Awakening His Duchess (40 page)

“Women always are.”

In spite of her fear, irritation niggled. Getting herself
and Etienne away from the bloody massacre and across an ocean was not the feat
of a coward.

But she needed to focus on Henri. How far did she dare push
him? She leaned back and reached to open one of the satchels to show him the
clothes. “I even packed some clothes for us. I would follow you to the ends of
the earth.” She smiled, although it was hard to make her face assume a happy expression.
“Or France or the Caribbean, wherever you wish me to go. But is it wise to give
up everything that will be Etienne’s if we take him away?”

Henri went still. Yvette searched for the right way to
convince him to give her Etienne and let them go back to the castle.

“Beau is not well. He is weak from working the sugar cane.
He has a sickness—malaria—and the next time” —She rolled her shoulders. Beau
didn’t have malaria, but it felt wrong to reveal he had the cane disease—
“perhaps I will mix the wrong herbs. If his illness overcomes him, eh.” She
lifted her hand in a nonchalant gesture while her stomach roiled. “I will say I
have tried everything.”

“He should have been dead already.” Henri’s face twisted in
a semblance of a one-sided smile. It was then she noticed the scar that slashed
across his cheek and disappeared under his hat. Henri had been a coldly
handsome man but now he appeared ghoulish.

“Oh, Henri,” she said softly when what she really wanted to
do was turn away. Somehow Beau’s scars enhanced him while Henri’s diminished
him. “You must have been badly hurt.”

“Killed the animal who dared to do this to me.” He lifted
his hand. The sun glinted off the barrel of a pistol he’d had hidden. “Now get
down.”

Her chest squeezed and her throat tightened.
Mon Dieu.
Had he called her out to kill her?

 
*~*~*

Etienne struggled against the strips of cloth that bound him
to the bed. He would have waited, but he had to relieve himself. Still he felt like
he’d spun around in circles and his head pounded. His pere had told him to come
with him, that they were going back to a new place where he could eat bananas
every day.

At first he’d been happy to walk with his pere, but then he
asked about his mother. Pere said she was coming later. Then Etienne had asked
about his new papa. His pere’s face had twisted the way it did when he flogged
a slave, and Etienne had gotten scared.

He’d tried to run away, and he didn’t remember anything
after that. Now he was alone in this strange room with a cloth stuffed in his
mouth and another tied around his head holding it in place.

There was noise coming from below, people talking, things
thumping around. Etienne shouted, but the sound was held in his throat by the
material in his mouth. He pushed with his tongue, trying to move it out of the
way, but there was too much of it and he gagged.

Why would his pere tie him up so? Etienne twisted, trying to
get his hands free. He really needed to pee. He rubbed his cheek on the bed,
trying to loosen the gag or move it down. If he could shout maybe his pere
would return.

He jerked hard against the bindings, trying to kick and
thrash.

His legs started to shake from the need to go. He hadn’t
peed his pants in years, not even an accident. Only babies peed their pants.
His eyes began to fill with moisture and a sob tried to make its way past the
barrier in his mouth. His nose got clogged. He couldn’t breathe.

Then he didn’t even care when the falls of his breeches grew
warm with moisture. He scarcely felt it as the moisture turned cool and he
frantically tried to breathe and swallow. The material slipped into his throat.
No. Why would his pere do this to him?

Spots danced before his eyes and darkness closed in from the
edges. He didn’t like this, not at all.

 
*~*~*

“Why do you have a gun, Henri?” Yvette asked. She wanted to
alert Beau, but her voice was so small and tight she wasn’t certain he would
have heard her. She tapped her heel against the box. They should have arranged
a word or a signal for when it would be safe for him to come out.

“I thought you might be followed.” Henri’s voice was flat.

“No.” Yvette wasn’t moving off the seat, not until Henri put
the gun down and it was safe for Beau to get out. “I am allowed to come and go
as I please. Come, get in and we can drive to Etienne.”

If Beau tried to get out now, Henry would likely shoot him
before he could take aim. She couldn’t let that happen.

