Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Rogue is gone!” Simon cried, bereft, as he ran alongside the paddock fence.
Octavia and her son had returned not five minutes ago, and the first thing that Simon had wanted to do was check on the horses.
She had no idea who ‘Rogue’ was. The name certainly did not belong to one of the household horses, so she could only guess that it was Malcolm’s black stallion: the impressive beast he had ridden to her on, defying the doctor’s orders and all logic and reason.
“I am sure Rogue is just sleeping,” Octavia said, to placate her worried boy.
The child did not hesitate; he ran straight for the stables, almost knocking into the stablemaster’s legs in his hurry. At the stall door that presumably belonged to the missing stallion, Simon ran into a greater obstacle.
He was not tall enough to see into the stall itself.
“Ah, you’ll not find him in there, Master Simon,” the stablemaster said. “Your father took him out a couple of hours ago.”
Simon whirled around, his face the very picture of distress. “Papa went without me?”
“Now, now, Master Simon, you wouldn’t be able to ride such a beast anyway,” the stablemaster soothed. “Rogue is a war horse. A mighty stallion. Much too dangerous for a young fellow like yourself to sit upon, even with your father.”
But the child was not calmed by the explanation. Tears welled in his beautiful green eyes, his bottom lip wobbling, looking as if the stablemaster had just reached in and torn out his heart, stamping it to bits on the stable floor.
“He promised!” the boy wailed.
Octavia rushed to him and gathered him into her arms, gently stroking his dark hair. “He promised?”
“Said he… would teach me riding,” Simon cried.
“Ah…” Octavia held him tighter. “But he has been, remember? He has been teaching you to ride on dear Bessie. Did he ever say he would let you ride on Rogue?”
The boy considered the question, tears streaming down his cheeks. “No, but… he went without me.”
“And I am sure he will be back soon, and you can give Rogue a carrot,” Octavia soothed.
Although within, she was brimming with a rising alarm. If this was Simon’s reaction to his father taking a leisurely ride in the countryside—for that was what she assumed it to be—then what on earth would he do if Malcolm left entirely? Her beloved son would be crushed. Utterly, utterly crushed.
I should never have allowed Malcolm to stay, not even for a day.
She was the one who had permitted uncertainty and disruption to enter their peaceful home. She was the one who had set her son up for failure, for heartache.
Unless he has gone already?
A chill beetled through her, a discomfort churning in her belly. What if he had remembered in the night and taken the opportunity of her absence to depart Huntfield altogether?
It was not, she realized with sudden horror, just Simon who would miss Malcolm.
She had just been getting to know him, too.
“Let me down.” Simon wriggled in his mother’s arms, and she put him back on his own two feet.
Apparently recovered and reassured, the little boy wandered toward one of the stalls closest to the stable entrance, where Bessie lolled her big head over the side to give him a good sniff.
Simon laughed brightly and patted her nose, while she sniffed him more thoroughly, searching him for anything delicious to eat.
Satisfied that her son was in no immediate anguish, Octavia turned to the stablemaster.
“Do you know where His Grace went?” she asked.
The old man leaned on his hayfork and shook his head. “Just said he had a fancy to go out riding. Watched him head eastward, toward the woods.”
“And you said he has been gone for several hours?”
“Aye, Your Grace. But that’s to be expected. A stallion like his needs a good, long run, or they start causing trouble. I’ve seen horses like that kick a stall door down because they were bored and frustrated.”
Octavia chewed her lip, anxiety bubbling within her chest. “He said he would return?”
“Well… no, not exactly, but why wouldn’t he?
” the stablemaster replied, an eyebrow raised.
“He’s not going to ride all the way back to Scotland without provisions, and there weren’t any saddlebags.
He’ll have just taken the stallion to the hills to wear him out; I’d wager this here hayfork on it, and it’s a fine hayfork. ”
She could tell the stablemaster was trying to reassure her, humor in his voice, but she could not get her unease to quieten or her nerves to settle.
Just then, Simon cried out. “Look, Mama!”
Octavia whirled around… and stared in surprise at the sight of a bundle of fur, held awkwardly in her son’s arms. The creature mewled and struggled in Simon’s grip, claws digging into his jacket as it tried to climb up onto his shoulder.
Simon chuckled and released his hold, the orange cat successfully making its ascent, where it promptly draped itself around the boy’s neck like a scarf and closed its big, amber eyes. Its front claws remained hooked in Simon’s clothes for balance while it slept.
“Is that yours?” Octavia whispered to the stablemaster.
The old man shook his head. “Never seen it before, but it’s not so unusual to find strays sheltering here from time to time.”
