Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The gardens of Huntfield were nothing like the wild and rugged gardens of Highcastle. For so many years, Malcolm had looked out upon the gloomy glen and the dramatic mountains in the distance, finding peace in that isolated corner of the world.
He had never needed company, not there at least. Of course, he had appreciated the company of his comrades, and he would have given anything to spend another hour with his brother, but solitude served him well because of his losses. There was no worrying when one was entirely alone.
Now, here at Huntfield, he felt the weight of responsibility for others once more. He did not like the sensation: how it pressed down on him, how it made old memories resurface, how it made his mind race and his blood roar in his ears, how exposed it made him feel.
Ye’re a fool for ever coming here. He wished he could speak to the amnesiac version of him who had thought it so very wise to ride to Huntfield to bother his wife. He wished he could shackle the idiot, to prevent him from ever leaving Scotland.
To make matters worse, he did not know how to keep up the pretense that he was the version of himself that Octavia seemed to prefer. It had not been his natural state for ten years and, like a too-small waistcoat, it did not fit who he was now. Just smiling felt foreign to him.
“Your Grace?”
Malcolm bristled. Was it so difficult to wander through the gardens to gain some peace without being disturbed?
He turned to find the butler approaching. “What is it, Lincoln?”
The butler blinked in surprise, reminding Malcolm to adjust his tone. In keeping the news of his recovered memories from Octavia, he had to keep it from everyone else, too… with the exception of Stanforth, who had been warned that, under no circumstances, was he to inform anyone of the change.
“Apologies.” Malcolm sighed. “It has been a long night.”
Mr. Lincoln relaxed. “Of course, Your Grace, and I’m sorry to interrupt you. It is just that the doctor wishes to speak to you.”
“Already?”
The butler nodded. “Yes, Your Grace.”
“Very well.” Malcolm tilted his head from side to side to try and unravel a knot. “Tell him to meet me in the study.”
“At once, Your Grace.”
Mr. Lincoln hurried off, and though he knew he should probably return inside immediately, Malcolm took another few moments to lift his face to the sunshine and close his eyes.
As the warmth bathed his face, he found himself wishing that he could lose his memories again, if just for a week or two. Just until Simon was better.
Ye are better at this than me, he thought, speaking to the version of himself that could not be brought back. Ye would ken how to deal with all of this. Ye might be useless with ledgers and business, but… ye still had a heart back then.
He opened his eyes again and made his way toward the house. His search for peace and quiet would have to wait.
A short while later, seated behind the desk where he had formerly fumbled through ledgers his memory-less mind did not understand, Malcolm raised his head at a knock on the door.
“Come in,” he said gruffly, one of those ledgers open in front of him.
It all made perfect sense now, the key to his private code restored to him along with memories of his wedding, his honeymoon, his first kiss with his wife, the first time he had set eyes on his son, and the moment he held his brother in his arms as he died.
The moment he heard that his mother’s heart had given up.
The moment he stood in the slurry of a mud-slicked field, surrounded by dead friends, comrades, men who had helped him survive his losses.
A clash of the darkest shadows of his life and glimmers of light that he had tried to douse.
He shook off the thoughts and fixed his attention on the doctor, who had just walked in, looking rather sheepish.
“What do ye make of him?” Malcolm asked stiffly and slammed the ledger shut.
The doctor jumped a little. “It’s as the other doctor said.
A fever. Nothing I haven’t seen before. Nothing of grave concern.
” He approached the desk and sat down. “He managed to open his eyes for a very short while, and he is young and healthy; he will continue to improve. I have left instructions with the nursemaid, and better medicine to keep bringing his fever down.”
“Thank you.” Malcolm sat back in his chair and breathed a small sigh of relief.
It was not that he did not trust the local doctor, but he knew of Stanforth’s credentials.
And if I had listened to ye in the first place, I wouldn’t be in this mess now. He could not forget that. Doctor Stanforth had tried to stop him from leaving Highcastle, but in his ‘youthful’ naivety as a man with a twenty-three-year-old mind, Malcolm had been too determined.
“It is the least I can do,” Stanforth replied, hesitating. “But, if I may, why have you not yet told your wife of your condition?”
