Customer Reviews

Velvet Touch (Harlequin Historical)

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The Lady Fellis Made His Pulse Thunder - Yet She Could Never Be His

Indeed, Sir Stephen Clayburn knew all too well her destiny lay in the marriage bed of an enemy. And as the king's messenger, he would be forced to deliver the woman he loved into the arms of another.

The king had commanded that she wed, and Fellis had no choice but to agree. Yet how could she tell Sir Stephen, the king's own knight, that she would rather obey the dictates of her own heart and love only him forever?

The plot is a good one - Sir Stephen, at the order of the King, has to arrange a marriage between the lady Fellis and a Welsh warrior who's been constantly raiding her father's property. It's hoped that the marriage will bring peace to the quarreling border-neighbors. Stephen finds himself immediately attracted to Fellis, and vice-versa. An added complication is Fellis' mother, a cold woman, who's trying to convince Fellis to become a nun instead of marrying the man her father wants her to.

While the characters of Fellis and Stephen were nicely written, and I liked the potential in the story (the forbidden love aspect), somehow the story began to drag, and I found myself beginning to skim instead of being fully absorbed into this story. For me, I think Ms. Archer was a little too flowery when describing the intensity of feelings that Stephen and Fellis were having for each other -- a little too 'mushy' for my taste. Also, it seemed that their love was more about their physical attraction to each other; more focused on their physical attractiveness, too, instead of developing the characters' personalities.

The author did a nice job depicting the tension between Stephen's duty to arrange Fellis's marriage and his feelings for Fellis. The subplot involving Wynn, Fellis's intended husband and his mistress Ardeth, was interesting, but a little prolonged. I don't often think a romance needs to be shorter, but perhaps this one would have benefited from a little pruning. All in all, this historical romance was not a keeper for me.