Awakening His Duchess (28 page)

Still it was as if he wasn’t so important anymore. No one
was checking every five minutes to be certain he hadn’t fallen and hit his head
or whatever trouble they thought he might get up to. Ever since he could
remember he’d been watched over like he was the goose that laid the golden
eggs.

The freedom was fun but a little scary. He felt a little
like he used to when they’d jump off cliffs into the water back in
Saint-Domingue.

Slinking around to the back of the fountain he carefully
watched the house. Not seeing anyone, he slipped off his shoes and stockings,
carefully stuffing them in his shoes. Sitting on the edge of the fountain he
rolled up his breeches. Even if he got them wet, there was time for them to
dry.

Maman always said he must be considerate of the servants. So
he was being good, even as he knew he wasn’t supposed to wade in the fountain.
And none of his cousins were here to tattle on him.

He slid his feet over the edge and the cool water lapped at
his toes. It wasn’t so very deep. Two feet, maybe more at the center. Nothing
like the ocean.

Scanning the back of the house one last time and seeing no
one, he slid into the cool water. The stones under his feet were slick. The
water lapped at his thighs, and he held up his breeches but they were still
getting wet around the rolled bottoms.

He took a careful step, disturbing the flat water and
watching the ripples move away, imagining he was a great sea monster disturbing
the calm of the deep ocean.

The water pushed against him and a memory of splashing in
the ocean surf overwhelmed him. That day had been hot and the water was so
deliciously cool as the sand squiggled between his toes.

“Qu'est-ce que tu fais,
Etienne?”

The question in French spun him back through time as if he
really were on that beach in Saint-Domingue, although the language did not come
as easily as it had when he was younger. Etienne whirled. “What?”

He’d been thinking in English for so long that it took him a
minute to remember the meaning. He’d been asked what he was doing, and he
didn’t want to be in trouble. His mind spun with explanations. “I’m getting
my—”

The man who asked the question stood with a low-pulled hat,
but Etienne remembered the voice, the stance. Recognition flowed through him
like a cold drink. The same but not the same.

“Mon pere?”
His voice came out all squeaky and high.

The man smiled, but only half his face moved. He raised a
gloved hand covering the scarred side. “
Oui.”
He held out his other
hand. “Have you not missed your pere?
”

Etienne’s thoughts swirled and his throat tightened. The
cold of the water seeped under his skin and the back of his neck felt funny.
“You’re dead.”

“Non.
I live.”

“Maman said you were dead.” Etienne took a step backwards
and rolled on the stone he’d been intent on retrieving. The next thing he knew
he was sitting in the fountain and the water was slopping over the edges.

“Do not fall, silly boy. I am not dead. I am merely badly
hurt. You see me get hurt, no?”

Etienne nodded his head, but his blood was pumping hard.
He’d never be able to conceal his transgression now and with his pere smiling
that odd lopsided smile a cold fear tightened his bones.

“Come take my hand that you may know I am flesh and blood,
not a ghost.”

Then there was heat over the coldness of a fear that Etienne
didn’t understand. “I’m tired of people lying to me about who is dead!”

“Etienne, do not raise your voice,” said the man with his
pere’s bisected face. Then there was a smile, but unlike with his English papa,
the smile didn’t touch his pere’s eyes. “Are you not happy to know I survived?
Nothing makes me happier than to learn you lived.” His voice dropped to a
whisper, but in the shadow of the hat his eyes never wavered from Etienne’s face.
“I thought I had lost you. I think my life will be very bad without you.”

Etienne’s fingers closed around the rock and for a second he
contemplated throwing it at his pere, but then a memory of standing near as his
French father raised a whip to a slave made him grip the rock tight. The sun
had been harsh, the slave’s skin dark as night until the whip split it open and
then it parted first white then red and then the whip landed again and a spray
of sweat and blood droplets arched into the air. The slave had cried out, but
Pere’s eyes had lit in a way that sucked the heat from the air.

“I came as soon as I learned where you are, but your maman
is married again and I do not know if she wishes to see me. I am not so pretty now.
I wait until you are alone. I have missed you, my son.”

