Page 43 of His Duchess to Remember

I should never have allowed Malcolm to stay, not even for a day.

She was the one who had permitted uncertainty and disruption to enter their peaceful home. She was the one who had set her son up for failure, for heartache.

Unless he has gone already?

A chill beetled through her, a discomfort churning in her belly. What if he had remembered in the night and taken the opportunity of her absence to depart Huntfield altogether?

It was not, she realized with sudden horror, just Simon who would miss Malcolm.

She had just been getting to know him, too.

“Let me down.” Simon wriggled in his mother’s arms, and she put him back on his own two feet.

Apparently recovered and reassured, the little boy wandered toward one of the stalls closest to the stable entrance, where Bessie lolled her big head over the side to give him a good sniff.

Simon laughed brightly and patted her nose, while she sniffed him more thoroughly, searching him for anything delicious to eat.

Satisfied that her son was in no immediate anguish, Octavia turned to the stablemaster.

“Do you know where His Grace went?” she asked.

The old man leaned on his hayfork and shook his head. “Just said he had a fancy to go out riding. Watched him head eastward, toward the woods.”

“And you said he has been gone for several hours?”

“Aye, Your Grace. But that’s to be expected. A stallion like his needs a good, long run, or they start causing trouble. I’ve seen horses like that kick a stall door down because they were bored and frustrated.”

Octavia chewed her lip, anxiety bubbling within her chest. “He said he would return?”

“Well… no, not exactly, but why wouldn’t he?” the stablemaster replied, an eyebrow raised. “He’s not going to ride all the way back to Scotland without provisions, and there weren’t any saddlebags. He’ll have just taken the stallion to the hills to wear him out; I’d wager this here hayfork on it, and it’s a fine hayfork.”

She could tell the stablemaster was trying to reassure her, humor in his voice, but she could not get her unease to quieten or her nerves to settle.

Just then, Simon cried out. “Look, Mama!”

Octavia whirled around… and stared in surprise at the sight of a bundle of fur, held awkwardly in her son’s arms. The creature mewled and struggled in Simon’s grip, claws digging into his jacket as it tried to climb up onto his shoulder.

Simon chuckled and released his hold, the orange cat successfully making its ascent, where it promptly draped itself around the boy’s neck like a scarf and closed its big, amber eyes. Its front claws remained hooked in Simon’s clothes for balance while it slept.

“Is that yours?” Octavia whispered to the stablemaster.

The old man shook his head. “Never seen it before, but it’s not so unusual to find strays sheltering here from time to time.”

“Simon, perhaps you should put the cat down,” Octavia urged, approaching her son. “You do not know where it has been. It might be dirty. It might be riddled with unpleasant things.”

The boy backed away, stubbornness flaring in his eyes. His mother’s stubbornness.

“I will keep her,” he said with a grin. “She’s my cat.”

“No, Simon, she is not. She is a stray cat. She does not belong to anyone, and I really think you should put her down before something crawls off her and onto you,” Octavia urged, shuddering.

She had once found fleas on the two lazy dogs who technically belonged to the household but were actually the gardener’s dogs: a pair of huge mastiffs who would have done anything to protect Simon. She had never quite recovered from the sight of seeing those awful little bugs creeping between the fur she had been stroking.

“She’s my cat,” Simon repeated.

“My darling, she is a free cat. She would not like to be kept in a house,” Octavia urged, thinking of those fleas jumping onto her dear boy, bringing him out in spots.

“She choosed me,” Simon insisted.