Awakening His Duchess (8 page)

“I have been neither dead nor alive for near a decade. A few
days for them will matter not.” Beau shifted his attention to the boy Yvette
stood behind, her hands on his shoulders.

Etienne stared at his outstretched hand but refused to be
drawn back or move forward. Then Yvette leaned down and whispered in the boy’s
ear. “You must go with your papa.”

The boy’s nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed.

“Come, Etienne, you should at least get to know me before
you decide if you hate me,” said Beau.

Beau waited to see if the child would take his hand.

Yvette stroked her son’s hair.

Even that soothing maternal gesture reminded him that she
had cheated him out of the first eight years of his son’s life.

She whispered to her son to obey and be a perfect gentleman.
Of course the scheming bitch would do anything to keep her place in the world,
even toss her own son to the lions.

Not that Beau was a lion or would feed on his young.

The boy’s lips tightened. He marched past Beau’s extended
hand and reached for the newel post. And Beau added being cheated of knowing
his son as another mark against Yvette, as if she didn’t already have enough to
damn her to hell.

*~*~*

“You are not my father,” Etienne said to the man who’d
followed him to the nursery floor, into his room, waited while his nurse helped
him into his nightclothes, and now stood fingering the spines of his books.
Etienne wanted him to remove that rough finger from his things.

“If I am not your papa then you have no right to be here,”
said the man going on to finger the tin soldiers lined up on the shelves. “And
these are not your things.” He turned around and his eyes went soft.

Maman always said he had his papa’s eyes. Etienne jerked his
head toward the dusky window.

“But I am your father, Etienne. Of that much we can be
certain. You remind me of myself at your age.”

Maman and Grandpere said he looked like his papa, but this
man was burnt like a farm worker and had an African for a friend. He was
nothing like the man standing there. This man couldn’t be his father. His
father was dead. “A slave cut
mon pere
with his machete.”

The man went still. “I am sorry to hear that.”

His voice was kind and Etienne didn’t want him being kind.
“I hate it here. I want to go back home. I want to eat bananas.”

The corners of the man’s mouth lifted. “I shall miss the
freshness of the coffee, but you do not want to go back to Saint-Domingue.” The
smile faded the way the sun will shine through a hole in a rain cloud and then
retreat behind a wash of gray. “It is not the same place.”

“There is coffee here,” protested Etienne. He’d yet to see a
banana or a coconut or a sweet slice of sugarcane.

The man picked up a cricket ball and tossed it. “So your
mother was married to another man?” There was the kind of carefulness to his
question that made Etienne want to pick his way around cautiously.

“
Mon pere,
Henri Petit. I am Etienne Petit.”

The man didn’t correct him the way Grandpere would or even
Maman would.

The ball went up and down a few times. The slap of the
leather against the man’s palm grew louder as the ball went higher and higher
with each toss. “Perhaps we shall see if a banana tree will grow in the
conservatory.”

Etienne popped off his bed and snatched the ball when the
man tossed it in the air again. “Leave my ball alone.”

The man’s mouth quirked up. “Do you play often?”

Etienne shrugged. He hit the ball with the bat, he ran the
bases, he threw the ball, but there wasn’t anyone to play with, let alone a
team to challenge.

The man sat down on Etienne’s bed, depressing the mattress
far deeper than Etienne ever managed. “I used to be quite good at cricket. Had
to be to hold my own with my brothers, but then I used to sneak off from our
tutor and practice hitting—not that you should ditch your lessons, but I could
teach you a few things.”

“I don’t like cricket.” Etienne put the ball back with the
bat. He would never run away from his lessons. It would upset his mother too
much.

“What do you like?” the man asked.

Palm trees swaying in the wind, the cane fields burning late
in the night, and snow. Only one of those things could be found in England and
not at home. Etienne shrugged.

“Tell me of your life in Saint-Domingue.”

“Maman doesn’t like me to speak of it.”

“Not even of the time before the revolution?”

“Revolt,” corrected Etienne.

The man’s mouth tightened, but he didn’t correct Etienne’s
description. Danvers would say a revolt turned into a revolution when it was
successful.