The cool water surrounded him and gave him a sense of
protection. But Etienne didn’t understand why he was afraid. His pere had
always treated him as if he was important, yet he never liked to disagree with
him. Better not to. “I have an English papa now,” he said in a small voice.

“Yes, you do,” agreed his pere easily. “You always did, but
this we do not tell a little child. We wait until you are older, but was your
English papa not really dead?”

Etienne shook his head.

Pere sat on the stone around the fountain. “Do you remember
the swims we had?”

Etienne nodded.

“They were good times, no? Your brother and I would toss you
back and forth like a ball.”

Etienne remembered squealing in laughter as he flew through
the air. But that brother was dead. Even though Maman had covered his eyes,
he’d seen below her fingers that horrible night. He nodded.

“Come out of the water, my son. It is too cool here to
swim.” He sat on the stone edge and patted beside him. “But we will share
recollections of the good times before the bloodshed and fires destroyed
everything.”

Etienne sloshed up and slowly moved toward the edge.

His pere leaned over and lifted him out of the fountain. “We
must get you dry, no?” He removed his overcoat and used it to rub over
Etienne’s wet clothes, all the while keeping up a steady stream of talk.
“Remember the bananas. We used to love bananas, yes?”

Slowly his pere’s gentle prodding of memories made the fear
and anger fade. So when Pere asked to meet again, Etienne readily agreed.

 
*~*~*

After four days of going over the books he wanted to scream.
The duke seemed enamored with every last decimal point and determined to
explain things in his own set order rather than answering Beau’s random questions
as they came to them. By the time the duke was ready to answer, Beau had
already decided how he would deal with different situations. But the duke took
his suggestions of possible solutions as insult to the way things were done.
Shouts from outside gave Beau an excuse to leave the tension-filled study.

“I should see what the commotion is about,” said Beau.

His father opened his mouth as if to say
let the servants handle it
, but then
shooed him out.

Beau met Mazi in the hall as he headed for the front door.

One of the tenant farmer boys was yelling as he ran down the
drive. “Help! Lady Beaumont! Men. We. Need. Help!”

Beau raced down the steps as a couple of footmen appeared.
Finley behind them barked, “What is the meaning of this shouting?”

Beau held up his hand to the butler. “Obviously the lad is
in distress.” He turned to the boy. “What is wrong?”

The teenager doffed his cap and the sun revealed the glitter
of tears in his eyes. “Begging your pardon, my lord. The old elm tree fell on
my little brother.”

The lad’s knees buckled and Mazi steadied him. “We need help
and your lady wife. He’s hurt awful bad.”

“Mazi, you—”

“I have it.” His friend nodded before Beau finished his
thought. With the ease of having worked with each other for years, Mazi had already
inferred the direction of Beau’s thoughts.

Beau turned to the footmen. “You two go with the lad now.”

He bent down in front of the boy and gentled his voice.
“We’ll send all the men and equipment we can. Take these men and I’ll send
more.” Mazi and the footmen would be able to run, but Beau couldn’t. Not for
any distance anyway. He turned back toward Finley. “Send all the able bodied
menservants.”

“Shall I fetch Lady Arrington?” asked Finley.

“Please,” begged the boy.

“Getting the child out is the first priority.” Beau pointed
across the park to where the gap in the horizon looked odd, like a tooth was
suddenly missing. “And send for the nearest doctor.”

“But he needs Lady Beaumont,” protested the boy.

“They’re used to sending for your wife, my lord,” said
Finley.

“Get her then,” Beau growled. He made a shooing motion with
his hand toward the boy. “Go. Mazi will catch up to you. I’ll be along with
supplies.”

In low voices he and Mazi conferred as they hurried toward
the stableyard.

“Gather firewood, bricks, and rocks or whatever we can use
to stabilize the weight. We don’t need a second accident when we move the
tree.”

Mazi nodded and took off down the drive.

