Page 57 of His Duchess to Remember

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.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Octavia stirred to a slice of hazy sunlight cutting through a tiny gap in the drapes, straight across her eyes.

She blinked and, stifling a groan at the dull ache in her bones, pushed herself into a sitting position. She had no memory of falling asleep, but it had still been dark when she came to the nursery, and now it was assuredly morning. Late morning, too, judging by the intensity of the light.

Rubbing her eyes, she realized that she had fallen asleep right next to her son, at an awkward angle, so that her legs had been hanging half off the bed, while the rest of her had been squashed onto the narrow space between Simon and the edge of the bed.