Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
The doctor from the village arrived some forty minutes later, and though she did not want to leave her son’s side, Octavia allowed Malcolm to lead her away. Not far, of course, but to a chair on the other side of the room.
There, with Malcolm’s hand on her shoulder, she watched the physician work.
Is this what it would have been like to have you with me from the beginning? Is this how our life would have been?
She had never wanted it, had never permitted herself to imagine a united marriage, but as she moved her hand to hold onto his, she was not sorry that he was there. Right when she needed him the most.
I wish you could have been there when our son was born…
She would not admit it, but she had been terrified on the night she gave birth to Simon. Although, with Evelyn and Frances there, she, at least, had not been alone.
“Is he all right, Doctor?” Octavia asked tremulously.
The physician turned. “I’m convinced he will be, Your Grace. It seems to be a simple fever. He has no rashes or concerning marks.” He paused. “I’ll give him some medicine to hopefully bring his fever down and, in a day or two, you should see improvement.”
Octavia expelled a small sigh of relief, and observed as the doctor measured medicine from a bottle and carefully spoon-fed Simon.
A squeeze of Malcolm’s hand against her shoulder brought her attention upward.
“Ye should retire to yer rooms and rest,” he said. “I’ll stay with him.”
Octavia shook her head. “I will not be able to have any rest now. I will stay with him.”
“Then, it seems we’re both staying.” He shrugged and sank down onto a chair, pulling it closer to her.
For a while, neither of them said anything, both too focused on what the physician was doing: adding more blankets, refreshing the cloth on Simon’s forehead, applying some manner of balm to the boy’s temples and just below his nose.
“You’ll have to give him two more spoonfuls in… about two hours,” the doctor instructed, rising. “Every two to three hours should suffice after that, although I’ll be back in the afternoon to check on him.”
He left a bottle and a medicine spoon on the side table. With a nod, he gathered up his leather bag and headed out of the room.
Both Octavia and Malcolm moved together, aiming straight for their son. There on the edge of the bed, they both sat down: Octavia took hold of Simon’s warm little hand, while Malcolm leaned against the wooden end of the bed, his hand resting almost tentatively on his son’s blanketed foot.
“He looks like you,” Octavia said, smiling down at her slumbering child.
He did not seem to be in as much pain, his forehead relaxed, though the redness and the perspiration remained. The medicine was probably intended to help him sleep more soundly, though Octavia could not be sure.
“Nay,” Malcolm replied with a half smile. “The laddie’s far more handsome.”
To her surprise, Octavia managed a chuckle.
“I must admit, it has been rather annoying that he looks more like you than he does me.” She paused, her laughter fading.
“But then I gradually began to forget what you looked like, and I saw only him instead. Until you came back, that is, and I remembered where he gets his hair from, his eyes, his dimples, his frown when he is mad about something.”
“I’m surprised ye ever married me,” he said, a furrow appearing between his eyebrows. The same one that Simon had when he was concentrating.
“What makes you say that?” Octavia asked.
He shrugged a shoulder. “From what I hear, I did a lot of frowning.”
“Oh, well, I knew exactly what I was getting,” she replied. “Back then, at least. You are not… the same now as you were then.”
His gaze dropped to the blankets, his hand gently squeezing Simon’s foot. “What was I like?”
She blew out a breath and rested her head against the post of Simon’s bed, letting her mind drift back to the first time she ever met Malcolm. The moment that had led to all of this, the decision that had changed the course of her life and given her what she wanted.
“Goodness, you were terrifying,” she said with a raspy laugh.
“I was back in society for the first time in years. Properly, I mean. I was well beyond my debutante years and knew my options would be sparse, but I knew that what I wanted and who might agree to such a thing would make them sparser still. Then, of course, there was the fact that I had no desire to dance or speak or engage with any gentlemen at all, to make it all the more difficult.”
She chuckled into her free hand, wondering how it was possible that she had ever gotten married at all, considering the circumstances. But Malcolm was not laughing. He had raised his gaze again, those striking green eyes looking at her with curiosity.
“I had heard every rumor about you before I ever saw you,” she continued, remembering. “You were infamous. No lady, debutante or otherwise, was brave enough to approach you or to consider you as a match. Mothers were warning their daughters to stay away from you.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “And ye thought… what? Aye, there’s my perfect match?”
“Something like that.” She nodded, smiling.
“What did they say about me?”
She bit her lip and closed her eyes, digging deeper into her memory. “That you were a savage, an uncouth beast with a thirst for blood and a foul temper. A dangerous man who had likely killed his way into his unexpected fortune and status.”
“Charming,” Malcolm muttered, bringing another laugh to Octavia’s lips.
“I never believed them, not really. I know enough about society’s gossipmongers; they cannot help but embellish and sensationalize,” she told him. “But I did believe you might be in a position to give me what I wanted, seeing as society had already decided to dismiss you.”
He made a noise halfway between a grunt and a laugh. “How very sly of ye.”
“I saw an opportunity,” she said with a playful shrug. “And I… felt as if I owed you.”
She had not thought about the night they met in a very long time, putting it to the very back of her mind in a locked box of memories.
There had been no reason to dig them out and blow off the dust, not until he came back into her life and stirred up plenty more memories she had assumed she would never think about again.
“Owed me?” Malcolm’s frown returned.
She nodded. “I was being bothered by a few potential suitors. I was… frightened by their attention, and they would not leave me alone. Then, all of a sudden, they just… parted and scurried off. And there you were.”
