Page 31 of His Duchess to Remember

I won’t embarrass ye, lass.

“Good. I’m glad.” The butler smiled. “Can I fetch you anything while you wait?”

Malcolm shook his head. “No, thank ye. It can’t be much longer now, else we’ll be verging on offensively late.” He paused. “Does Simon sleep well?”

“What do you mean, Your Grace?” Mr. Lincoln paused.

“Does he sleep through the night?” Malcolm glanced up the stairs once more. “I don’t want him to wake and wonder where his parents are.”

The butler smiled. “He sleeps well, Your Grace. He won’t even know you are gone.”

It should have been a comfort, but the words struck Malcolm in a way he had not expected. He won’t even ken I am gone. Perhaps that had been true over the past few years, but he refused to let it be true for the next five, ten, fifteen years.

Doctor Stanforth was still trying to rack his brain for ways to fix Malcolm’s affliction, but the longer Malcolm lived without his memories of the past decade, the more convinced he became that he was better off without them.

Important things could be relearned. The rest did not matter. Only his wife and his son mattered.

At that moment, she appeared: a vision in dark blue, embellished with glittering spangles that made her look like the night’s sky, awash with stars. Her hair had been curled and pinned, studded with little pearls, and there was a sapphire at her throat.

Mercy…

She looked radiant. So beautiful, so ethereal, so perfect that he once again had to ask himself what on earth had possessed him to stay away from her.

“I wish you luck, Your Grace,” Mr. Lincoln whispered with a pleased smile. “Don’t forget your steps.”

“I won’t,” Malcolm replied, too distracted to spare the man any of his attention.

Octavia seemed shy as she stood there at the top of the stairs, her palms anxiously smoothing down the front of her skirts.

Malcolm moved closer to the bottom of the stairs and, with a smile, lifted his hand toward her, beckoning for her to come to him.

Cheeks rosy, her gaze cast down, she began to descend.

“Definitely worth the wait,” he said as she reached him, her hand slipping into his.

Her blush deepened. “Apologies. My maid had some trouble getting my hair to behave. It does not like to be pinned into submission.”

“Then, ye should have worn it down,” he teased, imagining how long it might be, how soft and silky it might feel to the touch.

She gasped quietly. “I could not possibly! It would be a scandal.”

“More’s the pity.” He weaved her arm through his. “Although, ye look astonishingly beautiful as ye are.”

She turned her face away from him, but he could have sworn he saw the ghost of a smile upon her lips before she quickly covered it.

“Come, we should depart,” she said stiffly. “I fear my unruly hair has already made us late and, unfortunately, unless my locks are on fire, most do not accept it as an excuse.”

She has a sense of humor too.

It might not have seemed like much but to him, that small joke almost felt like ice beginning to thaw. A warmth, tentatively reciprocated.

The carriage journey to Joan and Laurence’s estate was a blessedly short one, for Huntfield House was perfectly situated to be within reach of Octavia’s friends. A happy coincidence that she was perpetually grateful for.

“The trousers… look well on you,” she said awkwardly, unable to bear the silence that stretched between her side of the squabs and Malcolm’s.

“Well, that’s fortunate, because they don’t feel so pleasant,” he replied, lounging a little. “I’ll never understand which fool decided to trap a man’s legs in tight fabric instead of letting them be free. Ye didn’t see the Romans marching around in trousers; it’s probably why they were so victorious.”

Octavia resisted the urge to chuckle. “It is funny how things change,” she said instead. “Now, gentlemen would raise their eyebrows at a man wearing anything resembling a skirt.”