Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Here you are,” Octavia’s voice roused Malcolm from a dinner-induced stupor. “I did not know where you had gone.”
While Hugo, Evelyn, and Octavia had been amusing themselves in the drawing room, he had slipped away to steal some peace and quiet to try and soothe his agitated mind.
The terrace had seemed a safe enough place, on a bench in the twilight, watching the stars emerge one by one like candles in city windows.
“I just needed a moment,” he told his wife.
“Too much food?” she asked, shyly perching beside him.
He looked out over the shadowed gardens, where trees towered like strange sentinels. “Something like that, aye.”
“I did not mean to disturb you,” she said after a moment. “I just… Well, I just thought we ought to be heading back to Huntfield soon. Simon might wake up and wonder where we are, and I do not want him to think that I have abandoned him.”
Malcolm glanced at his wife. “He is well again, ye ken.”
“He is better,” she corrected, “but I do not want anything to happen to him. What if he tries to find me and stumbles? What if he takes ill with another fever and I am not there to help him?”
The soldier part of him struggled with the instinct to tell her to get a hold of herself, that worrying would not do Simon or Octavia any favors, especially Simon.
But then he remembered the fear on her face on the night that Simon fell ill, and how she had pleaded not to lose him.
How frantic she had been until Malcolm had put his arms around her.
For such a long time, it had just been the two of them, mother and son; of course he was all she could think about, all that occupied her thoughts.
So, Malcolm swept aside the urge to be stern, and softened his voice, “It was lovely news for Evelyn and Hugo, wasn’t it? Ye can see they’re nervous, but I imagine they’d support each other through anything. That’s an enduring love, right there.”
“She has struggled so much,” Octavia said, nodding. “And they have both suffered the grief of their losses. If men could have children, I have no doubt that Hugo would offer to do it in Evelyn’s stead. An enduring love, indeed.”
She turned to him then, her hands clasped in her lap. “I did not know that your mother had you when she was so much older.”
“It doesn’t exactly come up in conversation,” he replied with a wary smile.
“I have never heard you speak about your brother before.”
He had known this might happen, that once he began, she would be too curious to leave it alone. But if it distracted her from her worries about Simon, then perhaps it might do some good.
“I don’t like to talk about him,” he said, swallowing. “It’s not exactly a warm story.”
She waited, her brow furrowed, her eyes gleaming in the low light. No words spoken, but an expectation that he might continue.
“His name was Barnaby, and I… adored him,” Malcolm relented.
“He was younger than me, aye, but he was also smaller, quite slight, and nae at all interested in the things my father favored: boxing, shooting, hunting, anything competitive. He loved his books, his poetry, and… mercy, he had the sharpest mind. He could look at a page of arithmetic and figure it out in seconds. To my father, that meant he was weak.”
A lump began to form in Malcolm’s throat, memories marching to the forefront of his mind. Some happy, but all marred by the shadow that their father cast.
“What ye have to understand about my father is that he was a relentlessly cruel man,” he continued.
“He was cruel for sport, cruel because it made him feel strong, cruel because it amused him, and cruel because he was the weak one.
Weak of mind. As the heir, he wanted me to be able to protect our family, or so he said.
So, whenever I made a mistake, it was Barnaby who got punished for it.
“It was supposed to teach me to be perfect, I suppose, but nay matter how hard I tried, I still made mistakes. Barnaby got beaten for the slightest error.” He swallowed thickly.
“And he was tormented at his school, too. We couldn’t afford to be sent away to one of yer schools like Eton or Harrow, but I often wonder if he might have had some happiness in his life if he’d gone to a place like that. ”
Octavia’s hand reached for his, her fingers sliding between his own, her grip tight and reassuring.
“I adored my brother, but I ken he hated me for being the cause of so much of his pain,” he said stiffly.
“He tried nae to, but I could see it in his eyes sometimes. It got worse as I got older. I was working at my father’s business, and I wasn’t very good at it, but my brother wouldn’t ken about the mistakes I’d made until we got home and he received his beatings.
“One night, my father beat Barnaby so badly and… he was just lying in bed, his face all puffed, distorted beyond recognition, his arm possibly broken. I kenned I had to end it, so I joined the army. I thought that if I wasn’t there, my father would have nay reason to beat my brother…
and there was a part of me that kenned that if I stayed, I would probably kill my father with my own bare hands.
I was three-and-twenty, Barnaby was one-and-twenty. ”
Octavia squeezed his hand. “I am so very sorry.”
“The funny thing is, I found peace at war. I was so certain that my brother would be all right, and the men around me were good men. I was weirdly happy.” He shook his head.
“About a year later, I got a letter from my mother that my brother had attempted to take his own life, and the doctors didn’t ken how long he had left.
I was allowed to go home to Edinburgh, and I…
just held him. For days, I held him and told him how sorry I was.
My leaving hadn’t made a difference; it had only made my father crueler and the beatings more constant.
But Barnaby had kept that from me in his letters. My mother, too.
“He died in my arms, and I still don’t ken, will never ken, if I was forgiven,” he whispered.
“My father wanted me to stay after the funeral, but I refused. I went back to war, and I hoped I would die out there. Instead, my mother died of a broken heart, and no matter how reckless I was, I just… couldn’t die.
The men around me did, friends and brothers-in-arms, but I always seemed to survive.
Same as my father, like the cockroach he was. ”
He heard Octavia sniffle at his side, and put his fingertips beneath her chin, tilting her head up to look at him. Tears meandered down her cheeks, her eyes glittering with them. With a sad smile, he brushed them away with his thumb; he did not deserve her sympathy.
“At six-and-twenty, I got the news that my father had inherited a dukedom,” he continued.
