but not affection, there lingered – a secret hidden even from himself – the idealism of the boy who had run away from everything that was cruel and degrading to fund a new life of his own.
    As he held Wivina close to him and his lips became more demanding, more insistent, he thought that what he felt for her was part of the beauty and love that he had known with his mother, and that which he had found in the silver of the lake and the dark mystery of the woods.
    It was their beauty that had brought to him the only solace he had known from the tyranny and cruelty of his father and it was the memory of these things that had filled his dreams in the heat of India, the cold and dirt of Portugal, and the filth and stench of the battlefields of Spain.
    It seemed now as if while he kissed her, Wivina embodied everything that had moved and inspired him and lifted him sometimes only in his dreams towards the heights within himself.
    And he knew that what he felt, she felt too, and as she quivered against him, not with fear but with the wonder of the emotions he evoked in her, he knew that together they touched the divine.
    What they felt was not of the world, but something so perfect, so rapturous, that it was hard for their human minds to grasp the wonder of it.
    How long their kiss lasted neither Lord Cheriton nor Wivina had any idea, but when finally he raised his head he saw by the light of the candles that her face was transfigured and she was more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen before.
    She looked up at him, her eyes alight with a glory that did not come from the candles but from within herself.
    Then she asked almost beneath her breath,
    “Is – this love ?”
    “It is love!” Lord Cheriton said firmly. “The love I have been seeking all my life, although I did not know it!”
    “How could it – happen so quickly?”
    He smiled.
    “In the East they would say we have been moving towards each other all through the centuries. It is our Karma that we should belong to each other.”
    “Do I – belong to you?”
    “Can you doubt it?”
    “No,” she answered. “It is too wonderful – too perfect for doubt.”
    She paused, then she said with a little note of anxiety in her voice:
    “Do you – feel as – I do?”
    It was the question of a child who wants to be reassured.
    “I feel as you do, and very much more,” Lord Cheriton replied. “You belong to me, Wivina, you have always belonged to me and now we have found each other.”
    She made a little incoherent murmur of sheer happiness and hid her face against his shoulder.
    Masterfully he put his fingers under her chin and turned her face up to