“But of course you should,” she murmured.
To his amazement, she went up on tiptoes and leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. His arms circled round her—hard enough to crush her—because she laughed again and pushed him away and said, “So eager, Your Grace? Let me catch my breath.”
He made himself loosen his hold, but he did not let her go. He pressed his mouth against hers and gave back the kiss she had given him. He was tentative at first, having kissed only a few tavern wenches and willing dairymaids when he was at Oxford. A widow in the town of Comarty near Blackthorne Abbey had taught him most of what he knew about satisfying a woman in bed, but his lessons had not included much kissing.
His body trembled when Lady Penthia’s hands twined in the hair at his nape. He wanted desperately to taste her, to put his tongue inside her mouth, but he knew that was not the sort of behavior one forced upon one’s future wife.
She made a sound in her throat, more pleasure than protest, but Alastair knew he had already held her longer than he should. He felt almost dizzy when he let her go. His body had hardened revealingly so it would have been impossible to go directly back inside, even if that had been his desire. But he was not finished. There was something else he wanted to accomplish.
He opened his mouth to offer for her, but the words got stuck in his throat. It was, quite simply, fear that she would refuse him. “Shall we walk?” he said, practically dragging her beside him as he strode along the gravel path.
He thought he saw a flash of irritation on her face but decided it must be his imagination when she smiled prettily up at him and said, “Will you speak with my father tonight?”
He stopped and stared down at her. Well. He had not needed to say the words after all. She had assumed the proposal. And why not? He had taken her into the dark and kept her there too long—he could hear the music had stopped—and kissed her and held her in his arms.
Except, somewhere inside him a voice said, “The offer should have come from you.”
Another voice reminded him that he had what he wanted. She was his. He felt a swell of pride, a feeling of triumph that overrode that other, less certain voice. “I shall call at Straith House tomorrow morning to speak with your father. Shall we go inside now?”
“You will not fail me?” she said, her eyes anxious.
“I shall not fail you.”
When Alastair paid his addresses to Lady Penthia in her father’s drawing room at the town house on Berkeley Square, he did so knowing that he had her father’s delighted approval for the match. Alastair felt certain Lady Penthia must love him as much as he loved her. Why else—after refusing all those other offers—had she chosen him?
She was seated on the sofa when he entered the room to tell her he had her father’s permission to wed her. She looked up at him, a smile on her lips, her eyes shining with … It was not precisely love, but rather … jubilation. And why not? He felt joyful himself.
He dropped to one knee, a flamboyant gesture more appropriate to his brother, but an indication of the depth of his feelings for the woman to whom he was about to propose marriage. To his consternation, his hand, when he reached for hers, was shaking. Her hand was surprisingly cool and dry and calm, with none of the signs of anxiety he found in himself. He hurried to speak, for fear his legs would give out under him.
“I … I love you, Lady Penthia. Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?” he blurted.
“Yes, Your Grace, I will.”
His throat tightened with emotion, and he blinked to keep his vision clear. “I will do my best to make you happy.”
“I am counting on it, Your Grace,” she said with a pleased smile.
It was not quite the answer he had expected. He had been hoping for a declaration of her love in return, but he attributed the lack of one to maidenly modesty. After all, they hardly knew each other. Her declaration would come with time. They had their whole lives to spend together.
He leaned forward to touch her lips with his, but she turned aside so he brushed her cheek instead. That surprised him, but he could understand her shyness at being kissed in her father’s drawing room.
“Until later,” he murmured.
“Later,” she agreed.
But he never had her alone in the month that followed before they were wed in June at St. George’s.
It was not until his wedding night that Alastair realized his bride was not quite so pure as she had led him to believe. He would never have known, except that he had swallowed his pride and gone to the widow in Comarty and asked her what he could do to make the wedding night easier for his bride. Mrs. Jensen had explained in great detail what he must do, and he had followed her instructions explicitly.
Except, there had been no barrier.
His pride had kept him from asking his lady wife who had come before him. But he began to look askance at her when she flirted with other men. And he noticed how often she teased his brother, who returned jibe for jibe, but who was obviously infatuated with her.
The real trouble began when they left London and returned to Blackthorne Abbey, his estate in Kent. There was little in the country to interest Penthia, yet that was where he felt most comfortable. He trusted his neighbors not to steal his wife. And he was not so sure she could not be stolen by another man. It became plain she was dissatisfied with him, that she had none of the feelings for him that he held for her, and that she tolerated his attentions at night because it was her duty.
He rejoiced at learning his wife was expecting a happy event within a year of their nuptials. But the partnership he had envisioned marriage to be was nothing like the actual estrangement from his wife he lived with from day to day.
“There is no need for you to come any longer to my bed,” she said at the same time she announced she was with child.
He had been more than willing to return to the widow. She, at least, seemed to enjoy his touch.
He consoled himself with the thought of having a child to love in Penthia’s place. He spent time with his brother and his friends and gave his wife the public courtesy that concealed his personal discontent with their relationship. And in fact, his life found new meaning the night his wife was delivered of twin girls, Lady Regina and Lady Rebecca.
