Read Online Awakening His Duchess by Katy Madison - Free Book Online

soft English rose,
beget a few sons—if he lived long enough—and deny the child who stared back at
him with hostility in his blue eyes.
    Blue eyes like his, brown hair like his had been before the
sun streaked it motley colors. A nose and chin that had been his in his youth.
The boy’s fists balled at his sides and his chest heaved.
    He had a son. An angry son, but a son nonetheless.
    The boy lifted an arm and pointed at Mazi. “You go!”
    An unmannerly whelp, but not afraid to challenge a man
thrice his size.
    “His father was a king. Show him proper respect,” Beau said
before he could soften his tone.
    The child shifted his glare to cut through Beau. Never had
he wanted to repeat the patterns he and his father had fallen into. He wanted
to dandle his children on his knee, to hug them without awkwardness, and to
laugh and converse with them. Already his relationship with his son was
strained, and he didn’t even know the boy’s name.
    “Come, Etienne, it is time to ready you for bed,” said
Yvette in a soothing tone.
    “Etienne? You named my son Etienne?” The objection shot out
of his mouth like the ocean hitting rocks and casting up a violent spray. “You
couldn’t name him a good English name like George or Arthur?” Or Beau.
    The corners of Yvette’s mouth turned down. “I had no idea he
would one day be an Anglais duke.” Her dark eyes flashed at him. No
doubt a reminder that he had never revealed his identity to her was in that
glare.
    Hadn’t she known who he was after he was buried? “Didn’t
Danvers tell you who I was?”
    “I did not see Danvers again.” She shook her head. “Not
until I came here. I only learned after I came to England. If the revolt hadn’t
destroyed my home, I never would have known.”
    The duke wheeled close. “He’s a good lad, for all he’s
saddled with an unfortunate French name. Besides his friends will all call him
by his title.”
    True. The family always referred to his oldest brother by a
nickname derived from his honorary title. A title that was now his. If he would
become the duke, she would be a duchess, assuming he outlived his father.
Outliving anyone was questionable these days. But his mind spun. He had a son,
conceived on that makeshift wedding night. At that moment he’d had every
intention of following through—marrying her again if it proved necessary. The
boy would be his heir if all had gone as Beau planned.
    But he would only have a title if Beau accepted the marriage
as legitimate. He could deny the marriage, deny Yvette and make his son a
bastard.
    Mazi touched Beau’s arm, breaking the spell that had him
staring at the boy, caught between acknowledging him as legitimate, which also
meant Yvette would be his wife, or relegating the boy—Etienne—to being an
irrelevant by-blow. The choice threatened to rend him in two.
    He had a son. The thought spun from an amorphous form into a
solid rock of fact. He had a son.
    “I should go,” said Mazi.
    “No. You and I will raise a glass. A man should celebrate
the birth of his son.” So he was over eight years late. He looked down at the
feeble man in the Bath chair. “You realize if I claim him, he will be the only
child I will ever have.”
    Yvette gasped. The implication was not lost on her.
    Legitimate child that was—unless by some miracle he outlived
Yvette, because he would not take that viper to his bosom ever again. But a man
of his station could have a mistress. Hell, it was almost de rigueur. He would
never accept Yvette as his wife in anything more than name, and only because
she was the mother of his son would he even consider her in that light.
    “Don’t be hasty,” said the duke.
    He didn’t have to be hasty, but by claiming the marriage was
real he would make this boy he didn’t know his heir. And he would be tied for
eternity to Yvette. “She is all but dead to me, as she did her best to see me
dead.”
    As much as Beau wanted to please his father, accept the boy
as