Her eyes closed in remembrance. He had been so tall and intimidating, and so breathtakingly handsome, even then, even wearing his hardest scowl. But rather than fear, she had been grateful for him at that moment. Relieved that he had chased away the other gentlemen.
So grateful, in fact, that…
“You asked me to dance with you, and I did not say no,” she told him, realizing that he would not remember any of this.
“I danced with ye?”
She nodded, her heart fluttering a little. She could not recall if her heart had fluttered back then, or if she had been too fixated on not making a wrong step, but the memory seemed warmer now.
“You were very direct,” she said, smirking.
“I suppose I was too. You asked if I was in society to find a husband. I said that I was, and asked if you were in want of a wife that you did not want to live with. You said it was not disagreeable to you. The moment the dance was over, you kissed my hand and told me that we would see each other soon.”
“Did we?” he asked, a softness in his eyes.
She tilted her head from side to side. “It depends on your opinion of ‘soon.’ You wrote to me two days later, saying that you had thought about my terms. You asked if I had any others. We must have written our requirements back and forth for a fortnight, maybe longer, although I daresay I had more terms than you. Eventually, you wrote to Hugo and made a proposal of marriage. And that is… essentially that.”
She laughed, realizing how entirely unromantic it had all been.
Even their letters had been short and business-like, devoid of any emotion or possibility of affection.
It was precisely what she had longed for when she had entered society again, but now…
How could she not laugh when her sister-in-law was convinced that she was falling in love with her husband?
A man she was specifically not supposed to fall in love with or feel anything for at all.
How could she not laugh when she was in the nursery with her husband, both of them tending to their son, doting on their son, united as any family ought to be, while reminiscing about the past and reveling in the closeness? She was, at least.
Is Evelyn right?
She gazed at Malcolm, and as he held her gaze, the warmth in her cheeks seemed to be some kind of answer… though perhaps not the one she was prepared for.
Malcolm remembered every moment as if it were yesterday: how stern his wife had looked on the night they met, with her eyebrow raised and those blue eyes filled with suspicion upon his approach.
He could not recall seeing gratitude or hearing it, so it made it all the more surprising to hear that his presence at that ball had not been quite so unwelcome.
It was the only ball he had attended, forced there by Anthony.
“How are you supposed to find a bride if you do not leave my townhouse?” his friend had asked.
“An advertisement?” Malcolm had countered, much to the disapproval of Anthony.
“Come, you will attend at least one society gathering, and it might as well be this one. If you despise it wholly, then I might permit you the indignity of writing an advertisement for a bride, but not a moment sooner.”
“I’ll do as I please,” Malcolm recalled replying, before relenting. “But aye, it wouldn’t hurt to see what I might gain as a bride.”
He had not thought that he would find her on that one occasion, but there she had been, scowling at a crowd of gentlemen who were almost certainly bothering her. Perhaps, it should have dissuaded him from approaching her, but it had not; rather, he had felt compelled to free her from the horde.
I should tell her the truth. He knew it, deep in the heart of him, but for some reason he could not get his mouth to fashion the words.
He told himself it was just the shock of the evening and Simon’s illness. It would not have been fair to Octavia for him to tell her that his memories were back, hitting her with a second shock.
So, instead, he surprised himself by teasing her. “Ye must’ve liked the way I danced. Did I whirl ye around and make ye so dizzy ye couldn’t choose anyone else to be yer husband? Did I win ye over with my waltzing?”
“We most certainly did not waltz!” she protested, her eyes wide.
“Och, I can see it now,” he said, closing his eyes.
“There ye were, in my arms, staring at me with such adoration. Ye kenned right then and there that ye wanted me to be yer husband, that ye couldn’t dream of having anyone else.
And when the dance ended and I kissed yer hand, ye shivered.
I must’ve thought it was the bad kind of shiver, but now I’m nae so sure. ”
Octavia shot him a mock-withering look. “That did not happen. You did not kiss my hand, and I certainly did not shiver in either a good way or a bad way. Remember, you were grumpy then; you would not have kissed my hand, even if you had wanted to.”
“Do ye think I might have done?”
“Done what?”
He smirked. “Wanted to kiss yer hand?”
“I highly doubt it,” she said, chuckling. “At our wedding, you did not even want to hold my hand. I think you held onto it for all of two seconds before you dropped it like a hot spoon.”
His smirk became a true grin, his cheeks now accustomed to the sensation of a smile. “Like a hot spoon?”
“It is an apt description, believe me,” she replied, her own lips curving into a grin, her eyes twinkling with amusement. “Why, I daresay it must have been the most grim wedding there has ever been.”
Malcolm allowed himself to laugh, though he did not know if he was simply playing along with the version of himself she had come to like, or if it was really his present self laughing.
Either way, it was hard not to be amused by the memory of their dreary, dismal wedding.
And as he laughed, Octavia laughed, their good humor filling up the room.
Nae tonight. I’ll nae tell her tonight, he told himself. Another time. Once Simon is better.
Indeed, there was no chance of him leaving before then, for though he knew that would soon have to part ways with Octavia and Simon, he was not so cruel as to abandon his son before the boy was recovered, nor without a goodbye. He would not have been able to forgive himself if he did that.
As he watched his wife laughing and admired how it made her glow from within, he was struck by a sudden, sharp thought that almost killed his humor entirely: Solitude is going to be much harder after this.
And the longer he delayed his departure, the harder it would become.