Penthia was furious she had not borne him an heir, but Alastair was content that the title go to Marcus if his wife gave him no son. He had taken one look at the two identical little girls with their tiny noses and rosebud mouths, their blue eyes and black hair, and promptly lost his heart.
He had spent far more time in the nursery than any gentleman should. He had delighted in their first smiles, their first teeth, their first unsteady steps. His life would have been perfect if only Penthia had shared his pleasure in the twins. She wanted to return to London for the Season, but he would not leave the girls to go with her, and he did not trust her to go alone.
He had woken one violent, stormy night, with the branches of a giant oak cracking against the windowpanes and the wind whistling eerily in the ancient stone Abbey, and thought to look in his wife’s room to see if she was frightened by the storm.
A ragged streak of lightning had revealed her empty bed, the sheets tousled, the imprint of her head on the pillow. He had pulled on a pair of buckskins and his Hessians and gone searching for her, unsure what might have happened to her. He looked in the kitchen, in the drawing room, in the library, a sense of foreboding growing in his breast. He had finally gone to the crumbling east wing of the Abbey, where Marcus had his rooms, to enlist his brother’s help in searching for his wife.
And found them together in Marcus’s bed.
His wife had been naked, her breast glistening in the candlelight where his brother’s mouth had just released it. Thunder clapped overhead, a deafening ovation for his foolish love. Alastair would never forget the horrified look on Marcus’s face or the defiant glare in Penthia’s blue eyes.
“Why?” he had asked, the word torn from his throat.
“I wanted him,” she said.
“Marcus?” he rasped.
“Alex, I … she … I …”
He had seen the tears of regret in Marcus’s eyes and looked away before he could forgive his brother. It was an unforgivable act. He had turned and left, his Hessians echoing on the stone floor as he escaped the wretched scene.
No one would ever know the effort it had taken to remain civil to his wife and his brother before the world, when inside him burned a rage so hot, a hurt so painful, he was eaten up with it.
Marcus had come to him, his eyes full of misery, wanting to explain, wanting absolution. Alastair had cut him off.
“There will be no discussion of what happened. Ever.”
Marcus had left Blackthorne Abbey shortly thereafter to join the army, and Alastair had turned to his daughters for solace. With them he could forget the pain for a little while. Regina and Rebecca were the one bright light in his otherwise bleak existence. He loved them with his whole being, and they returned his love in full measure. He had been able to bear the pain of his failed marriage and his brother’s betrayal because he’d had his daughters.
Until Penthia robbed him of even that joy.
She had begun to drink to excess not long after Marcus left Blackthorne Abbey. Alastair had stopped inviting company to the Abbey, because she embarrassed him and herself. He had thought she could do him no further harm, that she could not sink lower, until the night she came to the children’s nursery and found him holding one-year-old Regina in his arms, rocking her to sleep, while Rebecca lay in her crib nearby.
“You love those bloody twins more than you do your own wife,” she accused in a drunken slur.
“I loved you once, Penthia,” he replied.
“I never loved you!” she spat back. “I wanted to be a duchess. And I am. Duchess of Blackthorne. Hah! Duchess of some moldy old abbey. I hate it here! I hate you! And I hate those bloody twins!”
He did not know why she was so intent on hurting him, had not even realized he still could be hurt. “Go away, Penthia,” he said, putting Regina up over his shoulder and patting her back to quiet her agitation at her mother’s angry voice.
“Put that brat down, Alex, and attend to me,” Penthia demanded. “I am your wife.”
“You’re foxed, Penthia. Get yourself to bed.”
“I said get rid of that bloody brat!” She threw her empty crystal wineglass at him but missed, and the splintering glass ricocheted off the stone wall behind the rocker.
Regina let out a howl of pain.
Alastair lurched to his feet and felt his insides clench when he saw blood streaming from the child’s lip where a shard of glass had cut it.
His gray eyes glittered dangerously when he raised them to his wife. “Get out, Penthia. Before I put my hands around that lovely neck of yours and squeeze the life out of you.”
“The brat’s barely scratched!”
“A drop of my daughter’s blood means more to me than your whole miserable life.”
Penthia’s face flushed with rage. “No blood of yours runs through her.”
“What?”
“Regina is not your child,” she said in a voice laced with malice. “The twins are not yours.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said in a deadly voice.
She hesitated, her eyes narrowing, her features hardening before she said, “No? Then ask your brother.”
Alastair gave an agonized cry, as though he had been stabbed, and stared down at the wailing child in his arms. It was not possible that Regina was not his. He had not found Marcus with Penthia until after the twins were born. “You’re lying,” he said.
She smirked. “Am I? You’ll always wonder now. Are they mine? Or not? Look at their eyes, Alastair. Not gray like yours, but blue, like his. Because they’re your brother’s children.”
“Get out of my sight, Penthia. Leave now or I swear I will shut that lying mouth of yours forever.”
She lurched drunkenly for the door, shoved it open, and left the room.
