Awakening His Duchess (7 page)

His lip curled as if she’d gone off like week-old milk.

“I gave you no reason to doubt me. I told you I would return
to speak with your father, and I did.” His words were venomous. He hated her.

“You told me you had no property or wealth of your own. What
was I to think?” Her hopes of a joyful reunion shattered into a dark depth that
was far more familiar to her, but she fought the darkness of her emotions as
she tried to make sense of what had happened. Had her mother summoned the vodou
priest? Or her father? Oh God, this was a thousand times worse than what she thought
had happened. All this time she’d thought he was dead of a freak accident.

He arched an eyebrow.

A protest bubbled inside her. He’d crossed someone else who
summoned the vodou bokor. He’d made an enemy by gambling or seducing another
woman—but the truth was those last few weeks he’d spent most of his time with
her. The weight of a thousand stones pressed her down. His accusation belatedly
sank in and she hissed, “This isn’t my fault.”

But there were a thousand moments she could have called back
and made a different decision and this wouldn’t have happened. She never should
have agreed to sneak out with him late that night. She should have insisted he
approach her father. Or never returned home.

He leaned toward her, his face tight with contempt. “I told
you I would take care of you.”

Take care of her, yes, but had he meant to marry her? She’d
wanted to believe him. He’d told her he owned nothing. What was a girl to do?
If he had told her who he was—

The
duke caught her wrist and held her. “You will have to acknowledge him as your
husband.”

“I’ve never denied him.” At least not here. Perhaps the duke
had seen the beginning of her defection on her face. Not that she ever cared
for herself, but for Etienne.

“The marriage wasn’t legal.” Beau glared. “Neither of us was
of age. I won’t stay here bound to a woman who did her best to rid the world of
my presence.”

Yvette’s
face heated. Where was the Beau who loved her? Had he been only an illusion of
her youth? Her body felt strange as if it were not hers to command. “If the
plantation work didn’t kill you, I don’t imagine marriage to me would.”

A look of disgust crossed his face. “The sugarcane wasn’t
going to kill me. I’m stubborn like that.”

Like his father, she realized. Her thoughts spun and wove
into patterns that made too much sense. More sense than a healthy nineteen year
old dropping dead the morning after their clandestine marriage. Saints above,
he
should
hate her. He had been turned into a slave because of her. The
conditions in Saint-Domingue were beyond inhumane. Yet Beau had survived and
was here now. “Then I am glad you survived.”

“Didn’t want my death on your conscience?”

His words were biting and Yvette wanted to curl up in a ball
and hide away.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. How many times she’d
wished for one last time with Beau, to hold him and tell him she loved him
instead of being cross about the trick he’d played on her. And had it even been
a trick? His father had worked like a demon to insure that their marriage
stood. She’d convinced herself that he’d truly meant to marry her, but with his
protestations, the hope had been gutted like a fish.

“The solicitors assure me that if neither guardian objected
at the time, then the marriage stands.” The duke leaned forward, his face
growing red. “But I cannot believe you would perpetuate such a deception to
seduce a young woman of good standing. What kind of scoundrel does such a
thing?” His upper lip blanched and rose unevenly. “Certainly no son of mine
would set up a mock marriage for such a purpose.”

She wanted to clap her hands over her ears, shut her eyes,
and stop this.

Beau’s shoulders slumped and bright spots of color fought to
show through his tan. “You wouldn’t say so if you knew what a lying schemer she
was.”

A shriek made all of them swivel toward the door.

“Maman!” shouted Etienne. “Grandpere, you must get out.”

Yvette rushed to the door and threw it back. Her son
clattered down the stairs, his shoes clacking on the wood.

“The slaves are in the house,” shouted Etienne. He pulled a
chair in front of the fireplace and scrambled up, reaching for a cudgel. “We
have to flee.”

“Etienne, no. There are no slaves here.” Yvette rushed
toward him. “There is no danger.”

“Just former slaves,” said Beau.

She swiveled to see him leaning against the doorway, his
arms folded. For a second he resembled the boy she had fallen in love with. Her
heart fluttered. God, no, she didn't want to love again.

