Page 19 of His Duchess to Remember

“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.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Octavia had not meant to cause any trouble, but as Malcolm ate his way through the next two courses of white fish with lemon slices and succulent roast chicken with buttered vegetables in complete silence, she knew she had struck a nerve.

For a moment after she had mentioned him fighting in the war, he had almost transformed back into the man she remembered. The man who had been brusque before their wedding, indifferent during, and surprisingly gentle but still distant afterwards. A hard, cold man.

Worried about her son meeting that version of her husband instead of the warm, playful one from the greenhouse, she cleared her throat and steeled herself.

“I should speak to the doctor about what you do and do not remember, so I do not make a mistake again,” she said.

Malcolm glanced at her. “Ye didn’t make a mistake. I can’t remember much of the war, but I ken I don’t like speaking of it.” He sighed. “It’s a feeling in my body, rather than a memory. Still, ye weren’t to ken that.”

She swallowed, a faint prickle of warmth running up the back of her neck. If he could remember the war by feeling, then what else could he remember? Did his body remember their brief honeymoon? Is that why he had embraced her so warmly when he came into the drawing room, his body telling him that there was a connection between them that a memory would refute?

“Do you have any ‘feelings’ about this manor?” she asked, reaching for her glass of wine and taking a rather large sip.

He shook his head. “Nae really.”

“Highcastle?”

“Misery,” he replied simply.

She gulped down another mouthful. “And me?”

“I’m still figuring them out,” he said with a smile. “But I ken ye’re beautiful, and ye’re warm, and ye’re the kind of lass I wouldn’t be able to walk away from.”