Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Malcolm sat back down as Octavia left the greenhouse, the scent of her perfume lingering like a ghost: a fresh aroma of citrus and soap.
Do I ken that scent?
He closed his eyes and tried to remember, but there was nothing where so many years should have been.
It was not a feeling of memories dancing on the tip of his tongue or the edge of his thoughts, but a complete blockade.
If his mind were a library, whole sections had been bricked up and sealed off.
“Why would I have made a deal like that?” he asked himself, opening his eyes again.
When the doctor had informed him that he had a wife at Huntfield House, a manor in the south of England, it was the first time since waking from his accident that he had felt a spark of remembrance.
He had not been able to recall Octavia’s face or anything about her, or even much about Huntfield House, but it had been enough to make him want to be near her.
Why will she nae answer me when I ask her what I did to make her want my absence?
That troubled him, as he glanced at the spot where she had departed. The greenhouse doors were wide open, letting in the cool of the morning air.
Did I hurt her? Did I betray her?
He picked up Simon’s paper boat and frowned at it, as if it might be a secret letter with an explanation hidden inside.
With a strained sigh, he flattened the boat and slipped it into his pocket for safekeeping.
My son. My sweet lad.
It had been such a happy morning; the happiest since his injury, and all the confusion that had come afterwards. He could have played for hours with his cheerful, charming son, getting to know one another slowly, organically.
“I meant what I said, lass,” he murmured, his gaze traveling toward the manor. “I won’t be leaving my family again.”
Perhaps, he no longer wished to remember the past ten years. Perhaps, he did not want to remember what he had done to make his wife so averse to him.
Octavia still could not quite catch her breath as she returned indoors and walked directly to the breakfast room, where she knew Millicent and Simon would be.
Be patient, she told herself, pausing just outside the breakfast room. Your husband will recover, and he will leave again, and everything will be fine.
This was all just temporary. This was all just a minor inconvenience in what had otherwise been an excellent marriage of convenience. When he remembered himself, he would change back to the way he was, and he would apologize, and he would go back to Highcastle without delay.
She had to keep telling herself that, or she would go mad.
Her life was not designed to have a husband in it; she had curated it that way, and she would not allow Malcolm to ruin it…
even if she did sympathize with his affliction.
It could not have been easy to remember nothing of the past decade, nor to live with that confusion.
With a steadying breath, she pushed into the breakfast room with a forced smile upon her face.
Simon sat at the far end of the table with a plate of eggs, while Millicent stood a short distance away, by the window, keeping an eye on him. Relief and chagrin warred for priority upon the maid’s face as she saw Octavia.
“I really am sorry, Your Grace,” Millicent said, her hands tightly clasped. “It wasn’t my intention for him to meet Simon.”
Octavia approached. “I know, Millicent. I do not blame you. Now, you go on to your quarters to have your rest.” She paused. “I need to have a word with my son.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” The nursemaid bowed her head and scurried out of the breakfast room as fast as her legs could carry her.
Through a mouthful of eggs, Simon looked up at his mother and said, “You scared her.”
“I did not mean to,” Octavia replied, pulling out a chair to sit beside him. “I was just so worried about where you were, but all is forgiven now. I am not cross with Millicent.”
Simon scooped another spoonful of eggs into his mouth, providing Octavia the perfect opportunity to explain without interruption.
“Simon, my darling boy, I… do not want you to get too attached to the duke,” she began haltingly. “I know you must have had a lovely time playing boats with him this morning, but… he is not feeling very well.”
“Papa has a sore head,” Simon said with a nod, as if that was all the explanation he needed.
“Yes… Yes, he does have a sore head, but he is also a very busy gentleman. He will not be staying with us long. As soon as his head is not so sore, he will be leaving again, and… you might never see him again after that,” she told him carefully, hoping that it was not already too late to avoid her son getting hurt.
Simon paused in his eating and turned to her, his green eyes scrunched in consternation. “Why not?”
“Because he will be too busy.” Octavia swallowed. “He is a gentleman of business up in Scotland and the journey is immense. He will not be able to travel back and forth, not when he needs to be in Scotland.”
The little boy seemed to consider the words. “Why has Papa not come to see us before?”
Goodness, how am I supposed to explain this?
