The Widow's Kiss Read Free Page A

boar, his little red eyes glowing, stood at bay. He snorted and lowered his head with its wickedly sharp tusks.
    Pen raised her bow, her fingers quivering with excitement. The boar charged straight for the child's pony.
    Guinevere raised her own bow and loosed an arrowjust as another flew from along the path ahead of them. The other caught the boar in the back of the neck. Pen in her mingled terror and excitement loosed her own arrow too late and it fell harmlessly to the ground. Her mother's caught the charging animal in the throat. Despite the two arrows sticking from its body, the boar kept coming under the momentum of his charge. Pen shrieked as the animal leaped, the vicious tusks threatening to drive into her pony's breast.
    Then another arrow landed in the back of the boar's neck and it crashed to the ground beneath the pony's feet. The pony reared in terror and bolted, the child clinging to its mane.
    A horseman broke out of the trees at the side of the ride and grabbed the pony's reins as it raced past. As the animal reared again, eyes rolling, snorting wildly, the man caught the child up from the saddle just as she was about to shoot backwards to the ground. The pony pawed and stamped. Other men rode out of the trees and gathered on the path facing Guinevere's party.
    Pen looked up at the man who held her on his saddle. She didn’t think she had ever seen such brilliant blue eyes before.
    “All right?” he asked quietly.
    She nodded, still too shaken and breathless to speak.
    Guinevere rode up to them. “My thanks, sir.” She regarded the man and his party with an air of friendly inquiry. “Who rides on Mallory land?”
    The man leaned over and set Pen back on her now quiet pony. Instead of answering Guinevere's question, he said, “I assume you are the Lady Guinevere.”
    There was something challenging in his gaze. Guinevere thought as had her daughter that she had never seen such brilliant blue eyes, but she read antagonism in the steady look. Her friendly smile faded and her chin lifted in instinctive response. “Yes, although I don’t know howyou would know that. You are on my land, sir. And you are shooting my boar.”
    “It seemed you needed help shooting it yourself,” he commented.
    “My aim was true,” she said with an angry glitter in her eye. “I needed no help. And if I did, I have my own huntsmen.”
    The man looked over at the group of men clustered behind her, at the dogs they held once again on tight leashes. He shrugged as if dismissing them as not worth consideration.
    Guinevere felt her temper rise. “Who trespasses on Mallory land?” she demanded.
    He turned his bright blue eyes upon her, regarding her thoughtfully. His gaze traveled over her as she sat tall in the saddle. He took in the elegance of her gown of emerald green silk with its raised pattern of gold vine leaves, the stiffened lace collar that rose at her nape to frame her small head, the dark green hood with its jeweled edge set back from her forehead to reveal hair the color of palest wheat. Her eyes were the astounding purple of ripe sloes. The miniature had not done her justice, he thought. Or perhaps it was maturity that accentuated the grace and beauty of the young girl in the portrait.
    His gaze turned to the milk-white mare she rode, noticing its bloodlines in the sloping pasterns, the arched neck. A lady of wealth and discrimination, whatever else she might be.
    “Hugh of Beaucaire,” he said almost lazily.
    So he had come in person.
No longer satisfied with laying claim to her land by letter, he had come himself. It certainly explained his antagonism. Guinevere contented herself with an ironically raised eyebrow and returned his stare, seeing in her turn a man in his vigorous prime, square built, square jawed, his thick iron-gray hair cropped short beneath the flat velvet cap, his weathered complexion thatof a man who didn’t spend his time skulking with politics in the corners and corridors of