“We’ll leave the horse and carriage here.”

“That would raise suspicion. Honestly, Henri, they wouldn’t
expect me back before tomorrow.” Defying Henri was always a risk. She tried to
infuse her voice with sultry flirtation. “Besides, we shall get to an inn
faster where I can show you how very much I have missed you.”

“Yvette,” said Henri, sounding exasperated. He rubbed a hand
across his forehead, then tugged his hat back down to shadow his face. “I don’t
think this can be salvaged. I wish I would have known this Lord Arrington was
ill and that you don’t wish to be his wife.”

“As you said, I was never his wife. I have always belonged
to you.” She heaved a deep breath as the words seemed to weigh so much they
were hard to force out of her mouth.

His shoulders slumped. “I did not know what to do when I saw
this man still alive. I saw him buried in Saint-Domingue.”

The world stopped for a second and she tried not to goggle
at Henri. How was it he had seen Beau buried? Had he been in Port-au-Prince
that day? Why would he have gone to the gravesite of a man he did not know?
Unless he was the one who had him drugged, he wouldn’t have known or cared to
go to his funeral.

Henri continued to talk and she had to drag her focus back
to him. “I never stopped wanting you. I take Etienne so you will have to come.”

“You should have sent me a letter or called on me with some
alias. Goodness, it was nearly impossible convincing everyone that Etienne had
gone with old friends-of-the-family from Saint-Domingue. I told them their poor
English must have confused the innkeeper so that he did not deliver the letter
reminding me they were stopping for a visit and were taking Etienne for a few
days.”

“You persuaded them of this?” Henri’s tone was sharp,
disbelieving.

“Beau was quite angry that I could be so careless with
Etienne. I told him in all the excitement over his homecoming and his father’s
illness that I had forgotten I had made arrangements earlier.” Her lies rolled
smoothly off her lips. She was half amazed they were so easy, but she felt no
sense of guilt lying to the man with whom she’d spent six years of her life.
“Henri, I believe you and I are better matched then you could realize.”

He chuckled and it was like stabbing knives into her spine.

“Come, we should go. We can leave the curricle at a posting
inn, or we can just send the horse back. It is not as if they will realize for
a couple of days. Or, if you think it best, I can fetch Etienne and return to
the castle with him. We can simply arrange to meet until things fall in line.
After Beau is gone, you can come live in the castle. Diana had her lover living
in the castle and the duke did not care.”

Yvette silently begged forgiveness for the slur to her
widowed sister-by-law’s character. She didn’t know if the man in question had
been Diana’s lover or not although there had certainly been sparks between
them. And the duke had probably been oblivious rather than tolerant of his
son’s widow and her activities.

“
Mais non,
Etienne might not wish me to live with
you.”

Her chest was so tight it was hard to speak. What had Henri
done? “He is a child, he will have no say over whether or not I wish you to
live with me. He is always fond of you. You are his pere for his early years.
He barely knows his new papa.”

The curricle rocked as Henri climbed on. She barely restrained
a shudder then forced herself to reach for him, her fingers going to the scar
on his face. He jerked back.

“Will you not kiss me?” she whispered, anxious to get a show
of affection over with. Henri wouldn’t believe her if she couldn’t manage to convince
him that she was his wife in all ways. “It has been so long since I have been
kissed.”

His nostrils flared and he stared through her in a way that
curdled her blood. “Does not your pretend husband kiss you?”

She shook her head, staring Henri in the eye. It almost
wasn’t a lie. “It is why Etienne is so important to them. Beau is not a whole
man anymore. There will be no more children.”

Henri pulled her head toward him and covered her mouth with
his. It was odd in that he clearly was unable to control one side of his face
and mouth. She just concentrated on mimicking the things she had done with Beau
because she felt nothing but repulsion.

The seat thumped under her.

Henri jerked back. “What was that?”

Beau protesting.
“Nothing, I bumped my heel against
the” —she couldn’t say box without alerting Henri to its presence— “the
underside of the seat.”

