Awakening His Duchess (6 page)

“You look like a damned field hand.”

Not surprising, since that was what he’d been, but his
father would be appalled if he said that.

“You couldn’t send a letter?” The duke glared.

“You wouldn’t have recognized my hand. And I figured we’d be
here in about the same time.” Not to mention posting a letter was costly to a
man who had to pick up odd work just to get home.

“For more than nine years you have been unable to send a
letter.” There wasn’t much of a question to his words, just a resounding
disappointment Beau was no stranger to.

“No, sir. I have not had access to finer things like pen and
paper.” Beau coughed. He stopped the impulse to rub his weakened right hand. It
worked after a fashion, but he could no longer hold a pen in it, and his
left-handed scrawl was barely legible. Not that he’d had a great deal of
opportunity to practice.

His father’s eyes shot up and down his body. “Have you
forgotten how to dress properly, too?”

“I haven’t anything that fits.” He didn’t really care that
much anyway. While the clothes in his trunk had been finely tailored, it all
seemed so wasteful now.

“I cannot believe you crossed England wearing rags. Have you
forgotten your station?”

Beau sighed. For a long time
his station
had seemed a
delusion. One of many he’d suffered while the bokor controlled him. Many times
as he worked with the sun beating down on him, he would say, “I am Lord
Beaumont William Arthur Trey Devereux Havendish, third son of the Duke of
Newkirk.” As if in saying it again and again, he would return to himself and
become a gentleman again.

Now Beau had no answer. He would have thought his father
would be happy to see him, at least to settle the heir issue if nothing else.
“Am I to assume I have no nephews since the servants are addressing me as
Arrington?”

“Your sisters have boys, but your brothers only managed to
produce girls.” The duke cleared his throat. “It is good you are here to clear
up matters.”

Clear up matters?
Was that how his change to heir
apparent was considered? A trifle to be sorted. He would have thought his
father would care that his title passed to his direct descendent instead of to
a distant cousin. Beau fisted his left hand. “God forbid matters aren’t clear.”

Talon like fingers gripped Beau’s arms.

There was still strength in his old man’s grip. He pulled
Beau to him and gave him three hard pats on the back. The embrace was awkward,
and just as Beau wrapped his arms around his father’s frail frame, the duke
pushed away and landed hard in the cushions of his Bath chair.

Still it was more contact than Beau remembered his father
ever giving him.

The duke rolled the chair back and, if his eyes were a
little watery, Beau wasn’t certain he could put it down to anything more than
his age. For a man who had always valued physical prowess, his infirmities must
be a burden.

The lap robe had dropped between them and Beau bent to pick
it up.

Intending to put the rug back on his father’s lap, he
stepped forward. The duke wheeled several feet away. Beau curled the edge.

“Sit down. I don’t want to crane my neck.”

Beau considered standing, but his leg was tired, and he’d intended
to become a dutiful son, pursue a career in politics once his health was
back—if it was ever back. He wanted his father to be proud of him, not just
regard him as a useless addition to the family. But if he was the heir, their
relationship would have to be different. He took a step toward a chair and
tossed the lap robe toward it.

The door popped open and Finley entered. “Lady Arrington,
your grace.”

Beyond the open door, Beau saw a woman removing a bonnet
from her dark hair. Odd, he’d thought his oldest brother’s wife was a tiny
blond thing. Her back was turned as she handed her headwear to a footman. There
was something familiar about her...

She entered the room with a half smile lingering about her
full lips. Finley closed the door behind her.

Yvette.

“You wished to see me, your grace?” Her sultry voice
beckoned to him from a lifetime ago.

“No!” Beau reeled back and grabbed the chair to keep from
falling.

He’d hoped the woman was dead. His ears filled with a
rushing sound. Yvette had ruined his life—or at least a decade of it and
destroyed his health. Now she stood inside the door.

She drew to a stiff halt and stared at him, the smile
faltering then falling away.

“I presume you remember your wife,” said the duke, beckoning
her to his side.

