Page 5 of The Bodyguard Who Came in from the Cold
Lord Fogge leaned one way. Margery went the opposite way, and found herself against his chest.
“Margery, I ache for one of your kisses. Just one.”
She leaned back in his embrace and turned her face away, but she felt his hot breath on her neck. She had been in this situation one too many times this last month. Why hadn’t she learned by now that every eligible man in England considered her fair game? And yet, what choice did she have? The days were flying by at too fast a pace, and soon the king would need an answer.
Margery felt his mouth on her cheek and grimaced. Just as she was about to bring up her knee and end his lordship’s kiss with pain, Lord Fogge abruptly released her. As she stumbled back against the bench, she realized that he had not willingly let her go. He was caught in the grip of a stranger—a much larger, broader man, who punched him hard in the stomach.
With a groan, Lord Fogge doubled over and staggered against a tree trunk. The stranger grabbed him again, and Lord Fogge covered his head and whimpered.
“Let him go,” Margery said.
The stranger ignored her. His fist connecting with Lord Fogge’s chin snapped the man’s head back.
“That is enough!” she cried, grasping the stranger’s arm. She stumbled as his arm came forward, but hung on grimly. “You’ve disabled him. He will not be so foolish again.”
The stranger abruptly released Lord Fogge, who reeled sideways, blood dripping from his lower lip. Without a glance at Margery, his lordship darted through the trees toward where they’d left the horses. But she soon forgot him when the stranger turned and looked at her.
She felt a shiver of fear. Her rescuer would have continued to pummel her assailant if she had not intervened. She could trust him even less than Lord Fogge. The man was tall and well-muscled, wearing a leather jerkin over a dark shirt. His bright blond hair was long and shaggy, as if he’d been traveling for some time. Then their gazes met, and Margery forgot to breathe.
She would recognize those intense eyes anywhere.
He was Gareth Beaumont, the boy from her childhood.
Shock and disbelief made her freeze. Not a week went by that she didn’t wonder what had become of him. Almost without thinking, she reached for the purse hung from her belt, and touched the crystal stone through the fabric.
She’d never been able to forget the way his golden eyes seemed to glow with a light of their own. But now a coldness lurking behind those eyes made her realize he was no longer the boy she knew.
She stepped back, barely able to take in the man he had become. He was sun-burnished, golden, his nose straight and strong, his cheekbones as chiseled as if carved by a sculptor. He was so beautifully rendered, yet so male, that it made her uneasy. And in that moment, she felt small and dark and sinful, unworthy to even look upon such perfection. What would he think of her if he knew her secrets?
But this was foolishness. Gareth Beaumont needed to know nothing of her past. He was no longer her childhood friend, but a stranger passing through her land.
And then she remembered the ignoble rumors that had chased him from the country. He was said to be a vicious opponent in battle, who won at any cost.
He, too, was assessing her, staring into her face, then glancing down her body, leaving a searing path in her flesh. She was shocked and unnerved, aware of him suddenly as a man and not a memory. It showed what kind of woman she’d become, how easily the heat of desire consumed her.
But every man looked on her with a covetous bent, and she was disappointed that Gareth was no better.
“Margery.”
“Gareth Beaumont, can it really be you? I have not seen you in?—”
“Twelve years.” His voice was deep, rumbling, as unnerving as his face.
She swallowed. “What have you been doing for all these years?”
“I’ve been traveling through Europe.”
She hesitated, then asked bravely, “Doing what?”
He just stared at her in that cool way of his, and she didn’t think he’d answer.
“There is money to be earned at tournaments, and noblemen to work for,” he finally said. “ ’Tis as good a way as any to live.”
She remembered then that his parents had died in a fire just after he’d come to foster at her father’s castle. The king had taken the Beaumonts’ land and possessions as payment for a debt. Gareth had no home, no family. It was sometimes so easy for her to take her brothers’ love for granted.
There was a long, awkward silence.
“Did you like Europe better than England?” she asked, then wanted to wince at her inanity.