She hadn’t realized the storage compartment was there until
Beau pulled out the carriage robe for her. She hoped Henri would not notice
either.

He scowled at her, but then she could see the flare of
interest in his eyes. She deliberately licked her dry lips.

Henri rubbed his gloved thumb against her mouth. She lowered
her eyelids as if the gesture excited her. Again it seemed odd that he hadn’t
removed his glove and his fingers did not caress her face so much as just brush
against it.

“Let us go so that we may find a bed and have our reunion,”
he said.

“Yes. I should like that.” The idea of allowing Henri to
touch her made her stomach churn, but he had to think that was what she wanted.
“Shall I drive or will you?” she asked, tilting the reins in his direction.

He waved her on, which surprised her. Henri never allowed
her control of anything during their years together.

She snapped the reins and the horse started forward. “You
shall have to tell me which direction.”

“Turn right at the road.”

The only thing that told her was they were going away from
Haven Castle.

Finally Henri leaned close and said, “You would give him the
wrong potions?”

“I would do whatever it takes...to have you back in my life.
Giving him herbs that will make him worse would be easy. They trust me.”

“They should not.”

She shrugged. “I had no reason to want to change the state
of affairs until I know you are alive.”

“So you are happy here?”

She shrugged. “Not so much happy as looking forward to the
day when Etienne will own so much. But Henri, you knew when we were in
Saint-Domingue that Etienne was not yours. You knew he was the grandson of a
duke, no? You always say he will be our salvation.”

The flicker in his eyes was all the acknowledgement she got.
But he had known.

“Even so, it is quite lucky that Etienne is in line for the
duchy.” Too lucky. “If Beau’s brothers lived...or had sons before they died, he
would not be.”

The corner of Henri’s mouth tilted up, confirming her worst
suspicions.

Her stomach churned and her hands felt frozen. Still she
tilted into him, hoping he didn’t notice the stiffness of her move. “You knew.
You have him learn English when you did not consider it important with the
older children.”

Henri said nothing.

“The trips you took to France. You came to England too.” It
was a question, but it wasn’t. She sorted in her mind, adding years and
subtracting against ages of her children, how Henri seemed to need to take
trips when she was pregnant and couldn’t risk delivering on a ship. She
compared against the dates Beau’s brothers had died. The tumblers turned and
clicked much like a key turning a lock to reveal a room of hidden horrors.

“You were here when the duke’s other sons died. I was
enceinte with Piere and you were gone. That was the year William died. When I
was carrying Marie you took another trip and were here when Beau’s oldest
brother died, no?”

Henri stared back at her, neither acknowledging nor denying.

“So clever are you.” Her stomach turned as she tried to
paint admiration in her expression. “Such a magnificent plan.”

“Such a magnificent imagination you have,” he said with a
smirk.

“
Non
, you might think it clever to deny this but not
to me, Henri. I know you were trying to make it so Etienne would become the
duke, and then we would have no worries ever again. You must trust me if you
hope to make it work. You need me. You will have no access to Etienne without
me, and we both need him.” She wanted him to confess and confirm what she knew
in her heart of hearts. “If I am to hasten Beau’s disease by giving him the
wrong herbs, I will not be alone in this. I must know that you are with me.”

“Mayhap I could give you an ingredient for your herbs.” His
voice had dropped to a low undertone. There was no mistaking his meaning, but
his reluctance to speak in anything other than veiled terms frustrated her.

“Like whatever the duke has been given?” she murmured.

He jerked and stared at her. The scar dominated her
impression and she had to force herself to look him in his eyes. Eyes that were
lifeless and flat like the eyes of a fish.

“I know not of which you speak,” he said slowly, but his
head moved up and down ever so slightly.

“Yes, you do. Tell me how you got rid of Lord William and
Lord Arrington. I need to know so I do nothing that will risk discovery. I
cannot use a poison that can be detected. The duke is old, but if three sons
die so young, there will be suspicions. There already are.”

Henri scanned the horizon and looked over his shoulder.
“There are no suspicions.”