If he was older, it would have been easier. But how was Octavia meant to tell the truth in a way that an almost five-year-old could understand?
“He has had too much to do,” she said hesitantly. “And he does not like to be in England. He is Scottish, after all, and the Scottish are not so fond of the English.”
Simon’s eyes widened. “Papa doesn’t like me?”
“Oh no, my dear boy, he does. No, you must not think that,” she hurried to reply.
“He likes you very much, but… he prefers to be at home, and home for him is Scotland. It is the same way that you prefer to be here at Huntfield and get upset whenever we have visited your Uncle Hugo or Cousin Dominic.”
The boy’s expression softened, and he nodded slowly. “I like home best.”
“Exactly, my darling.”
She was about to breathe a sigh of relief and change the subject when Simon piped up again. “I like Papa. I like playing with Papa. Maybe…” he searched for his words “… he stays if he has fun. Maybe, here can be home for Papa.”
It grated on Octavia to hear her son call Malcolm by that term of endearment so readily, though she did not know why. He was Simon’s father. He was Simon’s Papa.
It is because it will wound him when Malcolm does leave.
“I can play boats with Papa again?” Simon asked.
There was such hope and enthusiasm in her son’s voice that Octavia knew she could not refuse. The last thing she ever wanted to do was make her son sad, and she feared that trying to keep father and son apart might do exactly that.
Even if it hurt Simon later, once Malcolm remembered, Octavia could not bring herself to disappoint her beloved little boy. She would just have to comfort Simon and help him heal from the abandonment when the time came.
“You can play boats with your father again,” she relented. “I will… let you spend time together, while he is still here at Huntfield.”
At that, Simon sprang from his seat and threw his little arms around his mother’s neck. He held on tightly to her, and she could feel him smiling against her shoulder as he said, “Thank you, Mama.”
As she hugged him back, she prayed that she would not come to regret this generosity.
Do not break his heart, Malcolm. Please, do not break his heart.
Despite the injury to his head, Malcolm had not become stupid. As such, he had decided that it would be in everyone’s best interests if he stayed out of the way for a while.
Instead of bothering his wife and son, he had withdrawn to the library to search for anything that pertained to his dukedom of Highcastle and how he had come to possess a manor like Huntfield House.
When he had found nothing whatsoever, he had picked up a book that had been left on a table by the reading chair and begun to read that.
At some point, he must have fallen asleep, succumbing to the exhaustion that occasionally struck him after his accident, for when he awoke, the sun was setting.
I have missed the whole day?
He rubbed his bleary eyes and got up, somewhat disoriented. It took him a couple of minutes to remember where he was, not in the gloom and mist of Highcastle but in the pleasant, airy realm of the duchess.
Heading out of the library, he narrowly avoided a collision with the butler. The man had either been posted outside the room, or it was a coincidence that he just happened to be there.
Malcolm did not believe in coincidences.
“Did my wife send ye to stand guard?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
The butler’s throat bobbed. “She… um… sent me to see if you would be coming to dinner, Your Grace. I knocked, but you didn’t answer.”
Malcolm narrowed his eyes. “Why didn’t ye just come in?”
“That would not be proper, Your Grace.” The butler frowned in confusion. “Unless it was an emergency.”
Malcolm shrugged. “Well, aye, I’ll come to dinner.”
He began to walk off, intending to go directly to the dining room. If he could remember where it was.
The butler ran to catch up to him. “Are you attending dinner like that, Your Grace?”
Malcolm stopped. “What do ye mean?”
“Will you not change first?”
Malcolm glanced down at himself. His clothes had been freshly laundered, and clean when he put them on this morning: a simple shirt and his favored kilt.
He could not smell any unpleasantness, just the scent of soap from the bath he had enjoyed at dawn.
To his mind, he looked and smelled perfectly presentable.
“Why would I change?” he asked.
The butler hesitated, chewing his lip in consternation. “It is… not necessary, of course, but it’s usually expected.”
“I’m not a guest in a stranger’s house,” Malcolm said with a shake of his head. “This isn’t a dinner party where I need to consider a thousand stupid rules and follow some manner of complicated etiquette. She’s my wife, and we’re having dinner together. What I’m wearing is fine.”
