Free Awakening His Duchess by Katy Madison

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