Awakening His Duchess

by

Katy Madison

Smashwords Edition

copyright © 2013 Karen L. King

cover by Kim Killion at HotDamnDesigns.com

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This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any
person living or dead is purely coincidental.

Chapter One

August 26, 1785

Port-au-Prince, Saint-Domingue, West Indies

So this was
what it was like to be dead.

All Beau
could do was listen and watch as the arrangements for his burial were made with
all haste. The wood of his open casket was hard under his back. He wanted to
tell them that he wasn’t Beau Devereux—or rather those were the least of his
names—but his mouth refused to move.

As the
conversation drifted over him, he realized a couple of men were trying to
persuade his tutor-turned-minder that the burial must be right away or Beau
would begin to stink in the tropical heat. Not a pleasant thought. He’d done a
lot of rotten things in his life, but actually rotting was more than he wanted
to contemplate.

His eyes
red-rimmed, Danvers leaned over the casket. “I have to take his body home. His
family would wish it.”

Beau was
rather surprised his man was upset enough to shed tears. Mostly the
long-suffering Danvers’ job had been to send home reports of Beau’s
transgressions and requests for money. His family, especially his father, would
be relieved to close the book on him.

Beau willed
his eyes to move, but they stared up, dry and unblinking. He tried to lift an
arm, wave his hand, twitch a finger so they’d know he was still breathing, but
his body didn’t respond. Was he still breathing?

Beau
concentrated everything he had on making his lungs draw in air and nothing
happened. God, was he truly dead?

“You don’t
understand. I must take him home,” Danvers pleaded. He looked down and
blanched. “It’s like he’s looking at me.”

Damn it,
Danvers, I am looking at you!

Yvette’s
father pulled Danvers away. “A storm is blowing in. It’ll be days before ships
can leave port. Better to bury him.”

Their
voices grew harder to hear, but Beau had bigger problems if he wasn’t
breathing. Corpses don’t breathe.

Lord
Beaumont William Arthur Trey Devereux Havendish fought to draw in air. He
couldn’t be dead. He was only nineteen.

For once he
hadn’t been taking any risks. No, he’d been eating a seed cake and drinking the
freshest coffee he’d ever tasted with the girl he’d spent the night with. She
was the chit he’d decided to spend the rest of his life with. He only waited
for her father to grant him an audience.

True, he’d
spent the night with more than one damsel and never troubled himself to offer
more than pecuniary compensation, but this one was different. He’d known it
from the first time he encountered her in the streets of Port-au-Prince and
followed her into an apothecary shop.

She’d tried
to ignore him, but Beau generally got what he wanted. And he’d wanted her, the
French beauty with sloe eyes and dark curls dancing about her delicate face.
From that first conversation underneath sprigs of dried herbs, she’d made him
feel whole, more whole than he’d ever felt before.

“Your
father won’t be disappointed by our marriage,” he’d told her.

“You don’t
understand,” she’d whispered. “I’m promised to a very rich and powerful man. He
won’t care what any ship captain says.”

Beau had
smiled. Even in this God-forsaken corner of the world, his family name would
change her father’s mind. His family’s holdings would dwarf any man’s she’d
been promised to. His family’s prestige and power would eliminate any
objections Yvette’s father might have. It wasn’t every day that a mere West
Indies plantation owner’s daughter married the son of a duke.

On the
other hand, his father would be furious. Beau wasn’t supposed to return from
his world tour with a foreign born bride. He hoped to trump his father’s
objections by presenting Yvette as his wedded and bedded wife.

“He hates
all things English,” she whispered.

“So did
you,” Beau reminded her.

She flashed
him an angry look. “I would have done better to trust my instincts and give you
a wide berth.
Mon Dieu,
if Papa knew...where I was last night.” She
shook her head.

Beau hadn’t
responded because he’d felt strange. His fingers and toes tingled. He lifted
the coffee to his lips. The cup fell from his hand.

Yvette
stared at him, her eyes huge in her face. “Beau?”

Then she’d
been gone, and the dark faces of the house slaves looked down on him as he lay
on the floor. He didn’t remember collapsing. The last thing he vaguely
remembered thinking was that he should stand, walk around to rid himself of the
strange prickles as if his entire body was falling asleep after he dropped the
coffee cup. But if he stood or tried to he had no recollection. Now he lay in
the casket they’d brought for him.

Candlelight
flickered around him. It had been morning, but now it was gloomy and dark.
Afternoon? Evening? Either way time was running out. Once they sealed him into
the casket, being dead or alive wouldn’t matter.

Beau
struggled to yell and then, as silence reigned, to scream. His muscles were
strangely loose and unresponsive.

Danvers
leaned in and lowered his eyelids.

The relief
of having his dried out eyes closed was short-lived. Beau struggled to raise
his lids again and managed to see through the dark fringe of his lashes. He
wanted to crow in triumph. He could see. Dead men don’t see. Not through their
eyes anyway.