Instead the man picked up a book and opened it. “Would you
like me to read to you?”

“I can read for myself. I am not a baby.”

The man closed the book softly and ran his palm across the
cover. “I know. I am sorry I have missed so much of your life. I don’t know
much about being a father, but I’d like to try.”

Etienne had heard his mother gasp, and he’d seen the harsh
way this man looked at her.

“You are not my father. My father loved my mother very much.
And you hate my grandpere, and you hate my mother, and you hate me.”

Chapter Five

“I don’t hate you,” Beau said softly to his son. He let the
other charges stand. What he felt for his father, he wouldn’t describe as hate,
but definitely he hated Yvette for everything she’d done to him. “I don’t know
you.”

“You hate my name.” Etienne thrust a belligerent lower lip
forward.

“It is an unfortunate name for an Englishman when we are at
war with France.” Beau regretted his dismayed outburst especially since it had
occurred in front of Etienne.

“I am French.”

“You are only half-French, Etienne.” Beau sighed. The last
thing he wanted was to end this maddening day in an argument with his son. As a
young man, Beau had been a sought after companion in school. His easy ways
seemed foreign to him now, but he had to figure out a way to get through to
this child of his. He hated the strain of his own paternal bond, and he’d be
damned if he went to his grave robbed of a closer connection with his only son.

Etienne stared back at him, his little face stoic in
distrust—yet so much a mirror to Beau’s own features at a younger age, touching
a part of him that was proud and awed that he had fathered this boy. Except
that Yvette’s tilted eyes were unfortunately stamped on his features too. Had
she poisoned the well against him? “What have you been told about me?”

“They said you were dead.” Etienne’s narrow shoulders were
hunched, yet he vibrated with energy.

Beau rose from the bed because his son didn’t seem inclined
to come near while he sat on it. More than anything he wanted to grill the boy
and learn every detail of his life, everything he had missed. Forcing the issue
too soon was not the way to succeed.

Instead Beau moved to the doorway and leaned against the
frame. “I will leave you so you might rest. But, Etienne, finding you was the
best thing about coming home.”

Etienne cast such a look of doubt in his direction, Beau
wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t risk alienating his son.

“Tomorrow morning before you must be in the schoolroom I
will arrange for us to take a couple of horses out for a bit of exercise.”

“I’m not allowed to ride a horse.”

Beau’s head jerked around. “What?” The boy was eight. He
should be riding horses. All English gentlemen rode. Beau didn’t remember a
time when he hadn’t known how to ride. “Do you have a pony then?”

For a second Etienne looked eager. He pressed his mouth
closed, lowered his chin, shook his head, then turned away.

Rustling outside the door alerted him to another’s presence.
Beau would have suspected a nursery maid loitered in the passageway, except the
sudden tension in his spine signaled Yvette. She didn’t trust him alone with
his own child. “Would you like to ride?”

“Grandpere doesn’t want me to. He says I can take carriages
wherever I go.”

Had his father turned soft in his old age? Beau and his
brothers rode the minute they were out of leading strings. Englishmen rode and
the ability to sit a horse well was a mark of breeding. Not that Beau gave a
fig for bloodlines, but Etienne would have to fit into society one day. “You
need to know how to ride. I will teach you. And then you will have a choice
between taking carriages or riding.”

“But Maman—”

“This is not a thing to be decided by women and old men. I
will take care of their objections.” Perhaps sooner than later. Grabbing the
door handle, Beau glanced to the passageway where Yvette hovered, her lips
pursed tight and her arms folded.

“I need to speak with you,” said Yvette. “Alone.”

Her voice grated like fingernails on a slate. Beau tensed.
He wanted her out of his sight, out of his hearing, out of his life.

His son climbed into his bed and pulled the covers to his
chin. Beau was filled with the longing to teach the boy everything he knew, to
hold him close yet give him the strength and courage to grow into his own man.
The idea of relegating the child to the status of a bastard or, worse, the son
of French colonialists while their countries were at war stabbed at Beau. If
acknowledging the boy meant Yvette was his wife, he would endure it, but he’d
never, ever forgive her.

