“Let me go, do you hear? Take your hands off me, you –”
All the breath was knocked out of her as he curled his foot behind her ankle and sent her spinning into a large bale of straw at the back of the dark stable. Winded and breathless, Lucy raised her arms to protect herself as Philip, his eyes narrowed and cruel, stretched out a hand towards her.
In that instant, the memory of the beating she had received from her father the night she ran away from home came back to her in discomfiting detail. Then, she had fought, bitten, scratched and kicked, yet still she had been overpowered.
Perhaps there was another way of dealing with this kind of situation – with calm reason and cool logic. Philip didn't look like the kind of man to be swayed by a woman's pleas or tears, but perhaps, if she co
