Page 20 of His Duchess to Remember

She nearly choked on her wine, her face radiating sudden heat. Was her husband… flirting with her?

“Well, you did,” she blurted out, her throat tight. “Actually… no, that is not entirely true. You did not walk away from us. You have taken very good care of us from afar, which you had promised to do.”

“I prefer being beside ye,” he said, turning in his chair, bringing himself a little bit closer to her.

Oh goodness… How am I supposed to get through a single conversation with this man when he keeps looking at me like that?

She took a breath, steeling herself. “We had a honeymoon. It was just for a week, then you left. I do not know where you went, but I stayed at Highcastle for three months, so I could be sure that I was with-child.”

Why was it so terribly embarrassing to tell the truth to a man who, somewhere in his addled mind, knew all of this already? He had been right there, even if he could not recall it.

“I left our honeymoon?” He sounded incredulous. “Well, now I am starting to wonder if ye’re telling me everything. There’s nay way I would have abandoned ye during our honeymoon, of all times.”

“It was… our agreement,” she urged, her cheeks flaming. “Agreed upon before we got married. I needed a very specific kind of husband, and you were him.”

He put his elbow on the table and rested his cheek against his palm, watching her with that disarming smile. “Specific in what way?”

“I needed a husband who wanted children but did not care about the rest,” she explained, her voice catching. “You… obliged. It was, I promise you, what you wanted too. A marriage of convenience, living separate lives. And when Simon arrived, there was no reason for us to… um… try again.”

She did not mention that she would have liked to have siblings for her son, in case he got the wrong idea. She had wanted many children, a whole host of them, but she had learned to be content with just one.

Malcolm shook his head. “I’d like to have a stern word with the fool who made that agreement with ye. Who could ever let a lass like ye go once he had ye at his side?”

Flustered and blushing furiously, Octavia sought to take another sip of her wine, struggling to swallow.

“The way ye are with me,” he said, his eyebrow raised, “anyone would think I’d never spoken like this to ye before.”

She cleared her throat. “Well, that is because you have not.” Her heart had begun to race, and she did not know how to slow it. “I confess, the Duke of Highcastle that I knew, that I married, is very different to…”

She wafted a hand in his general direction.

“I notice ye never use my name,” he said, with that devastating smile of his. “Ye should try it; ye might like it. Aye, ye could think of me as Malcolm and the man ye kenned as the Duke of Highcastle.”

She considered it, but it was not as helpful as he clearly thought it was. After all, this was not the kind of marriage she wanted, regardless of what she called him.

And imagine if, one moment, I am speaking to ‘Malcolm’ and the next minute he remembers everything, and I am speaking to the Duke. She could not even begin to imagine what the man she had actually married would make of such informality.

“I would prefer not to,” she said stiffly. “Indeed, I would prefer it if you behaved more like the man I remember.”

Malcolm shook his head. “Then, ye should prepare yerself, lass, because I’m nae planning to hide my attraction for my wife. I married the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I cannae be held responsible for admiring ye and telling ye how lovely ye are, every opportunity I get.” He paused, smirking. “Indeed, I mean to do the wooing that the old me clearly neglected to do, so that we might be the family we should be.”

She stared at him, unable to speak.

Evidently, he had struck his head much harder than the doctor had said, for this man was not even the slightest bit like her husband. He was a changeling. An impostor who wore Malcolm’s face and form. A threat to the peace and contentment that she had carefully crafted for herself, and not without reason.

She did not want to be wooed. She did not want to be courted. If she had wanted that, she would have sought a husband the usual way while she was still young and appealing to the gentlemen of the ton. At nine-and-twenty and married for five years, she had never thought that she would have to fend off a suitor again.

“I would not waste your efforts if I were you,” she said coolly. “I cannot prevent you from spending time with your son and building a relationship with him, but I will never be your wife. Not in the way you are suggesting. I liked our arrangement, and that is how it will remain. I promise you that.”

But Malcolm merely smirked, as if he knew something she did not, and sank back into his chair as the next course was served.

“So, ye don’t ken my wife at all?” Malcolm asked Doctor Stanforth, who had agreed to remain at Huntfield for a week or two. To ‘keep an eye on things.’

Stanforth sat across from him in the secondary parlor that no one else seemed to use. As such, it served as an excellent spot for Malcolm to gather his thoughts, quieting his mind in the hopes that it might be enough to coax his memories back.

The doctor shook his head. “Barely, Your Grace.”

“Were ye the doctor when she found out she was with-child?”