*~*~*

Beau walked past her as if she weren’t there. That he could just
ignore her pricked at her. He might hate her for what had happened, but he
wasn’t going to ignore her when it came to her son. Their son.

She scurried after him. “Beau.”

Twenty feet down the narrow corridor he stopped but didn’t
turn. Looking as if it might rip any second, the linen of his shirt strained
against his shoulders. “What?” he snarled.

She dragged her eyes away from the changes to his body.
Changes that fascinated her. She’d thought him pretty before, but now he was
all man, strong, broad shouldered, and scary. And he was going to have Etienne
do risky things.

“This riding, it is dangerous, no?” she hated that her
accent suddenly got thick, as it tended to do when she was upset.

“No.” He resumed walking down the corridor, but there was a
stiffness in the way he carried himself and a tiny hitch to his gait.

He used to have such a smooth loose-limbed walk. She might
miss that. In Port-au-Prince she’d loved to stare after him when he walked away
from her. But she always knew it was with reluctance he left her. Now it was as
if he couldn’t wait to put distance between them.

Gathering her skirts in her fists, she trotted after him.
“Beau, your brother was killed by a horse. Your papa says it is dangerous. I
don’t wish Etienne to be put at risk.”

“All Englishmen ride,” said Beau, not stopping.

She grabbed his arm. The heat of his skin seared her and
fire seemed to shoot through veins rusty with disuse.
Mon Dieu,
was she
still so enamored of him she could not control her urges? And she didn’t,
couldn’t, want him.

He swirled around and yanked away from her. “Don’t touch
me.”

She pulled her hand back, startled by the churning deep
inside her. What was wrong with her? She didn’t want another child, didn’t want
to have relations with a man who didn’t love her, didn’t want to be a wife
again. Her life was all about what was best for Etienne. That was all that
mattered.

He reached out and put his hand against a table.

“You cannot make Etienne do such a dangerous thing.” She
tried to sound reasonable as he glared at her. Men lived their entire lives in
Saint-Domingue and never rode on the back of a horse. There were too few of
them to be turned into pleasure animals. Besides the animals here in England
were massive and far more dangerous. “This riding horses. There is no need.”

“There is every need.” Beau leaned his hip against the side
table and folded his arms across his chest. “With a name like Etienne he will
already be picked upon and if he sits a horse like a sack of rocks as Mazi
does, he will have a hard time at school.”

School?
“He has no need for school,” she blurted. Did
he mean to rip her son away from her by any means possible? “He will have the
best tutors here.”

Beau’s head tilted and his eyes narrowed. His beautiful
eyes—no matter how much his body had changed she would have known his eyes
anywhere. God, why hadn’t she asked more questions about the white slave? Her
husband would have made certain he was freed—unless he already knew it was
Beau. She put a hand to her head. Had Henri known? She tried to remember if it
had been him or her father who had most often said,
just an albino.

“School is for more than education,” Beau said tightly. “He
will attend in a few years.”

In a few years she might be able to convince him that school
was not necessary, but the horse riding... “I do not want him riding horses.”

“It’s not your decision anymore.” Beau pushed away from the
table and turned. “Mazi is waiting.”

She touched the warm wood where his hip had been resting as
if she needed proof he was real, not an apparition conjured to torment her or
to take her son from her. Without her willing it, she caught at his shoulder.
“Please, he is the only family I have left. I cannot lose him. I cannot. I
would have nothing left.”

Beau flinched. Then he pushed her shoulder back and held his
arm stiff, holding her away.

It was the wrong thing to have said.

“Do you think I would deliberately harm my son?” His jaw
thrust forward. “I shan’t have him jumping stiles or racing, just sitting on a
damn plodding horse.”

“I do not know what you will do. I barely know you.” What
she thought she had known was all turned on its head. In the last few years
she’d been betrayed again and again. Slaves who’d cared for her since infancy,
who’d fed her, washed her face, sung to her, men and women she’d known her
entire life had turned and butchered her family like they meant no more to them
than the chickens for supper.