He looked at her flatly. “Are you asking if I have always been a terror?”
“Something like that.”
A wry smile cracked his lips. “A bit of both. I was never like that –” He nodded toward Hugh, who still laughed gaily. “But I wasn’t always this…” He sighed. “A consequence of my upbringing, I am afraid. As cliché as that must sound.”
“Oh?”
“And I don’t want that for Hugh. If I can save him from that…” Again, he looked for his son and that smile grew. “Maybe that will make up for everything else.”
“Everything else?” She stared at him. “What do you mean?”
He winced and looked away.
Yvette watched closely, again surprised by how different the Duke was to what she had originally thought. There was a darkness inside of him, that was undeniable. But she sensed that he did not like this about himself, and that he wanted to be different.
Is that what Hugh is? A chance to prove that he is more than what people think?
“We can speak of something else, if you like.” Yvette softened her voice, determined not to let this moment pass.
The Duke tilted his head. “Such as?”
She shrugged. “Whatever you like. You will find that I am a bit of an open book.”
His eyes flashed with humor. “Very well, why don’t we start with –”
An ear-splitting scream cut through the question like a knife.
They both turned as one, and what Yvette saw had her stomach dropping to the earth in terror. She might have screamed, was she able.
It was Hugh’s pony, sprinting across the paddock, but with Hugh nowhere to be seen.
“Hugh!” the Duke cried and kicked his horse forward. “Hugh!”
“Hugh!” Yvette joined in as worry crashed upon her like waves in a storm. “Hugh!” Her eyes scanned the paddock as the fear compiled on her.
“I found him!” the Duke shouted from ahead.
Yvette rode her horse forward as the Duke jumped from his horse and crouch down in the brush. The grass was so long that it came up to the Duke’s shoulders when he dropped to his knees, so it took a moment for her to see what had happened.
When she came close, and when she saw Hugh lying in the grass, she lurched back, her entire being rebelled inside of her, and it took all the control she possessed not to scream.
No… please no…
Yvette hated the sight of blood. Worse than that, she was mortified by it. Memories converged in her mind, the sound of screaming, crying and shouting, blood everywhere. She was ten years old again, there was nothing she could do, and that sense of helplessness crippled her in ways that she wanted to forget… that broke her whenever they returned, as they so often did.
She started to shake. She started to sweat. She started to sway as the world turned…
“Easy there,” she heard the Duke say as he knelt by his son. “It’s lucky this grass is so thick, otherwise you might have really hurt yourself.”
Over his shoulder, Yvette forced herself to look upon Hugh, and she just about fell from her own horse as relief swept her body. Hugh was awake, he was shaking, but it did not look like anything was broken. And there was not a drop of blood in sight.Thank God…
“I’m so – so – so – sorry,” Hugh whimpered as the Duke pulled him into his arms. “I did – did – did not me – me – mean to –”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
“I sh – sh – should have lis – listened.”
His stuttering was as bad as Yvette had ever heard, and she braced herself for the Duke’s reaction. He didn’t know that his son had a stutter, and she knew how ashamed Hugh was of the fact. Just as she knew how much men of the peerage hated weaknesses like that, thinking it to be beneath them.