“Simon, perhaps you should put the cat down,” Octavia urged, approaching her son. “You do not know where it has been. It might be dirty. It might be riddled with unpleasant things.”
The boy backed away, stubbornness flaring in his eyes. His mother’s stubbornness.
“I will keep her,” he said with a grin. “She’s my cat.”
“No, Simon, she is not. She is a stray cat. She does not belong to anyone, and I really think you should put her down before something crawls off her and onto you,” Octavia urged, shuddering.
She had once found fleas on the two lazy dogs who technically belonged to the household but were actually the gardener’s dogs: a pair of huge mastiffs who would have done anything to protect Simon.
She had never quite recovered from the sight of seeing those awful little bugs creeping between the fur she had been stroking.
“She’s my cat,” Simon repeated.
“My darling, she is a free cat. She would not like to be kept in a house,” Octavia urged, thinking of those fleas jumping onto her dear boy, bringing him out in spots.
“She choosed me,” Simon insisted.
In fairness, the cat did look very comfortable in her role as the boy’s neck-warmer, while the tip of her tail wiggled as if in annoyance at Octavia’s protest.
The stablemaster, smothering a chuckle and no doubt deciding that this was not his argument to witness, decided to make himself scarce. Taking his hayfork with him, he headed out of the opposite end of the stables and disappeared from view.
“Put the cat down, Simon,” Octavia urged with a little more firmness in her voice.
“No,” he shot back stubbornly.
“You cannot keep it.”
“I can!”
Octavia took a breath, closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she found Malcolm standing at the stable entrance with his hand on Rogue’s reins. The man and the black stallion looked just as puzzled as each other.
“What’s all this then?” Malcolm asked.
Simon spun around, crying out, “Mama is mean! She not letting me keep my cat!”
All his grievances about being excluded from Malcolm’s ride had clearly vanished, no doubt seeing his hope for an ally in this quarrel.
“Well, that’s a fine wee beastie.” Malcolm reached out and scratched the cat under the chin, the creature opening one eye, the sound of loud, contented purrs filling the stable. “But ye realize she’s a wild one, don’t ye?”
Simon frowned. “What do you mean, Papa?”
“She’s a wild cat. She comes and goes as she pleases,” Malcolm explained. “I’ve seen her around here a few times.”
“She choosed me!” Simon pouted.
“Aye, that she has, and it means ye’re a special soul if a cat chooses ye,” Malcolm replied calmly, amusement in his eyes.
“But ye can’t ever truly tame a wild cat.
Ye have to keep letting her come to ye when she wants and letting her go off to wander when she wants too.
She’s nae an indoor cat, but ye already kenned that, didn’t ye?
Ye weren’t going to make her live in the house with ye, were ye? ”
The boy considered his father’s words. “Maybe she can sleep in my bed?”
“Och nay, wild cats don’t like beds,” Malcolm said. “But she might like to have a wee house of her own, where she can be warm and comfortable. Out in the gardens, do ye think? I can build one for her, so she can come and go as she pleases, but she’ll be safe from foxes and the like.”
Octavia’s tense muscles relaxed, her confused heart warmed by her husband’s aptitude for fatherhood. He had not told his son no, but nor had he gone against Octavia’s obvious wishes. The compromise was a good one, but it remained to be seen if Simon would take it.
The little boy chewed his lip in thought, a habit he had picked up from his mother, and absently stroked the cat’s furry feet.
Then, with a small nod, he replied, “She will have a house like mine.”
“It will be the grandest cat house anyone has ever seen,” Malcolm agreed, as he glanced up at Octavia and flashed a wink that made her heart stutter. “Now, ye just let me put Rogue away, and then we can pick a spot for the wee beastie.”
Simon’s face cracked into a grin, and he pressed back against Bessie’s stall door as his father led the gigantic, powerful stallion up the center of the stables to his stall.
Octavia also made way for the magnificent horse, but it was the sight of Malcolm in his usual uniform of a flimsy shirt and kilt that held her attention.
It had drizzled earlier, and he must have been caught in it, for the fabric of his shirt stuck to his muscular, rippling back: a pleasing display of his masterful strength.
Indeed, she was almost sorry she had been at her brother’s residence, and had missed the sight of her husband on horseback.
Octavia! she scolded herself and looked away.
She was already confused enough after visiting Hugo and Evelyn; she did not need to add to it by letting her wayward thoughts get the better of her.
I am not falling in love with him. I am not falling in love with him, she repeated silently, in the hope that if she believed it enough, it would become the unarguable truth, and no one—not Evelyn, not Malcolm himself—would be able to convince her otherwise.