“A week later, I got the news that he had died on his way to the solicitor. He just collapsed in the street. And so, I became the Duke of Highcastle, forced to return home to claim my new title and bury the man I despised. I like to think it was my brother’s revenge, but he was never violent; he wouldn’t have punished our father like that. ”
His face twisted with the pain of those bygone years, though Octavia’s hand was an anchor, holding him steady. And as he looked into her eyes, he felt the ice around his heart splinter, beating again after almost a decade, for her.
“You are a good man, Malcolm,” she said softly, looking up at him with such an earnest gaze that his heart cracked again.
“You are a wonderful father; I am certain you were a wonderful brother, and I know that if Barnaby were still here, he would tell you, without doubt, that you are forgiven. After all, my dear Malcolm, it does not sound to me like you did anything wrong. You tried to fix it, you tried to keep him safe; no one can do any more than that, and I am sure he knew it.”
He found he could not breathe properly, overwhelmed by a wave of feeling that he had held back for so many years, powered forward by a new, different current of emotion that he did not know what to do with.
“I can only hope,” Malcolm said with a shrug.
“I mean it, Malcolm. You are a good man,” she urged.
He frowned at the insistence in her words and realized he had waited quite some time to hear someone say that. Not that he necessarily believed it, but still…
“And,” she added shyly, “I am glad that you came to Huntfield. I am glad that some part of your mind thought to ride to me, even if you did not know me.”
Even with his memories intact, he still could not fathom why he had set off from Highcastle with the singular determination to reach his wife.
There was no explanation for it, and though his mind was in turmoil about whether to stay and when to tell her that his memories had come back, deep down he did not regret coming to Huntfield either.
I’m falling for ye. The realization hit him harder than any blow to the head. Heaven help me, and heaven help ye, but I’m falling for ye.
Before he could think to stop himself, his hand moved to cradle the side of Octavia’s face, his thumb lightly brushing the apple of her cheek. And as he gazed deeply into those shining blue eyes of hers, his head dipped, compelled by forces beyond his discipline and self-control.
He caught sight of her eyes fluttering shut a second before his mouth grazed hers, and his own eyes closed, the softness of her lips like silk against his, that tender press conjuring up a barrage of memories from five years ago.
The first kiss he had done his best to forget, when she had trembled in her bedchamber, and he had sunk to his knees before her, determined to do anything to calm her nerves and let her know that she was safe with him.
It was time travel, transporting him to the moment where he had known he might be in danger of wanting more from his marriage than he had promised.
He saw himself sitting beside her as she slept, admiring that peaceful, beautiful face and imagining a future where every morning began with her and every day ended with her.
I think I loved ye, even then…
Rather than pull away in alarm, his arm slipped around her waist and pulled her closer as his mouth caught hers once more.
Until that moment, Octavia had not realized just how much she had longed to be kissed by her husband again. Indeed, how much she had missed being kissed by him.
During their honeymoon, there had always been a voice in the back of her head, telling her that this was just temporary, that soon they would part ways and anything that happened between them would be forgotten.
But now, with him at Huntfield, so involved in her life and Simon’s, that voice had faded.
My old dream might yet come true.
She looped her arms around Malcolm’s neck and kissed him harder, relishing the feeling of being so tightly held in his arms. The strength of him made her feel safe, the passion of his kiss allowing her to hope for love, the warmth of him creating a bubble around them that nothing and no one could pierce.
Sinking deeper into the kiss, remembering, she thought of how wonderful it would be if she could kiss him like this whenever she pleased. A true husband and wife, with an enduring love like Evelyn and Hugo, or Frances and Dominic, or Joan and Laurence.
As she let her fingertips slide into his hair and smiled against his mouth as he kissed her slowly, a sudden thought ricocheted through her skull.
“At six-and-twenty, I got the news…” Malcolm had said.
Another realization slithered into her mind: the beating that had broken Barnaby’s arm happened when Malcolm was three-and-twenty. He went to war afterward, and, about a year later, his brother died, which would have made him around twenty-four.
Yet, he was supposed to have lost his memories of the past decade. If that was true, how could he possibly remember all of those things?
She pulled back sharply. “Malcolm?”
He smiled at her, his warm, rough palm still resting against her cheek. “What is it, lass?”
“Have… Have your memories come back?”
A flicker of something passed through his eyes, his jaw tensing as his head dipped in a nod. “Aye, they have.”
She took a moment to catch her breath, shock squeezing the air out of her lungs.
“And when, exactly, did they come back?” she managed to croak.
He expelled a heavy sigh. “About two weeks ago, on the bowling green.”
Her eyes widened, and she forgot to breathe entirely, staring at him in abject disbelief.
She had not been going mad; he was different when he came back from London.
All this time, she had been telling herself that it was just Simon’s sickness or exhaustion or any number of viable excuses when, really, he had been his old self all along.
Playing the part of the Malcolm that she had come to care for.
Pushing against his chest, she got to her feet, her eyes narrowed, her lip curled. “You have been lying to me.”
It was not a question.
“Nay, I was waiting for the right time to tell ye,” he replied in earnest. “I didn’t ken how to.”
“You open your mouth, and you tell me,” she said curtly. “You do not pretend to be someone that you are not.”
He reached for her hand. “I’m me, lass.”
“No. No, you are not, because the Malcolm who came to Huntfield would never have kept that from me.” Her throat tightened, her eyes stinging with tears that she would not permit to fall. “I would like to go home now.”
“Octavia, please. Just let me explain.”
She shook her head. “I think you have said everything that needs to be said.”
Hugging herself so that he could not take her by the hand, she marched off across the terrace and did not much care if he followed or not.
All this time, you let me think I was mad. All this time, you were an impostor. All this time, you made me believe there was at least one gentleman in this world, aside from my brother, that I could trust.
She touched the lips that he had just kissed and wished for the first time in a while that he had stayed in Scotland for good.