“Mr. Gates,” Beau yelled. As soon as the stable master
appeared, Beau issued commands. “Tell all the grooms and gardeners to fetch
axes, ropes, saws.” Likely they would need some sort of lever to get the tree
off its pinned victim. “I want the mounting block and any long sturdy poles
brought.”

A cart was brought out and hitched while Beau and others
tossed supplies in the bed.

“Beau.” Yvette’s voice cut through his worries like a hot
knife through butter, melting something deep in his gut. But her voice wavered
with uncertainty.

He turned and found her striding toward him, her forehead
pinched and that black case hanging from her hand. He reached out for it.

She started as he took it from her. “Finley said it was one
of the Fowler boys. Thomas or John?”

He didn’t know the boys’ names until she spoke. He hadn’t
been here to learn every tenant and dependant’s name. But he had known a Fowler
boy who was the same age as Arri. Donald Fowler had been persuaded to play
cricket with them on more than one occasion. Were these his children? “The
younger I gather.”

She winced then looked down. For a second she didn’t look as
if she knew what to do with her arms, then she folded them across her chest as
if hugging herself.

As her husband, he should console her. He could just wrap an
arm around her narrow shoulders. It wouldn’t mean anything more than duty, but
as he made the step toward her he knew he wouldn’t be able to touch her so
intimately without feeling the bond too. He didn’t want that.

“We should not delay.” She took a couple of steps toward the
drive. “I’ll need my case.”

The moment slipped away. A sigh of relief escaped him, or at
least he told himself it was relief—not disappointment. He pitched her rigid
satchel in the front. “Wait for the cart.”

“But I should go now.” Yvette rolled her shoulder. “His mother...”
Her eyes tightened. “She has a new baby.”

“The cart will be faster.” He turned and continued toward
the stables. He walked across the cobbles, issuing orders to the men. Had
Yvette really taken such an interest in the workers’ lives? Could she have really
cared about the slaves back in Saint-Domingue?

Beau cast about looking for anything else that might be
useful. How could he even be thinking about Yvette when some poor boy was
pinned under the old elm tree? “Send all the stable lads. I will send them back
as soon as they’re no longer needed.”

The loaded down cart rattled across the cobbled yard. Beau
swung up to the seat to drive. Yvette climbed in beside him.

He snapped the reins, leading the horse into a quick trot.
He wanted to go faster but if anything fell out of the back, time would be
lost. Not to mention he wasn’t sure how well he could control the horse with
only one good hand on the reins. Yvette clutched at the bench seat, her
knuckles white and her face drained of color. Her lips moved and he realized
she was praying in French to St. Nicholas the patron saint of children.

“It’ll be all right,” he muttered gruffly.

She cast him an incredulous look. He reached to cover her
hand with his and she snatched her hand away.
“Non.”

“He might just be trapped,” Beau said. With any luck the
branches would have kept the trunk from fully landing on the boy. But his
ordering all the able-bodied servants to help belied his belief in that
thought.

“I have seen this before.” Her voice was very quiet. “Back home.
A man was crushed under a hogshead of rum. He was talking until the weight was
lifted off him.” She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “He did not
last ten minutes. If it is like that, there will be nothing I can do.”

“Regardless of the outcome, your concern will be
appreciated,” he said stiffly.

Ahead of them the long length of the massive tree lay
sideways across the lane. Men were scurrying back and forth piling firewood
nearby while several attacked the trunk with hatchets and handsaws. It would
take hours to get through a trunk that large without two-man saws.

Damn, the tree should have been chopped down before it fell.
He’d seen it was half dead when he arrived, but he’d gone off on some crazy
poetical imagining that the tree would heal. As the future duke he should have
realized he needed to take care of these things. He should have paid more
attention to Arri’s complaints about all the mind numbingly boring duties he
had to watch their father perform.

There was a reason for the mundane tasks. Things fell into
disrepair. People could get hurt if things weren’t done.

He scanned the leaves looking for the child. The boy was
pinned at the hips, and his legs and feet couldn’t be seen. A smallish branch near
him had been sawed away. A crying woman knelt beside the pale boy. This was
bad. Beau swallowed hard.