Awakening His Duchess (20 page)

“Yvette!”

She snapped her mouth shut.

Heat slithered down his spine as he kept turning over the
idea that she would have come with him without his offer of marriage. He was
going to regret having to keep his distance, but he needed to focus on clearing
out the misunderstandings and figuring out why it had gone so wrong. “I don’t
know if our marriage was legal or not.” He swept his gaze around making sure no
one could overhear. The grazing sheep weren’t likely to report his
indiscretion. “But I intended to make it so at the first opportunity. If
necessary.”

“But—”

“I never tricked you.” Was that why she had turned from the
passionate creature in his arms to the vicious animal that had him made into
little more than a beast of burden? “Just listen.”

It was strange that he was the one on the high moral ground,
but his intentions and behavior had been, if not fully honorable, at least
headed on that path. He’d meant to make an honest woman of her.

She tossed her head, her hair rippling down her back. He
took it for a grudging acquiescence.

“I
intended
to marry you, but I didn’t want to reveal
who I was until you said yes. Because then I would never know if you accepted
because of my family’s wealth or because of me.” Shifting in the saddle, he
gave her a rueful smile. “Then I didn’t want to wait.”

She pressed her lips together and stared at the house.

Couldn’t
wait,
really. When she had agreed to sneak out and let him take her to the yacht,
he’d seen no reason to explain. He’d asked her to marry him, she said yes, then
his mind had been on other things beyond explaining who he was. Her slipping
out her window and off the veranda he’d taken as a sign they both wanted the
same thing. It never occurred to him she would have been willing to come to his
bed without marriage.

He’d told the captain of his plans, his reasoning, and
assured him his intentions were honorable, but he hadn’t explained to Yvette.
“I knew your father would not object when he learned of my family. The duke
would provide the obstacles. Or so I thought, but bringing you home as my
wedded and bedded” —
breeding
— “bride would have helped carry the day.
And I couldn’t wait until I turned twenty-one or you would already have been
married off to another.”

“My father needed Henri’s assistance.” She rolled a
shoulder. “A great many of our slaves had died.”

So she had been sold to pay her father’s debts. He almost
pitied her, except she had been instrumental in stripping him of his identity,
his health, and his ability to control his destiny. His spine tightened as he
remembered the absolute terror of that day in the coffin. “If you had waited
five minutes before you had me poisoned, you would have seen it was no trick.”

“I poison you not!”

Her dismay seemed so real, but— “You didn’t eat the
seedcakes.”

“What seedcakes? I like seedcakes not.” She stared at him,
her dark eyes intent. “What seedcakes, Beau?”

He shook off the feeling that she didn’t know. “The
seedcakes I was served the morning I was poisoned. We both drank the coffee,
but you didn’t touch the seedcakes.”

Her brows drew together and she shook her head slowly. “
Non
.
You fell.” She touched her chin. “Your head hit on table. Here.”

“I fell because the poison was taking effect.” His jaw
tightened.

Her eyes turned glassy, her nose red. “I scream and run for
help. But you breathe no more.” Her fingers dashed at her cheek. “I say,
non,
non
. This is not happening. I think until yesterday you are dead.”

She should audition for Drury Lane. “I don’t believe you
didn’t know.” Perhaps not the detail, but at least that he’d been gotten rid of
deliberately.

“
Non.
” Her mouth twisted tight and her accent grew
heavier. “I did not have poison for you. I would not have done this.” A tear
trailed down her cheek. “Now I must think
mon pere
did this horrible
thing.”

“How could he have known what happened if you didn’t tell
him?” No, she had known. His jaw ticked.

“I do not tell him. My maid bring my mother and I confess
where I had been. I do not know if you will come back that day.” She swiped at
another tear. “I think I am foolish girl to fall for false promise, or promise
you cannot honor. But my pere, was he so desperate?”

It was his turn to stare at the castle. Was she more upset
thinking her father had him enslaved or because he didn’t believe her? Damn
her, the tears twisted him inside.

“You knew, Yvette. The bokor told me things only you could
have known. The color of my blanket, the books I had on my shelf, how I touched
you” —details only she could have told him. God, that had been worse than
knowing she’d had him poisoned, that she revealed intimate details of their
night together to that weasel witch doctor. “That you kissed the scar on my
knee.”

“Magie noire,”
she gasped.

“No, not black magic,” said Beau. There was no such thing as
black magic, just chants and drugs and evil ceremonies. “You told him.”

“
Non.
I not ever look at your books.”

Chapter Eleven

How could Beau think she would have had anything to do with
poisoning him? Yvette stared across the yawning expanse between their horses
trying to understand why he was so certain she was behind what happened to him.
Her heart raced and her stomach churned. No doubt the bokor was called to free
her from the marriage, but she had nothing to do with such dastardly deeds.

“I just want to know why,” Beau said, his mouth a tight
line.

She shook her head. All this time he had thought she was
behind his poisoning and his enslavement. Her anger drained leaving her empty.
Feeling hollow inside was nothing new. She had spent the last three years with
the nothingness that was left of her life. “If I knew, I would tell you. But
you cannot think I knew what happened to you and then went on to marry Henri.
That I would risk—”

“You said you didn’t think our marriage was real,” he cut
in.

She stared at him, seeing his anger in the tense line of his
jaw. What hope was there for them if he thought her responsible for all that
had happened to him?

She rolled her shoulder. The grass and Daisy’s brown mane
blurred. Her mind rebelled against her father being so cruel, but who else
would have done such a thing? Not her mother. Her siblings were too young, and
the house slaves certainly wouldn’t have cared one way or another.

Her father had been defeated by life in Saint-Domingue. He
didn’t understand why he had such a hard time making a profit when other
plantations had done well. But he’d met with more than his share of misfortune
with his slaves dying off in droves.