Alastair daubed at the blood on Regina’s upper lip with a soft, lace-edged muslin handkerchief monogrammed with the letter B, for Blackthorne, until the flow stopped, and she had quieted in his arms. He settled back into the rocker and pulled her close and kissed her forehead. He laid his head back against the wooden rocker and felt the sting in his nose and the quiver in his chin. He gritted his teeth, but the moan escaped, squeezed his eyes shut against the threat of tears, but felt the hot wetness on his cheek as one spilled.
Through a blur of tears, he stared down at the drowsy child in his arms and realized the effects of the slow-working poison Penthia had administered.
This child is not flesh of my flesh. My blood does not run in her veins. My wife lay with my brother and created her. She is no part of me.
He stood and laid the child in the crib next to her sister. He could not kill the love inside him for the tiny beings. But his pride would no longer allow him to display it. How could he show love—for all to see—when these children were proof of his wife’s betrayal?
From that day forward, he had kept his distance from Regina and Rebecca. He had not stopped loving them. He had merely stopped wearing his heart on his sleeve. From that day forward, a drunken Penthia had delighted in telling anyone who would listen that the duke’s children were not his … they were his brother’s.
He had never confronted Marcus and demanded the truth. He had not wanted to know for sure. But he and his brother had become more and more estranged after Penthia’s accusation. And because he refused to deny his brother access to the children—his children—“Uncle Marcus” had a relationship with Regina and Rebecca that was far more loving than the one they shared with their “father.”
Recently, when they had been in London, the nine-year-old twins had stolen away to go sightseeing and vanished somewhere within the shadowed streets and crooked alleys. Alastair had admitted to himself, when he thought they might be lost to him forever, how foolish he had been. Even if they were not his flesh and blood, they would always be the Duke of Blackthorne’s daughters. And he loved them.
When the twins were found unharmed, he had surrendered his pride and held Regina and Rebecca and felt their small arms around his neck and realized he no longer wanted to keep his distance from them.
But his transformation from distant parent to proud papa had occurred only days before he left for Scotland. If he died at sea, their memories of him would more likely be of the stern and unloving father he had been for the past eight years than of the joyful and loving man he had been for the past nine days.
If I survive this storm, I will put the past behind me once and for all. He would be the sort of father he had always planned to be. And he would forgive his brother. If only the sea did not claim him first.
“Land ho!”
In the gray light of dawn, a rocky shore could be seen in the distance. Alastair grinned. He was going to survive. He was going to have a second chance at life.
“The mainmast is giving way!” a sailor shrieked.
A tremendous gust of wind had grabbed the sail and broken the mainmast in two as though it were a twig. The falling mast was headed straight for Alastair, and he dove out of the way as it crashed into the ship’s wheel.
There was no way to control the ship now. The wind and waves were driving them toward the rocks, where the ship would certainly be broken into pieces.
Above the howling wind he heard a man yell, “Git ’im, Danny!”
Alastair instinctively ducked, and the blow that would have brained him landed on his shoulder instead. He whirled to find himself surrounded by the three malingering sailors. “What’s this?” he shouted.
“Someone wants you dead,” one of the sailors yelled with a grin that displayed his toothless gums.
They attacked him all at once, and although Alastair gave a good account of himself, he had no chance, not with the wooden pin one of them was using to bang away at his head and sh
oulders. He felt the knot forming on his forehead, felt his eye swelling closed, felt his lip splitting and the blood pouring freely from his flattened nose. Once they had him pinned down on the deck, Gums said, “Let’s finish ’im ’ere.”
“We was told to throw ’im overboard and let ’im drown,” the one called Danny said. “And that’s wot we’re goin’ to do.”
“I’ll take those fine boots first,” Gums said, yanking at Alastair’s Hessians. “And that jacket.”
“Wot’s left for me?” Danny protested.
“Help yerself to that waistcoat with the silvery threads and his shirt and trousers,” Gums said.
“But the shirt’s all bloody, and them trousers too!”
“Wot do I get?” the third man asked.
“Those are fine stockings,” Gums said.
They stripped him to his smalls and tied his hands and bare feet, “Like a pig for roastin’,” Gums said with satisfaction.
“We’ll be lucky to outlive ’im,” Danny muttered, squinting up at the rain pounding down on them from the cloud-ridden sky.
“Let’s get it over with,” the third man said.
“Wait!” Alastair yelled over the wind. “Why are you doing this? Who wants me—” He felt a rush of terror as they picked him up and threw him over the side. A scream built in his throat as he started to fall, but the air exploded from his lungs in a grunting oof! when he hit the icy surface, and his mouth and nose filled with saltwater as the sea closed over his head.
Alastair experienced a moment of sheer panic before he realized the stupid ruffians had tied his hands in front of him. As he sank farther into the depths, he reached frantically for his feet to untie the knots.
But he had jerked reflexively when he landed, and the ropes had tightened in the water. He could not get free.
When his lungs seemed ready to burst, he broke the surface, gasping for air. A huge wave immediately closed over his head and twisted him back underwater.
Alastair forced himself not to fight the wave, and when it had gone, his body floated back to the surface, but much closer to shore. He had to get his hands and feet free, or he would be dashed against the rocks, where the wind and tide were inexorably taking him.
The Bodyguard Page 2