They had broached the subject at the door, upon the doctor’s arrival, but any thorough conversation had been interrupted by Octavia’s presence. A risk of her overhearing that Malcolm had not been prepared to take.
“Because Simon is sick,” Malcolm replied, in a tone that suggested it should have been obvious. “I won’t leave while he’s still unwell.”
The doctor nodded. “That is probably wise. She’ll need your reassurance.” He paused, staring down into his lap. “However, I don’t think you should leave it too long, where it might seem like you’re deliberately lying to her. In my limited experience, ladies don’t take too kindly to that.”
“I will tell her when the time is right,” Malcolm retorted sharply.
“Of course, Your Grace. I meant no offense.” Stanforth scraped back his chair and rose. “As I mentioned before, I would be more than happy to tell her for you. If it’s a matter of explaining properly or—”
“I will tell her when the time is right,” Malcolm repeated, his patience wafer thin.
He did not need anyone else to do the difficult tasks for him.
The doctor bowed his head. “Yes, Your Grace. I will leave you in peace. Her Grace will be eager to hear my opinion of your son’s illness, no doubt, so I shall go and allay her fears.”
“Say nothing of my memories,” Malcolm warned.
“I won’t, Your Grace,” the doctor promised.
With that, he left, and though Malcolm had a mountain of work to attend to, he found that he could not open the ledger and begin.
Instead, his thoughts drifted upward to the nursery, to his son, and to the woman who would remain at Simon’s bedside all day and all night unless someone could coax her away to rest and eat.
A woman with such love in her heart, who adored Simon in a way that all children deserved to be adored.
The lass I abandoned to do all of this alone.
For the next two days, Octavia kept a vigil at her son’s bedside. Doctor Stanforth took over the medicine duties, appearing to feed some to Simon every few hours, while she dripped water into Simon’s mouth and tried to get him to eat some soup in the rare moments when he opened his eyes.
Malcolm came and went, never saying much, his smiles all but gone, the dark crescents beneath his eyes becoming more bruised.
She had heard from the staff that he was in his study most of the time, tending to business, which she supposed she should have been grateful for.
But, in truth, she just wanted him to be there with her, with his arms around her, as he had done on the night Simon fell ill.
“Doctor?” she said quietly, the next time Stanforth came into the nursery.
He knelt at the boy’s bedside and began to prepare the medicine. “Yes, Your Grace?”
“May I ask you something?”
The doctor seemed to freeze. “Of course, Your Grace. What’s troubling you?
” He would not look at her. “Are you worried about the young master still? I assure you, he is improving. I realize that he isn’t yet alert and awake, but his fever is reducing well, and I am confident that in another day or two, he’ll be more like himself. ”
She was, of course, grateful for such positive news, but that was not what she wished to discuss.
“No… it is to do with my husband,” she said.
Stanforth poured too much onto the spoon, a dribble dripping down to the floor. He muttered under his breath and grabbed his own handkerchief to clean it up, before bringing the medicine to Simon’s lips.
She had the sense that he was delaying, buying some time for himself, but she could not be certain.
“Doctor?” she prompted.
“Goodness, I’m sorry,” he replied quickly. “Just grant me one more moment to give him another dose, and I’ll answer whatever you wish to ask.”
She frowned, that nagging sensation tugging at the back of her thoughts. The feeling that something was wrong.
Still, she waited patiently for the doctor to finish pouring the medicine and helping Simon to drink it down. Whatever curiosities she had, she would not risk her son’s welfare for them.
When he was done, he packed up his things and made to stand… as if she had not spoken to him at all.
“Doctor?” she said a third time, more impatient this time.
Stanforth blinked down at her. “What can I help you with?”
His voice was tight, and his gaze swiftly flitted away.
“Has my husband spoken to you about his condition since your return to Huntfield?” she asked, relieved to finally have his attention.
The doctor pursed his lips. “Uh… no, not particularly. We have briefly discussed how he is feeling, and all seems to be well.”
“Does he not seem… different to you?” she urged, if only to convince herself that she was being silly.
“Not really, Your Grace. He is… um… Well, he is quite himself, or so it appears to me.” Stanforth clawed a hand through his hair, clearly eager to be out of the room and out of the conversation.