She didn’t move, seemingly frozen to the spot. The bloom
drained from her cheeks and her eyebrows shot toward her hairline. Time hadn’t
touched her. She was as beautiful as he remembered and just as treacherous.

“She is not my wife,” Beau hissed through clenched teeth.
Not in a thousand years.

The duke wheeled toward her. “I have not spent the last two
years paying the best solicitors, tracking down the captain’s log with the
entry and letting it be known to everyone that she is my youngest son’s widow
to have you deny the marriage now.”

Had she been here, safe, all along? “That scheming bitch had
me poisoned, buried alive, and turned into a slave because I was not wealthy
enough for her.”

“No!
Mon Dieu
, no!” Yvette pressed her hand to her
mouth. Her dark eyes widened.

“Beaumont William Arthur, you will not use such a
disparaging term about a lady in my house.” His father’s color rose and his
mouth pinched.

Everything washed with red. “She is no lady, and the
marriage was not legal. I will not have her.” Especially not if she couldn’t
even bear to let him accompany her to the lap of his family’s luxury. Had she
considered him expendable after he’d married her?

“Oh, you’ll have her.” The duke took her hand in his gnarled
claws and looked up at the evil woman. “The ship’s captain signed an affidavit
that he filed the necessary license in Port-au-Prince.”

Beau wondered how much the affidavit had cost her. He had
not recorded the marriage with the proper authorities, although he would have
if he hadn’t been poisoned. Thank God for the favor of interceding before he
was shackled to that evil woman for life. “But you don’t have the license.”

“No. Too many records were burnt.”

“Convenient that most of the records have been destroyed.”
Did that mean she hadn’t come here until after the revolution?

“I would sooner put about that you are a baseborn imposter
than I would deny she is my daughter-in-law.”

The impact of his father’s words slammed Beau in the chest.
The years of dreaming of coming home hadn’t prepared him for this outrage.

Nothing would have prepared him for being shunned in favor
of the scheming bitch who’d ruined his life.

Chapter Four

Yvette stood rooted in place, paralyzed by Beau’s return
from the dead and his cruel words. What on earth had happened to him? His answer
echoed in her head, he’d been
poisoned, buried alive, and turned into a
slave.
Oh God, the stories of the horrible vodou spell were true.

Raw rage flashed across Beau’s face—and sliced through her
with the destruction of a machete.

Yvette jerked like a marionette with strings that had been
tugged. Her legs felt wobbly as if her knees had come unfastened and one wrong
move would send her clattering to the floor. The moment felt as unreal as if
she had been thrust into a puppet show. Staring at the man in front of her, she
reached out her free hand for support and was only vaguely aware that it landed
on the duke’s shoulder.

Beau’s face was older and tanned like a laborer’s, his body
was that of a man—a solidly built, strong man—not the aristocratic young dandy
who had charmed her into sharing a night with him.

When she’d first recognized him, something warm and bright
like the sun glinting on the water and turning it to sparkling silver grew inside
her. A thing so foreign to her she didn’t know what to make of it. But under
his hateful glare the brightness had shriveled and died before it had much of a
chance.

His gaze landed on the hand the duke held and her other hand
resting on his shoulder as if they presented a united front against him when in
truth, the duke had just been the nearest thing to lean upon.

He looked back at the duke. His mouth twisted, and he turned
his shoulder toward the man. But poor Beau, his father was all but saying he’d
rather his son was dead than interfering with the ducal plan for succession.
How could he think this? What kind of man wouldn't want another moment with a
child he'd thought dead?

She wanted to jerk her hand away and smash it against the
duke’s cheek for saying such a thing—for thinking it—but she couldn’t give in
to emotional impulses now. She strictly modeled her behavior on that of her
mother-by-law and her fellow widows, but they weren’t around now to show her
the way.

She needed to say something. Mitigate the cruelty of his
father.

Beau shot icy anger her way. Those eyes had once looked at
her with tenderness, but they were so cold now shivers ran through her.

She freed her hand and patted the duke’s shoulder. “That was
a cruel thing to say, and you do not mean it.”