The repeated trips to Port-au-Prince to try and get loans
had made things worse, especially when she endangered his plan to save the
plantation by marrying her to Henri.

She’d come across him one evening, crying. He’d tried to
hide his red eyes, and the idea of her strong father broken had twisted her in
knots. She’d wanted more than anything to be a dutiful daughter, to help him
save the family plantation, but then Beau had come along, and she’d thought
mostly of experiencing love before doing what must be done to save her father
and his plantation.

“I think my father must think I will not marry Henri if you
are around.” Right up until the last minute she’d planned to marry Henri, until
Beau asked for her hand, promised he would take care of her and ease her
father’s troubles. She’d been foolish to trust him without any particulars.

“Really?” Beau’s voice was full of scorn and dismissal.

“I do not know what more to say. I cannot make you see sense
of this. If I know you will be treated thus, I will not go with you. I know not
how to make you see.” She bit her lip and then ducked away from his cold stare.
Had he forgotten the magic of their night together? “Do you really think I
could give myself to you so completely and then have you killed—poisoned the
next day?”

He turned his horse so she could no longer see his face. If
he truly thought that, it was no wonder he didn’t want her as his wife. Was it
only she who thought the night had been fraught with magic that can only happen
between two people in love? Certainly her experiences with Henri had been but a
dim shadow of what it had been like with Beau. Too often with Henri she filled
her mind with memories of Beau touching her, kissing her, holding her to find
the necessary enthusiasm for the marriage act.

The only choice was to go on as she had. Clearly Beau didn’t
want her. He only wanted to avoid battles with the old duke. The only thing
that would change in her existence was she would now be the wife of a future
duke, not just the mother of one.

His voice was low. “Damn it, Yvette, you knew where I was.
You asked about the plantation near Thomassique. Don’t twist what happened. You
knew.”

She shook her head. “
Non
. When I come here to ask for
help, Mr. Danvers, he say your body is not in the grave, that he never find it.
I think and think what happen to you. If you are alive and in Saint-Domingue,
why would you not come to me?” Her fingers tightened on the leather reins in
her hands. “I pray, I hope that you are alive...then I remember the rumors of a
white slave. I try to remember if my father or my husband told me this white
slave is of no matter.”

But she didn’t remember. She wished she could go back in
time and examine their faces. Freeze that moment and experience it again and
again until she caught any sly looks, but it was just a moment of a thousand
others that had not seemed much important until later.

Beau turned toward her and stared through her. But she saw
just a glimmer of uncertainty.

“They are all dead or I would demand they tell me.”

“How convenient,” he muttered.

Her stomach clenched as his callous comment burned through
her and boiled her blood. Her fingers convulsed around the reins.

“We should go back—”

“You are bastard,” she said through tightly clenched teeth.
“It is not convenient that my entire family is dead, my mother, my father, my
sister, my brother, both my bab—” Her throat closed and she could not get the
word out.

His skin paled as he stared at her. “Your what?”

She shook her head and turned so he couldn’t see the storm
of tears. She thought she had cried more tears than any one person could
produce, rivers of tears, oceans. She shook her head and pointed the horse
toward the house.

He pulled alongside her. His voice had softened. “Yvette,
you had other children?”

She gave a short nod and swiped at the tears. His switch to
a reserved sympathy made her feel cracked open and raw, but she would not
succumb to this weakness in front of him. He was too caught in his own
injustices to see that he was not the only one who had suffered. She would give
her soul to go back to the day they married and make things come out
differently. “Do not take Etienne away from me. Do not send me away. He is all
I have left.”

His mouth tightened, and he looked toward the castle. She
didn’t want to wait to find out what he was thinking or if he would agree. She
kicked the slow Daisy and the horse jarred to a trot, bouncing her toward the
house.

Beau increased the speed of his horse, but he did not bounce
like a ball on his horse’s back. She didn’t think she liked this riding horses,
even if it scared her less than it had before. But this chasm between her and
Beau, she didn’t know if it could be mended. If he was so certain she was a
part of his being treated abominably, she could not fix that.

 
*~*~*

The two riders were moving away, but Henri didn’t dare
reveal his hiding place behind a shrub. He had meant to come and deliver the
cigars and the paper that would make him a hero to the old duke, but Yvette was
riding a horse with this man who looked uncannily familiar.

It was not in his plan to come to her first. No, he would
allow the duke to reunite them, and then he thought he might even manage to
shed a tear or two. It would be quite touching, and he needed to wait until
Yvette went inside before he continued to the house.

The two riders had not come so close he could hear their
conversation, but he could see Yvette was in a state. She went from tantrums to
tears with so little provocation that at times she exhausted him. Still that
passion was lurking under the surface, and he wanted to grasp it in his hands
and control it, mold it into what he wanted, make her the perfect pet in bed
and out.

He’d wanted her enough to have his rival killed, although
her moods had made him impatient. Still he’d never let his impatience rule.
Once he’d figured out the boy was the key to wealth beyond imagining, he needed
her to access everything.

But as he watched her dark hair sway in the breeze, his
groin tightened. She was still more beautiful than any other woman in
Saint-Domingue, and prettier than most in Europe. He very much desired her
again.

Yvette belonged to him, had always belonged to him since she
was little and he asked her father for her. He’d used the bokor then too, to
make sure her father needed his money to save his plantation. She would belong
to him again. Once he had everyone else out of the way and Etienne was the
duke, he could bend her to his will, take her in ways he hadn’t dared while her
family lived just miles down the road, make her cry and scream when he wanted
her to. Etienne was too young to defend her. Perhaps he would destroy her
beauty so no other man would desire her. He’d waited so long to reveal his true
nature. Perhaps he’d take a whip and flay the skin off her back the way he’d
done to the slaves.