His glare burned through her.
Non,
there was no
danger of love. The sunburnt harshness of his face and the hardness of his body
reminded her he had changed. He no longer wanted her. She raised her chin and
turned to retrieve Etienne.

She lifted her son off the chair—a priceless antique he
shouldn’t be standing on—before he managed to free the weapon from its mooring.

“Excusez-moi,”
said a big dark man following her son
down the stairs.

Her heart pounding, she took a step back. Stifling the urge
to run, she tightened her hold on Etienne. The slave revolt was never far from
her mind. The smell of fear and fire, slaves she had known all her life bearing
demonic expressions and swinging machetes into white flesh. The blood on the
ceilings, spattered on the wall, slippery underfoot. Swallowing hard, she
fought to hold her ground as a scream lodged in the back of her throat.

“I was trying to find my friend,” the black man’s smooth
voice sounded cultured, a hint of a French accent to his English.

“See.” Etienne pointed. His little body vibrated with energy.
Her son, all four stone of him, would fight the man if she let him go.

“I am here, Mazi,” said Beau.

The black man was with Beau. Relief soaked through her as if
she were a washrag needing to be wrung out.

“He will not hurt you,” she murmured to Etienne. The words
were to reassure herself as much as her son—Beau’s son. The fear would never be
entirely tamped down, but there was no reason for slaves to revolt here. There
weren’t any slaves to revolt.

The duke had wheeled to the doorway. “Is this your servant?”

“This is Mazi. My friend.” Beau’s brow lowered. “And who is
this boy?”

Yvette would have wished for a thousand different ways of
introducing Etienne to his father, preparing him—preparing them both. Slowly
she swiveled and turned her squirming child to face the older image of himself.

Beau stiffened, his eyes widening.

She set her son on the ground. “Etienne,” she whispered in
his ear. “This is your papa.”

Her son shoved her away. “No! My papa is dead!”

Beau sneered, but he couldn’t seem to follow through with
the expression. The harshness fall away leaving his eyes wide, his eyebrows
drawn upwards. Her chest felt as if it would crack open. This was not how the
two of them should have met.

“He looks like you,” he accused, seemingly unable to tear his
eyes away. Every inch of him was taut and he no longer leaned against the
doorframe.

“Only in the shape of his eyes, the color...” She shrugged.
Beau would see for himself.

His right leg buckled, and Yvette hurtled back in time to
the horror of the moment he’d fallen in front of her in Saint-Domingue. She
shrieked and stepped forward, but the big black man moved faster than she would
have thought possible.

Beau felt as if he’d fallen from the top of a palm tree and
coconuts had rained down on top of his head. Mazi gripped him, steadying him,
as he’d done a hundred times before. Ashamed of the weakness in his right side,
Beau swam free. “But it was only one ti-night.”

Yvette’s lips tightened. “I am blessed with fecundity like
that.”

Mazi let go but stood near, tall and straight but silent. He
should be told not to hold and offer support to Beau or others would think he
was a servant—or worse—his slave. But that was nothing but a tiny flair of a
thought, easily snuffed out.

“Now you see why you must acknowledge the marriage,” said
the duke in a subdued tone.

No. Beau didn’t see. He could marry a soft English rose,
beget a few sons—if he lived long enough—and deny the child who stared back at
him with hostility in his blue eyes.

Blue eyes like his, brown hair like his had been before the
sun streaked it motley colors. A nose and chin that had been his in his youth.
The boy’s fists balled at his sides and his chest heaved.

He had a son. An angry son, but a son nonetheless.

The boy lifted an arm and pointed at Mazi. “You go!”

An unmannerly whelp, but not afraid to challenge a man
thrice his size.

“His father was a king. Show him proper respect,” Beau said
before he could soften his tone.

The child shifted his glare to cut through Beau. Never had
he wanted to repeat the patterns he and his father had fallen into. He wanted
to dandle his children on his knee, to hug them without awkwardness, and to
laugh and converse with them. Already his relationship with his son was
strained, and he didn’t even know the boy’s name.