A prickle of cold sweat slipped under his collar as he continued walking in the direction of the dining room, for when it became clear that he had lost a decade of his life, he had lost every memory of that decade.
Not just names and faces and relationships and the fact he was married with a son, but all of the training he had received when he inherited his dukedom.
I can’t show that I’m an impostor.
He swallowed uncomfortably, realizing that dinner might not be as simple as he thought.
Octavia was already partaking in the first course when he entered the dining room, her spoon pausing in the lurid green soup before her.
She seemed surprised to see him, her blue eyes—the color of dusky summer skies—widening. “Your Grace?”
“The butler said ye wished to dine together,” Malcolm replied, though he was beginning to think that was not so true.
She put on a tight smile. “Oh, well… certainly. Please, sit.” She glanced at a nearby footman. “Might you set a place for His Grace?”
The footman bowed his head and rushed to comply, while Malcolm walked the length of the long dining table and pulled out the chair closest to his wife.
He sat down. “Have I kept ye waiting? I fell asleep in the library.”
“Yes, Dr. Stanforth said you might be tired after overexerting yourself,” Octavia replied flatly. “How is your head?”
“Fine. It’s my mind that’s injured.”
She nodded. “I am aware.” She lifted the spoon to her mouth, hesitated, and set it back into the green soup. “I just noticed you had a bruise, that is all.”
“The worst of it is under my hair,” he explained, feeling incredibly uncomfortable.
Is this why they lived separately? Because they had nothing to say to one another? He had been informed by the doctor that he and Octavia had been married for five years, so was it boredom and a lack of common ground that had forced them apart? Had the novelty of marriage worn off that quickly?
“Looked like I was smuggling a goose egg on the side of my head for days,” he added with a stiff chuckle. “It has gone down now, though.”
She, however, did not laugh; she did not even look up from her soup.
He was spared a few minutes of awkwardness by the return of the footman, who set down a place for Malcolm, while another servant rested a matching bowl of green soup in front of him. In fairness, it smelled better than it looked, aromas of onion and thyme making his mouth water.
He grabbed a spoon and tried to scoop some soup onto it, but the bowl was so shallow that only a little bit found its way onto the spoon. Annoyed, he tilted the bowl up and scooped up a proper amount, lifting it to his lips.
It was only as he swallowed that he noticed Octavia staring at him in something like shock.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She blinked. “You are not supposed to do that. You are supposed to take small amounts, like this…”
She demonstrated, daintily sliding her spoon through the watercress soup.
“It would take me an hour to finish it all,” he argued. “Why would ye nae put soup in a better bowl? One where ye can actually get a proper mouthful?”
“It is… just how things are,” she replied, frowning.
He shrugged off the remark and continued to eat his soup his own way, making a note in his mind that he should enquire about changing the bowls.
She was still staring when he wiped his mouth on a napkin, sat back, and patted his stomach to declare that it was delicious.
“I wouldn’t have thought something so green could taste so good,” he said with a smile.
She tilted her head to one side, observing him closely. “Is society different in Scotland? Are there not so many rules and expectations?” She paused. “But I know you were among English society for a while. Surely, you did not behave like this then?”
“Behave like what?” he asked, genuinely curious as to where he was going wrong.
Octavia chewed her lip in thought. “As if you have never sat at a dinner party before.”
“This isn’t a dinner party.”
“No, but one usually acts with the same decorum.” She furrowed her brow. “I suppose you must have lost some of your awareness of etiquette when you went away to fight.”
His body seized up, every muscle rigid, every sinew taut, all of his enjoyment of the soup evaporating.
He could not remember much of the war he had fought in, his memories ending somewhere on a battlefield, among friends and brothers-in-arms, where he had been strangely happy.
But his body seemed to remember far more.
When the doctor had mentioned his years at war, it had had the same effect, an involuntary response that darkened his mood though he did not have the information to understand why.
“I don’t follow foolish rules that serve no purpose,” he replied tightly. “It is dinner; I am not meeting royalty.”
A flicker of concern shone in Octavia’s eyes for a moment. “No. No, I suppose you are right. It is just dinner.”
With a raised hand, she called for the next course, while Malcolm’s mind refused to give up the secrets that held his body hostage.
What happened to me in that war?
He had seen the scars on his skin, but he had no way to see the ones hidden beneath.