Awakening His Duchess (12 page)

Beau flicked his hand, and the boy ran out, leaving the
suite door open to the hall.

With no time to spare she pulled out a metal disk and began
spooning various herbs into it. They looked old and gray where once they had
been deeply green or brown. She would have to get new supplies as soon as
possible, even if she had to send to the Caribbean for them. Her hands shook,
and she racked her brain for the correct amounts of the recipe she’d been
perfecting for years then added a pinch more for fear the herbs had lost their
potency. But not too much because some of the herbs could be dangerous. Her
hands shook, spilling flecks onto the sheets. Hearing him struggle, she added
extra chamomile.

All the while Beau’s wheezing echoed in her ears, but at
least it was steady and didn’t seem to be growing worse.

The under-footman returned with a low brazier of sorts and
set it on the hearth. She quickly took a second tin cup, filled it with water
from the jug near Beau’s bed, and set it to heat.

In a barely audible rasp Beau said, “M-my—”

“You want Mr. Mazi?” asked the under-footman.

“—son,” finished Beau.

“Yes,
get him,” said Yvette, knowing full well that wasn’t what Beau wanted.

The young man ran from the room.

“No.” Beau rolled his eyes. “Etienne.”

“No, Beau. Save your breath.” She didn’t want her son
exposed to losing another father so soon after gaining his real father back.

Kneeling, she stirred the herbs in the tin cup, silently
praying for it to heat quickly. Finally when she thought it had steeped enough,
she wrapped her dressing gown around the handle and brought it to Beau, blowing
across the surface so it wouldn’t scald him.

“Drink,” she commanded.

He turned his head and put his hand up to block her.

The big black man entered the room followed by the
under-footman. Her heart thumped oddly.

“Don’t...drug...me,” rasped Beau.

Mazi looked at her as if trying to take her measure.

“It’s medicine. It will ease your lungs.”

Beau shook his head furiously.

No, he couldn’t refuse. The tincture was the only thing that
would loosen his lungs and save him. Yet distrust narrowed his eyes. He had to
drink the herbs or he might die in front of her. Again.

Chapter Seven

“Please, Beau. I promise it will loosen your lungs.”
Yvette’s dark eyes begged.

He didn’t trust her. The bokor had told him again and again
that she’d had him cursed, poisoned, and made into a soulless slave.

Yet his chest squeezed like sugarcane being put through the
press. If he died this night, what would it matter if it was because of his
rebelling lungs or from what she gave him to drink? Either way his death could
be laid at her feet.

Then again, she could have left him to die on the floor.
Instead she’d dragged him to the window and called for help.

Mazi looked at her and then back at Beau. In Kreole, which
she probably understood, he asked if she would poison him with so many people
around. He gestured toward Digby.

Yvette’s dark eyes shifted to Mazi and then back down to
Beau. “I will drink half and you will drink the rest. Then I will make a second
batch with the herbs I have left and drink half again.”

She raised the cup to her lips and took a big swig. She
shuddered then lowered the cup to show that the level had gone down. “
Mon
Dieu,
that is bitter.” Gamely she raised the cup again.

Mazi curled his hand around hers, stopping her. “Drink the
medicine, beautiful mountain.”

Her forehead furled as she and Mazi brought the cup to his
lips.

“I...want...to...see...Et...Etienne.” Saying that many words
left his head spinning, and his head lolled back.

“Please, Beau, he should not see you like this.” Her dark
eyes filled with moisture. “He has seen too much bad things. I will not wake
him to see...”

So she too thought he would die and wanted to spare Etienne.
Beau turned his head, fighting the wash of anger. She had taken everything from
him and now she would deny him one last sight of his son whom he’d only seen
for one short evening.

Mazi shifted and pointed toward the hovering valet. “We will
take you to watch him sleep, beautiful mountain.”

Beau’s lips curled at Mazi’s suggestion. So if Mohammed
couldn’t come to the mountain, the mountain would go to Mohammed. It wasn’t as
if he could carry on a conversation with Etienne anyway.

“If you promise not to wake him,” said Yvette.