Coins
landed on his lids, the weight of them cold and heavy. One of the slaves
muttered in a strange patois while a priest intoned last rites.

Damn,
although he’d attended the church to get time with Yvette, he wasn’t Catholic.
He wasn’t dead. He tried again to scream. A little squeak eked out, but
darkness closed in on him as the lid was lowered and the nails pounded into the
rim.

His heart
managed a single thump. He was alive!

With his
terror, his pulse should be racing. His flaccid muscles should be tight, but
being trapped inside a body that refused to cooperate was ten thousand times
worse than when his older brothers had locked him in a linen press and the
confined darkness had closed in on him.

I’m not
dead! I’m not dead! God, please don’t bury me alive!
But the words only rattled around in
his brain box until it exploded in pain. Bloody hell, he couldn’t be dead and
be in this much agony.

*~*~*

Beau
listened to the all too brief funeral while silently screaming. Desperately he
tried to rock side-to-side but could feel no difference in the pressure of the
wood against his back. Why wouldn’t his body respond?

His heart
beat faster and faster and he tried harder to yell.

Please
hear me.
In his
dark casket his squeaks were barely audible to his own ears. Outside the wind howled.
He could scarcely make out the solemn voices over the rushing sounds. How would
they hear him when he could only just make out his own anemic screams? Dear
God, this couldn’t be happening.

His lungs
ached with the effort of trying to shout, and his muscles began to tingle and
prick as if the blood was returning. Thuds hit his coffin. A spray of dirt
showered his face. He spit the loamy dirt out of his mouth as a new trickle
landed on him. Was the lid collapsing? Terror rolled through him in waves. God,
this was it. He was being buried alive.

Then his
little finger moved.

He
concentrated on his pinkie. It felt strange without the signet ring he’d worn
for years, the one he’d given to Yvette to seal their marriage. But he could
feel the material of his breeches. He gasped. Yes, he breathed. Oh, God, he
could breathe.

The thuds
of dirt grew muffled and the trickle of dirt slowed. He could barely make out
the strange patois of the workers. Except it sounded as if they were shouting
at each other about the rain, calling the storm a hurricane. One wanted to
leave. The other insisted they had to finish.

No!
Don’t finish. Don’t bury me alive.

He shouted,
“Help!” But what came out of his mouth sounded more like
hell.

No
response. He strained to hear. The thuds didn’t continue, but there was no
sound of dirt being scraped away. His neck tightened. He couldn’t wait for the
workers to help.

He lifted
his arm an inch. His hand thudded back down against the wood as if unwilling to
do more. Beau tried with his right hand, but it didn’t move, nor could he feel
the texture of anything he touched. It was as if his right hand was dead. Oh
God, please let sensation return to his hand.

The air
turned stale. He fought to calm his pounding heart and get his body to move. If
he could just make a noise so the workers would know he wasn’t dead.

Currying
his strength, he slid his left hand over his thigh then inched over his belly
and continued sliding his hand up until he touched his face. Brushing the dirt
away, he celebrated the return of sensation and control. He grabbed the coins
holding his eyelids down and opened his eyes to a blackness as thick as peat
moss.

He
swallowed hard. Of course it was dark. He was in a coffin underground. He
hadn’t lost his sight, now, surely. In any case he wouldn’t know until he was
above ground.

Pocketing
the coins, he contemplated how to get out of his grave.

Water
dripped on his face. Dear Lord, he had to get out of here. He had to get back
to his new wife. He reached up to find a cross cut into the lid. Slime leaked
through. He couldn’t be that deep. He pushed against the lid, but it didn’t
budge.

Time was
running out. The air wouldn’t sustain life much longer. Pulling up his legs, he
kicked, but the sting in his left foot told him only his left leg had
responded. So he was only half dead now, whereas earlier he’d been completely
lifeless. Desperation infused his working limbs with energy, but he tried to
hang on to his sanity enough to measure the effectiveness of his efforts.
Panicked thrashing would only hasten his death. He labored to breathe, but the
air moving in and out of his chest offered no sustenance.

Placing his
left foot against the wood, Beau drew it back and kicked with everything he
had. The wood moved. He tried again. With a ripping splintering the wood gave
and mud poured into the coffin.

Dear
God, don’t let me drown in mud.

Beau
figured God wouldn’t have much use for him since Beau didn’t bother with a
whole lot of religion. But he couldn’t stop the appeals running through his head.
I’ll never sin again. I’ll stop wasting my life. I’ll go home and make my
father proud.

How in the
hell could he promise to do something he’d never figured out how to do before?

The mud
slurried around him. His promises wouldn’t matter. In spite of everything his
life would end now on this God forsaken island, leagues away from his home,
separated from his family and where no one knew his real name.

Then the
flow of mud stopped, and he smelled rain. Fresh, clean rain with the
unmistakable freshness of renewal.

Invigorated,
he struggled to wrench the lid out of the way. With more will to live than
finesse he clawed and shoved his way out of his grave.