“He means it,” said Beau tightly. “He’s never had much use
for me.”

She sucked in a deep breath and crossed the room. His icy
glare kept her from—what? Embracing him, touching her cheek to his. Searching
for composure, she picked up the duke’s blanket. Her hands shook so badly she
could scarcely get her fingers to grip the material. “No, he doesn’t mean it.
His legs bother him in the evening, and he is no doubt shocked by your return.”

There, that was very English lady behavior. They were not
too demonstrative these English. She had only to make it through the next
minute and the one after that without falling apart.

Beau’s eyes narrowed and glared at her. His expression was
the farthest thing from joy. Still her mind swirled, turning and churning.

How was his being alive possible? If either of her dead
husbands had shown up, she would have expected Henri. She'd never actually seen
him dead, but Beau had been in a coffin. She'd seen him lifeless, screamed at
him when he didn't move. Shaking her head, she tried to make sense of his being
alive.

Beau’s angry glare left her hollow, but she ignored the
sensation. She couldn’t fall apart now. There was nothing to do but pretend
this was normal, that her world hadn’t suddenly turned mad. It was a dream. It
had to be.

No doubt she would wake when the carriage stopped in front
of the castle and a footman opened the door. She was simply tired enough to
sleep after her hours in the village where she’d been looking after a child
with croup.

“I will not have you being a grouch,” she told the duke as
she tucked the blanket over his legs. “If you cannot be civil, you can go to
bed and we’ll discuss this in the morning. I am certain there is much to
learn.”

There that sounded sensible like the English gentlewoman she
was supposed to be now. Feelings long dormant bubbled and frothed in her
threatening to erupt.

 
“Like where he has been for the last decade,”
grumbled the duke.

“He told you. He was a slave,” she said sharply. Sharper
than she ever dared speak to a powerful man. Her place here was dependent on
the duke’s good graces. He only cared about Etienne. She was merely tolerated.

The duke stared at her as if she were the stranger arrived
to tip her world like a capsizing boat.

She
had never before objected to anything he’d said or raised her voice to him.

Her stomach revolted and she swallowed against the extra
moisture pooling in her mouth. This wasn’t a dream. Even in a dream she
wouldn’t have cast Beau as a slave.
Mon Dieu,
everything was beginning
to make a sickening sense. Danvers telling her the grave was empty, the rumors
of a white slave.

She patted the duke’s arm, needing the connection to what
she knew to be real rather than wanting to reassure the old man. She turned to
Beau.

The hard man standing there bore little resemblance to the
carefree boy she’d married.

Her mind kept clicking through details as if she could find
the piece that would make this shifting cacophony make sense. “Sugar plantation
south of Thomassique?”

His eyes narrowing, he nodded.

“We heard rumors of a white slave owned by an
affranchi
plantation
owner. We thought it was an albino.” White people weren’t supposed to be
slaves. French law expressly forbade it. A scream bubbled in the back of her
throat. This was making more sense than a dream would.

“You should have had me killed. It would have been kinder.”

Her knees buckled, but she put her hand on the duke’s Bath
chair rather than fall. “I never wanted you dead.”

“No, you just wanted to be rich. Are you happy now?” Tension
screamed from him and his gesture toward the opulent room was choppy.

“Happy?”
She no longer knew the meaning of the word,
and her protest shot out before she could consider the words. “This never would
have happened if you had told me who you were.”

“So you admit it?” He folded his arms.

Admit what?
That she’d been unable to hide the signs
of their lovemaking from her maid? That she’d been uncertain he would return
later in the morning although he’d said he would. She’d feared she’d made a foolish
mistake. A mistake a lot of young stupid girls made, trusting a man who didn’t
deserve to be trusted, believing his declarations of love when all he wanted
was the physical exchange. She’d tearfully confessed to her mother she might be
bound for life to a charming rogue with nothing to his name. Or worse she might
have given her virtue after being tricked with a sham wedding. Her blood
churned. “That I doubted you? I was barely seventeen.”