Page 17 of The Bodyguard Who Came in from the Cold
“So what are we doing today?” Gareth asked.
“We?”
“I go where you go.”
She sighed. “We are eating. I’m famished.”
He nodded and lifted his arm toward her. She stared at it for a moment in puzzlement.
“You’re supposed to take it,” he said gruffly. “I am your suitor, you know.”
“Oh, yes. Of course.”
After only the briefest hesitation, she slid her hand beneath his elbow and lightly touched his arm. He pulled his elbow in and she was firmly trapped against the heat of his body, intimately aware of his strength, of the power that lay dormant inside him, waiting. All at her command.
At the head table he insisted on sitting beside her. Her two suitors, short and dark to Gareth’s golden height, showed their displeasure with frowns and whispers to each other.
But Gareth seemed strangely oblivious to their jealousy. He ate only when she was eating. Otherwise he gazed solely at her, until Anne and Cicely dissolved into giggles, covering their mouths and pretending to cough. He finally bestowed his smile on them, and even Margery could see their eyes soften and their expressions grow dreamy. His smiles must be few, to be so potent.
When the meal was over, Margery waved good-bye to her two suitors, surprised at the frowns they directed at her as they rode away. Then she turned and saw Gareth standing just behind her, hands linked behind his back, his expression victorious.
She made a low sound of disgust and tried to stalk past him. He took her arm and pulled her to a halt.
“What is wrong?” he asked, his mouth close to her ear.
“I felt like a child’s toy between you and those men.” She shook off his hand and stepped away.
He lifted an eyebrow. “I was only playing my part.”
“Too well. What if they return to slit your throat?”
His smile didn’t touch his eyes. “They hardly seem to have that much bravery, even between them.”
“Do you want to make enemies of all the men who come to court me?” she demanded, fisting her hands on her hips, heedless of the fact that they stood in the center of the ward. “Thenyou’llneed your own guard.”
Gareth frowned. “You said you have your choice in husband. But those two?—”
“And are you the man who shall make my decisions for me? You are supposed to know my own heart better than I do?”
He didn’t reply.
“Just do as I ask,” she said, softening her voice as she realized how silent the ward had become, how they were being watched by people who didn’t bother to hide their amusement. “Let me choose the path of my life—I know what I’m doing.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he nodded. “I will stay out of it, unless you put yourself in danger.”
“I am not in?—”
He narrowed his eyes, and she suddenly remembered being chased by Lord Fogge around the bench.
Gareth was a true reminder of the privacy she’d lost. Every time she looked at him, she thought of the men who would be coming, the men he’d promised to protect her from.
And they were coming sooner than she’d thought. She sent a silent prayer to the heavens that Peter Fitzwilliam would not be one of them.
Margery stifled a shiver of dread. She wanted to mount her horse and ride through the Severn Valley until her problems were far behind her. But her freedom, her choices, were gone, lost in the grass along with her virginity.
Why couldn’t she keep on pretending that she could solve all her problems and live her life as she wanted? Why couldn’t she be left alone?
But there was Gareth, looking too deeply, seeing things he had no right to see. Even Peter had never made her feel that she had no privacy.
