Page 71 of His Duchess to Remember

“I just needed a moment,” he told his wife.

“Too much food?” she asked, shyly perching beside him.

He looked out over the shadowed gardens, where trees towered like strange sentinels. “Something like that, aye.”

“I did not mean to disturb you,” she said after a moment. “I just… Well, I just thought we ought to be heading back to Huntfield soon. Simon might wake up and wonder where we are, and I do not want him to think that I have abandoned him.”

Malcolm glanced at his wife. “He is well again, ye ken.”

“He is better,” she corrected, “but I do not want anything to happen to him. What if he tries to find me and stumbles? What if he takes ill with another fever and I am not there to help him?”

The soldier part of him struggled with the instinct to tell her to get a hold of herself, that worrying would not do Simon or Octavia any favors, especially Simon.

But then he remembered the fear on her face on the night that Simon fell ill, and how she had pleaded not to lose him. How frantic she had been until Malcolm had put his arms around her. For such a long time, it had just been the two of them, mother and son; of course he was all she could think about, all that occupied her thoughts.

So, Malcolm swept aside the urge to be stern, and softened his voice, “It was lovely news for Evelyn and Hugo, wasn’t it? Ye can see they’re nervous, but I imagine they’d support each other through anything. That’s an enduring love, right there.”

“She has struggled so much,” Octavia said, nodding. “And they have both suffered the grief of their losses. If men could have children, I have no doubt that Hugo would offer to do it in Evelyn’s stead. An enduring love, indeed.”

She turned to him then, her hands clasped in her lap. “I did not know that your mother had you when she was so much older.”

“It doesn’t exactly come up in conversation,” he replied with a wary smile.

“I have never heard you speak about your brother before.”

He had known this might happen, that once he began, she would be too curious to leave it alone. But if it distracted her from her worries about Simon, then perhaps it might do some good.

“I don’t like to talk about him,” he said, swallowing. “It’s not exactly a warm story.”

She waited, her brow furrowed, her eyes gleaming in the low light. No words spoken, but an expectation that he might continue.

“His name was Barnaby, and I… adored him,” Malcolm relented. “He was younger than me, aye, but he was also smaller, quite slight, and nae at all interested in the things my father favored: boxing, shooting, hunting, anything competitive. He loved his books, his poetry, and… mercy, he had the sharpest mind. He could look at a page of arithmetic and figure it out in seconds. To my father, that meant he was weak.”

A lump began to form in Malcolm’s throat, memories marching to the forefront of his mind. Some happy, but all marred by the shadow that their father cast.

“What ye have to understand about my father is that he was a relentlessly cruel man,” he continued. “He was cruel for sport, cruel because it made him feel strong, cruel because it amused him, and cruel because he was the weak one. Weak of mind. As the heir, he wanted me to be able to protect our family, or so he said. So, whenever I made a mistake, it was Barnaby who got punished for it.

“It was supposed to teach me to be perfect, I suppose, but nay matter how hard I tried, I still made mistakes. Barnaby got beaten for the slightest error.” He swallowed thickly. “And he was tormented at his school, too. We couldn’t afford to be sent away to one of yer schools like Eton or Harrow, but I often wonder if he might have had some happiness in his life if he’d gone to a place like that.”

Octavia’s hand reached for his, her fingers sliding between his own, her grip tight and reassuring.

“I adored my brother, but I ken he hated me for being the cause of so much of his pain,” he said stiffly. “He tried nae to, but I could see it in his eyes sometimes. It got worse as I got older. I was working at my father’s business, and I wasn’t very good at it, but my brother wouldn’t ken about the mistakes I’d made until we got home and he received his beatings.

“One night, my father beat Barnaby so badly and… he was just lying in bed, his face all puffed, distorted beyond recognition, his arm possibly broken. I kenned I had to end it, so I joined the army. I thought that if I wasn’t there, my father would have nay reason to beat my brother… and there was a part of me that kenned that if I stayed, I would probably kill my father with my own bare hands. I was three-and-twenty, Barnaby was one-and-twenty.”

Octavia squeezed his hand. “I am so very sorry.”

“The funny thing is, I found peace at war. I was so certain that my brother would be all right, and the men around me were good men. I was weirdly happy.” He shook his head. “About a year later, I got a letter from my mother that my brother had attempted to take his own life, and the doctors didn’t ken how long he had left. I was allowed to go home to Edinburgh, and I… just held him. For days, I held him and told him how sorry I was. My leaving hadn’t made a difference; it had only made my father crueler and the beatings more constant. But Barnaby had kept that from me in his letters. My mother, too.

“He died in my arms, and I still don’t ken, will never ken, if I was forgiven,” he whispered. “My father wanted me to stay after the funeral, but I refused. I went back to war, and I hoped I would die out there. Instead, my mother died of a broken heart, and no matter how reckless I was, I just… couldn’t die. The men around me did, friends and brothers-in-arms, but I always seemed to survive. Same as my father, like the cockroach he was.”

He heard Octavia sniffle at his side, and put his fingertips beneath her chin, tilting her head up to look at him. Tears meandered down her cheeks, her eyes glittering with them. With a sad smile, he brushed them away with his thumb; he did not deserve her sympathy.

“At six-and-twenty, I got the news that my father had inherited a dukedom,” he continued. “A week later, I got the news that he had died on his way to the solicitor. He just collapsed in the street. And so, I became the Duke of Highcastle, forced to return home to claim my new title and bury the man I despised. I like to think it was my brother’s revenge, but he was never violent; he wouldn’t have punished our father like that.”

His face twisted with the pain of those bygone years, though Octavia’s hand was an anchor, holding him steady. And as he looked into her eyes, he felt the ice around his heart splinter, beating again after almost a decade, for her.

“You are a good man, Malcolm,” she said softly, looking up at him with such an earnest gaze that his heart cracked again. “You are a wonderful father; I am certain you were a wonderful brother, and I know that if Barnaby were still here, he would tell you, without doubt, that you are forgiven. After all, my dear Malcolm, it does not sound to me like you did anything wrong. You tried to fix it, you tried to keep him safe; no one can do any more than that, and I am sure he knew it.”