The Bodyguard Read Free Page A

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 Hessiansechoing 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