But why? Do you know something that I do not? Has my husband taken a turn for the worse?
She had been considering the possibilities over the past couple of days, in an attempt to figure out where the smiles, the laughter, and the easy demeanor had gone. This was the most horrifying possibility of them all, that Malcolm’s injury was degenerative, causing him to forget more.
“You would tell me if his condition had worsened, would you not?” she pressed.
At that, the doctor looked at her properly, no longer shying away.
“Certainly I would, Your Grace. I promise you, his condition hasn’t worsened.
He’s not going to forget more or become incapacitated.
” He sighed. “As I have mentioned, amnesia is so uncommon and presents in such a multitude of ways that it has barely been studied. That being said, I am certain that His Grace will not deteriorate. In my medical opinion, he is on the path to recovery.”
Recovery? A faint shudder ran through her. Does that mean… remembering everything?
It was not that she wanted her husband to exist with a ten-year hole in his memories, but she did not know the Malcolm she married.
He was a stranger to her. The Malcolm who had ridden to Huntfield and thrown his arms around her was the one she cared for, the one she knew a little better; the one she wished to know more closely, and who had become a true father to Simon.
“That is good,” she said, hoping the doctor could not hear the reluctance in her voice.
Just then, another thought came to her.
“Did you happen to see my husband while you were in London?” she asked, as innocently as she could.
A flicker of unease passed across the doctor’s face. “Briefly, yes.”
“Did he summon you to the townhouse?”
Stanforth’s throat bobbed. “To a townhouse.”
“He told me that he went to find you,” she said. “Why would he have done that if there was nothing amiss with his condition? Surely, he went to you to seek treatment? Otherwise, he would have waited until you came back.”
“He had suffered a… um… difficulty with his head,” the doctor replied. “I suppose he feared that things had worsened, but I was able to reassure him.”
Octavia’s frown deepened, for a ‘difficulty with his head’ seemed like a peculiar way to describe a headache. Then again, maybe he was trying not to worry her.
“Where exactly did you meet with him, and please do not lie to me,” she said with surprising authority. She was a duchess, after all, though she often forgot.
The doctor grimaced. “At the residence of the Duke of Knotgill. I believe they are friends. Together, they came to find me, for I was… otherwise occupied with some acquaintances of mine from the Royal College. All three of us went back to the Duke of Knotgill’s townhouse, where, as I say, I checked your husband and reassured him.
” He paused uncertainly. “He was supposed to rest there, but he was gone before I woke at dawn.”
Octavia bristled at the mention of that name, the Duke of Knotgill. She still could not believe that such a rogue was acquainted with her husband, much less that Malcolm would truly be friends with him.
But he rode back to me once again.
The thought softened her worries and doubts, however temporarily. Wherever Malcolm was, it appeared he had a constant compulsion to return to her, even if it meant riding through the night.
“And you really do not think he seems different?” she asked, just one more time.
Stanforth hugged his medicine bag to his chest. “As I said, I think he seems entirely himself.”
With a sigh, Octavia nodded. Clearly, she was being paranoid, imagining problems that were not there.
It was more than likely that Malcolm was just concerned still, his worries about Simon making him quieter and less cheerful.
Indeed, Octavia could not say that she had been the most lighthearted version of herself either, so why was she expecting it of her husband?
“Thank you,” she said to the doctor.
He bowed his head. “It was my pleasure. I’ll come back in another couple of hours.
” He stepped forward, then turned. “You should get some rest, Your Grace. And eat something. Your son will want you to be in good spirits and good health when he wakes up. I see it all too often, the mother—and, indeed, sometimes the father—making themselves sick while their child is unwell.”
“I will try,” she promised with a smile.
“Very good.”
The doctor offered a sympathetic look before making his way out of the nursery, leaving Octavia to the soft, snuffling sounds of her son breathing in his sleep, and the gentle hum of the nursemaid, Millicent, who was folding fresh linens across the room.
“Millicent?” Octavia called out.
The nursemaid perked up. “Yes, Your Grace?”
“Do you think my husband seems different?”
Millicent cocked her head, contemplating the question. A moment later, she shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t think so, Your Grace.”
Octavia allowed herself a small, relieved smile. “No… No, that is what I thought.”