Beau nodded.

The cup appeared in front of his lips again. He took a sip
and it scalded his tongue, but Yvette was relentless. Her mouth worked as if
she would swallow it for him if she could. There was a familiar flavor to the
bitter brew, but Beau swallowed it down. He wanted to see his son.

“I don’t want him trying to walk. He needs to stay quiet.
And Etienne is upstairs.” Yvette put the now empty cup on the windowsill and
lifted the one with the strong smelling liquid in it. “Stairs will be too
much.”

Faithless she-devil had probably known he wouldn’t be able
to get up to the nursery floor. He should have realized she agreed too readily.

“I can carry him,” said Mazi.

“I will fetch the duke’s rolling chair. It is not so
difficult to roll up the stairs with two men,” said Digby.

Boy might prove useful after all.

Yvette’s lips pressed together, but she was intent on the cup
holding the odiferous oil that seemed to cut through his blocked air passages.
She dipped her fingers in then bent toward him and slathered the oily substance
against his chest.

Fire and ice sensations shot everywhere. He grabbed her
wrist, intent on shoving her away.

“I did this for the slaves with bad breathing. It will
help,” she said in a soothing tone, her face just inches from his chest.

He couldn’t imagine the spoilt girl he married giving a fig
about the slaves. His grip loosened.

With a faint smile in his eyes, Mazi clamped a hand on
Digby’s shoulder and pushed him toward the door. “We will go get that chair.”

The two men moved to the corridor, Digby protesting and Mazi
stilling his objections with a low rumbling comment that Beau couldn’t hear over
his own rattling breaths.

She dipped her fingers again and continued smearing the oily
liquid against his chest. His heart thundered, yet her touch brought memories
flooding back, how soft her skin had been, how enticing her moans, how sweet
her kisses on their one night together.

How could he be on the verge of death yet still be reminded
he was a man? His response disgusted him.

It was only that it had been eons since he last felt the
touch of a woman. Field slaves didn’t have access to females. He bunched the
covers over his lap lest any evidence of his response appear. His head spun as
his blood roared through his veins like a hurricane gale.

She continued rubbing his chest, her forehead furled in
concentration. Yet her breath brushed against his cool skin, the clean scent of
her braided hair penetrated the medicinal smell, and her small and delicate
hand against him was like heaven.

He let her nurse him while his heart raced. The tightness in
his chest eased a tiny notch. His breathing was harsh, too fast, still too
shallow and rattling, and not giving him the sustenance he needed.

“The herbs may make you feel strange, but you will be fine.
I will stay with you.”

He’d had plenty of concoctions that made him feel strange,
made him see people who weren’t there, made him talk to plants and hear them
answer him, transported him home and left him sobbing when he realized he
wasn’t really back in England. He shook his head. If her medicine made him like
that, he only trusted his friend to see him through. “No. Mazi.”

Her lips pressed together and her rubbing halted.

After a few seconds Yvette’s fingers resumed circling his
chest. “If you prefer.” Her voice placid, she said, “I will tell him what to
expect.”

What had that restraint of her temper cost her? He puzzled
at it. She hadn’t hesitated to cross him when they were younger. Her pluck had
been part of what drew him to her.

She continued on matter-of-factly. “Over the next few hours,
you may be very thirsty, and I’ll make certain you have plenty of water to
drink.”

The bitter concoction the bokor gave him every morning made
him thirsty and kept his mind tied in knots until he learned to purge the
liquid as soon as he was away from the vodou man. Mazi had helped him, giving
him clean water to still the thirst that urged him to drink the bokor’s
offering or distracting the bokor so Beau could pour or spit the drug on the
ground. That Yvette knew the same drugs didn’t surprise him, but using them for
illness instead of control, that was different.

“My husband hated that I would spend so much time treating
the slaves.”

Husband.
The man she had lived with after having him
poisoned to appear dead. It hadn’t been a real marriage since she was still
married to him. “No.”

“Yes, but it was good fortune to be at a slave hut with
Etienne the night the slaves revolted.” She’d taken his no in a way he didn’t
mean. Biting her lip, she looked down. Her voice warbled. “Otherwise I do not
imagine we would have been spared.”

