Page 88 of The Bodyguard Who Came in from the Cold
He wanted to say “your father,” but the lie wouldn’t leave his mouth. “I came for you both.” He gripped her arms when a pleased smile curved her mouth. “I did not lie to you about that. I lied about everything else.”
“Everything?” she asked in a weak voice.
If this was the only way to drive her from the chaos of his world, back to the privilege and safety of hers, then he would tell her every ugly truth and be damned in her eyes. “Since I was twelve years old, I have spent every moment of my life hating your family. I rescued you, and you all banished me.”
“But I didn’t know!” she cried.
She tried to wrap her arms about his shoulders, to press against him. It took everything in Gareth to keep from holding her, to remain as cold and remote as a statue.
He pushed her away. “I understand that now. But back then, since you didn’t try to stop it, I thought you were just as guilty. And when I arrived here and saw how good your life was, I was furious.”
“You had a right to be.”
By the saints, nothing was getting through to her. Must he spell out his every sin and watch the pain in her eyes? “Did I have a right to get close to you, to try to persuade you that I was more than your friend?”
Her eyes glistened. “What do you mean?”
“While pretending to be your suitor, I was seducing you in truth. I was lying to you, and I set out to use you.”
“But why?”
“Because it would have been my final revenge on your family. I wanted to make you fall in love with me, to choose me as your husband.”
“And I did.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
He turned away from her anguish. “You would have chosen me—a man cursed through life, Warfield’s Wizard, a poverty-stricken knight. I wanted all that for you.” He turned back towards her. “Now do you see what kind of man I am?”
Margery hugged herself as tears ran down her face. No matter how he’d come to Hawksbury, no matter his motives, he wasn’t the same man now. The pain in his eyes and in his voice told her that.
And she loved him. But she didn’t think he was ready to hear that.
“You have never trusted anyone,” she said slowly. “Life—and my family—has taught you that. You were right not to trust me. I was using you, too. Every moment I pursued you, every time I tried to bring you to my bed, do you think I had marriage on my mind?”
He looked at the floor, not at her. She wanted to put her arms around him, to take all his pain away and bury it inside her.
“ ’Tis not the same thing,” he said in a low voice.
“Is it not? I wanted you as my last good memory before an awful marriage. Did I care that I might hurt you? At least you wanted to marry me. I just wanted to selfishly use your body for my own pleasure.”
“Do you not see?” Gareth said, obviously scoffing at her sins. “It worked right into my plans!”
She stalked into his line of sight, then held his arms when he would have turned away. “Listen to me! Even my marriage proposal to you was selfish. You were the solution to my plans. I was not thinking about love, or even your feelings. I just arrogantly assumed that I was the answer to all your prayers. But of the two of us, who was the one to do the noble thing?”
“Margery, don’t do this.”
He looked deep into her eyes, and she saw all the pain he had spent a lifetime learning to hide.
“It was you!” she cried. “You refused to marry me; you saw what I was doing.”
“How could I marry you after everything I’d done, everything I was?”
“Tell me about the visions,” she whispered suddenly.
He tried to pull away, but she threw herself against him and put her hands on either side of his face. “Tell me about the visions.”
“There is nothing to tell,” he said woodenly. “They aren’t even useful most of the time. I usually see minor things, like someone getting sick, or something lost. I get so nauseous that I want to understand none of it, and I pray to God to take them away from me. But he never took them away from my father or my grandfathers, and they went mad.”
She held her breath for a moment, fighting tears. This was the true Beaumont Curse. “Oh, Gareth. Don’t tell me that you’ve worried your entire life that you would be next to go mad?”
