Awakening His Duchess by Katy Madison

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.”
    His lip curled as if she’d gone off like week-old milk.
    “I gave you no reason to doubt me. I told you I would return
to speak with your father, and I did.” His words were venomous. He hated her.
    “You told me you had no property or wealth of your own. What
was I to think?” Her hopes of a joyful reunion