“Come, Etienne, it is time to ready you for bed,” said
Yvette in a soothing tone.

“Etienne? You named my son Etienne?” The objection shot out
of his mouth like the ocean hitting rocks and casting up a violent spray. “You
couldn’t name him a good English name like George or Arthur?”
Or Beau.

The corners of Yvette’s mouth turned down. “I had no idea he
would one day be an
Anglais
duke.” Her dark eyes flashed at him. No
doubt a reminder that he had never revealed his identity to her was in that
glare.

Hadn’t she known who he was after he was buried? “Didn’t
Danvers tell you who I was?”

“I did not see Danvers again.” She shook her head. “Not
until I came here. I only learned after I came to England. If the revolt hadn’t
destroyed my home, I never would have known.”

The duke wheeled close. “He’s a good lad, for all he’s
saddled with an unfortunate French name. Besides his friends will all call him
by his title.”

True. The family always referred to his oldest brother by a
nickname derived from his honorary title. A title that was now his. If he would
become the duke, she would be a duchess, assuming he outlived his father.
Outliving anyone was questionable these days. But his mind spun. He had a son,
conceived on that makeshift wedding night. At that moment he’d had every
intention of following through—marrying her again if it proved necessary. The
boy would be his heir if all had gone as Beau planned.

But he would only have a title if Beau accepted the marriage
as legitimate. He could deny the marriage, deny Yvette and make his son a
bastard.

Mazi touched Beau’s arm, breaking the spell that had him
staring at the boy, caught between acknowledging him as legitimate, which also
meant Yvette would be his wife, or relegating the boy—Etienne—to being an
irrelevant by-blow. The choice threatened to rend him in two.

He had a son. The thought spun from an amorphous form into a
solid rock of fact. He had a son.

“I should go,” said Mazi.

“No. You and I will raise a glass. A man should celebrate
the birth of his son.” So he was over eight years late. He looked down at the
feeble man in the Bath chair. “You realize if I claim him, he will be the only
child I will ever have.”

Yvette gasped. The implication was not lost on her.

Legitimate child that was—unless by some miracle he outlived
Yvette, because he would not take that viper to his bosom ever again. But a man
of his station could have a mistress. Hell, it was almost de rigueur. He would
never accept Yvette as his wife in anything more than name, and only because
she was the mother of his son would he even consider her in that light.

“Don’t be hasty,” said the duke.

He didn’t have to be hasty, but by claiming the marriage was
real he would make this boy he didn’t know his heir. And he would be tied for
eternity to Yvette. “She is all but dead to me, as she did her best to see me
dead.”

As much as Beau wanted to please his father, accept the boy
as his own, he would not have her as his wife. If he became the duke, he would
banish her from his sight, but the house was still his father’s so he had no
say if she lived here now. But the son, Beau wasn’t certain about. Nothing was
the boy’s fault and acknowledging him was the right thing to do.

Beau stepped forward and held out his hand. “First, I will
take my son to his room and bid him good night. Tomorrow we will discuss the
ramifications of whatever decision I will make when I have had time to consider
what I will acknowledge...or not.”

“Beau,” said his father on a low warning note. “You cannot
deny the marriage. It is done.”

Beau looked down at his father. “I will not be rash. I am
not the callow youth who left here a decade ago. I will be considered and
thoughtful in my decision on how to go forward, and
I
would know that
this boy is worthy of the Havendish name.”

“He is a good lad, studious and serious. He will make a fine
duke one day.”

Every word of his father’s grated like the sound of a
machete grinding against a whetstone. Beau had never been serious with his
studies. What was the point? No matter how poorly he did in school, his degree
would be conferred on him by virtue of his father being a duke. No, Beau had
rather enjoy himself than spend useless hours studying, and it wasn’t as if
he’d ever been expected to take over the dukedom—but everything was different
now.

“Beau—” began his father.

“You know him. I do not. You should be glad that I am not so
rash as when I left.”

The duke opened his mouth and then closed it. He opened it
again. “You cannot leave their status in limbo—”