In spite of himself, her touch both soothed and stirred him.
It was as if she was caressing him as much as massaging the oil into his skin.
She tilted her face toward his, looking deep into his eyes. The last time they
had been staring in each other’s eyes like this, she had been naked beneath him
on the boat. A squishy softness invaded his chest.

“Are you not feeling any relief?” she asked in a breathy
whisper.

The rapidness of his breathing was as much about her touch
as anything. He raised his hand, holding his finger and thumb a small space
apart. The spread shifted, exposing his stomach and the pale skin where the sun
had not reached below his trousers.

She jerked away, averting her face. Her response was pure
reaction and too telling. She might be willing to smear camphor on his chest,
but she wasn’t interested in the way a wife should be interested in her
husband. No, she still thought of that plantation owner as her husband. Beau
shoved away his disappointment. He wasn’t young and healthy anymore. He was
broken and ill and it wasn’t any wonder he repulsed her.

Yvette’s heart nearly jumped out of her chest. Had her
expression revealed her fascination? Or the Herculean effort it had taken her
to look away rather than allow her gaze to dip? She wanted to reach lower below
where the blanket had slipped, explore the muscles of his stomach and slide her
fingers down to touch him as only a lover should. She fought to keep her hand
on his chest. What was wrong with her? He was only allowing her to touch him
because he was ill.

Knowing she was in no danger of the encounter turning into
love-making, she’d rubbed his chest much longer than was strictly necessary.

With one of her husband’s slaves she would have given a
swipe or two of the camphor and been done. With Beau she’d wanted to feel the heat
of his skin, the firm muscles he hadn’t had years ago, and reaffirm he was
real, alive, not dead as she’d believed for nearly a decade.

Her fingers went back to his chest as if drawn there by a
magnetic pull. She registered the quick cadence of his heart, the rise and fall
of his chest. All the while she grew breathless and her blood heated. The
physical desire stunned her.

It had been a long time since she’d been with her
husband—even longer since she’d been with Beau. She hadn’t realized she might
miss marital relations. But while intimacy with Henri had occasionally been
pleasant, the quickening in between her legs, the tingling of her breasts, the
softening of her heart, was a wild combination of memories of Beau on their one
night of passion. Could they have that again?

“Are you done, yet?” he asked tightly.

Her eyes went to his narrowed eyes. His cold anger gave her
an answer that punched her in the stomach. He didn’t want any part of her.

She gasped. Her chest ached with fresh pain. Too much had happened.
He didn’t want her. So they could never go back.

That left her feeling raw, exposed, and cleaved open to the
bone.

She and Beau—they weren’t going to be able to turn back the
clock to a time when they were right for each other. Even if he didn’t blame
her for the attempt on his life, she no longer had the
joie de vivre
he
needed.

She no longer enjoyed life or looked forward to each day.
Since the revolt, the fires, the murders of nearly everyone she held dear, she
had been going through life as if she were swimming through murky water.

She sought the dark depths in her mind that insulated her
from the world. In that place nothing could touch her. She would just go back
to putting one foot in front of the other, refusing to feel, and going through
the emotions until the hurt faded back. She wouldn’t surface again. The
murkiness kept pain at bay.

*~*~*

The chime of the desk bell apparently was not waking the
inn’s proprietor in spite of the vigorous ringing. The taproom beyond the
entryway looked to have only wooden benches, not exactly an enticement for a
weary traveler. No open register gave a hint of rooms taken. But if the
innkeeper didn’t make an appearance soon, he might find his door broken down.

A man still in his nightcap entered the moonlit room, his
nightshirt bunched under the coat he donned. He looked past the counter and
froze in his tracks, his expression wary.

Whether it was the low pulled hat or just the lateness of
the hour, setting the innkeeper’s mind at ease was paramount. “Pardon, monsieur.
Have you a room and supper for a tired and hungry voyager?”

The proprietor frowned and his eyes dipped. Probably a
cudgel was stashed behind the bar, just in case things got out of hand.