Page 23 of The Duchess’s Absolutely Delightful Dream (The Notorious Briarwoods #14)

W hat had he done?

He was in love. There was no denying it. It was the most brutal feeling he’d ever felt in his entire life. The loss of life he’d seen on battlefields, the loss of friends? That was a hell of its own.

Love?

Love was a hell he never could have hoped to understand.

Whoever had sung songs about love and the joys of it should be dug up, shaken, and pulled apart.

That was his opinion.

All the poems about love, except for the ones citing how terrible it was, should be destroyed. No one should be encouraged to be in love or feel love because he was being ripped apart by love.

How could love threaten to swallow up his sense of duty so entirely?

There was no question that it was making the attempt.

Octavian charged through the dark night across the heather. He did not know what possessed him, but he climbed up the peak, into the night.

Clouds covered the moon, making his path almost indiscernible.

A flash of light crossed the sky, and he realized that a storm had found him.

Thunder rumbled over the glen. Rain began to fall through the dark night. It slashed down over him, coating his clothes to his skin, smashing his hair to his head. He walked relentlessly through the cold, piercing rain as it dashed down on the land.

The cold water was merciless, like the brutality of the love that he felt.

His instinct, every part of him, told him that he should go back down into the glen, seize her, pull her to him, claim her as his own, and never let her go. She was his, his woman, like the old days when a man saw a woman and claimed her.

Yes, that’s who she was. His.

But he was not ruled by such forces as those men of old.

Duty, his service, his vows to that? That was controlling him now, wasn’t it? He had to stay strong. He had to hold tight. And yet, the harder he held tight, the stronger he committed himself to those vows to be hard as stone, the more he felt as if he was rattling apart.

How could he leave her? He was the worst of men. A complete and total bastard. Her husband, her best friend, had died, leaving her to face the world alone, and now he was going to leave her, but it was because of a noble endeavor.

Surely, that made it acceptable somehow. Surely, that was right. It was at least a justification.

A hollow, cruel justification.

He swallowed back bitter gall and strode higher and ever higher up into the craggy peaks, his feet catching on the wet grass and twisting heather.

He did not stop.

He did not allow himself to look back over his shoulder. He did not know what drove him, but on he went, farther and farther until he found the path that led to the glen she had taken him to.

Lightning flashed again overhead, and he spotted the cottages. They looked like ghosts in the darkness, like echoes of the past. Like bones, waiting for the soul to return.

Once this place had been full of hope. Once this place had been full of the lives of people who were born and lived and died in the ever-continuing circle that was the story of humanity.

They were gone now.

The cottages looked even worse in the storm.

Wind whipped at the collapsing roofs. Rain pounded down on the structures.

His heart sank.

He wanted to curse, and so he did. He threw back his head and cried out to the heavens as lightning flashed across the night.

He raged. Raged against the misfortune of finding love right before he had to go back to war. Why? Why did it have to be like this of all things?

And as his rage clawed at his throat, and he railed against the unfairness of it all, the storm began to dissipate.

And when his throat was hoarse and he lowered himself to his knees, the rain, the storm, as it seemed to do in these Highlands, passed as quickly as it came.

And he was left alone, drenched, cold, shaking.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed, man?”

He tensed.

He knew who it was. He closed his eyes. But he did not wish to see him.

“Please,” Octavian said, “not now. I cannot face you right now.”

“And I’m not giving you a choice,” the Duke of Rossbrea countered.

A strong hand came down on Octavian’s shoulder, but there was no harshness to that touch. “You have to face it, and me, and I won’t leave you alone like this because I think I’m to blame.”

“Why did you bring me here?” Octavian bit out. “Tell me, was it to be some sort of pawn in your sister’s life? When you met me, did you say, ‘Och, there’s the English fool that I can bring up to my estate’? Did you know it would end like this?”

“I had no idea it would end like this,” Rossbrea said wearily.

“And if I had, I never would’ve invited you.

No.” He stopped himself. “That’s not true.

I think I would’ve invited you still, because even though you’re on your knees here, I still have hope.

It is the curse of the Highlanders to have hope,” he sighed.

Rossbrea circled around him and knelt before Octavian, like brothers in arms of old, ready to take the vows of knightly service. The duke’s eyes flashed with resolve and suffering.

“We’ve had everything ripped away from us up here in so many ways. Even myself.”

Octavian blinked. What the bloody hell did Teague mean? He was a duke.

Rossbrea gestured to his wet clothes. “Look at me. I don’t dress like a great clan laird.

I don’t even speak like a great clan laird.

That’s been ripped away from me. Our music, our language, our way of life.

I speak and dress like an Englishman because I must, or I risk losing the power I have to help my people.

But when I met you, I knew you were a man to be reckoned with, a good man, and I thought, he needs peace.

He needs a bit of healing. I could see that you were on the brink, laughing, making jokes, and yet the tension in you was so intense. ”

Octavian sucked in a surprised breath as the force of his friend’s words fell on him. How had he not realized how much pain the Scot was in? “You didn’t bring me here for your sister?”

“No,” the duke said honestly, “I didn’t.

I brought you here for you. My sister was a lucky part of it.

” His voice dimmed. “Or so I thought. When we stood in the ballroom that first night, that’s when it struck me that the two of you would both enjoy each other and have a bit of a laugh.

It never occurred to me that she would fall in love with you.

You’re completely the opposite of what Hamish was.

Hamish was quiet and soft and gentle. He loved to roam the hills, but he made no war on anything.

You are loud and brash and a warrior. It never occurred to me that she, that you—dear God, man—that you would steal her heart, that she might one day wish to leave these Highlands to be with someone like you, that she would fall in love with a man who could be taken from her.

Do you think I’d want such a thing twice for my sister? ”

“No,” Octavian said, as he truly came to understand. “I suppose I don’t, but what am I to do? That is exactly the position that I am in. I have fallen in love with her.”

“And she loves you,” the duke said. “So what are you going to do, pretend that you don’t?”

“I have to,” he said.

“Then you are a liar and a coward, and those are two things that I never thought I would say about you.”

He snapped his gaze up to his friend. “You can say that? To me?”

The duke’s brow furrowed and pain tightened his mouth. “I did not think I could, but I must. If you are going to run away from here, if you are going to leave her and not understand the power of what you have, then that is what I must say.”

“But what about my men? What about the—”

“What about them?” the duke challenged. “Do you think they will do better having an officer who cannot even admit the truth to himself? No, this is what I have to say to you. You think that if you give yourself over to her, that you are putting everyone at risk, but this is what I think: If you do not give yourself to her, then you are only fighting for a flag, for a country, for an idea. But if you fight for love? For her? You will be fighting for so much more. You will be fighting for a legacy. You will be fighting for the bonny children you could have with her. And you will be fighting for a world that will be better.”

The duke grabbed his hand, clasping it as if making a blood oath.

“You must look ahead, Octavian. I would not usually say that to anyone. I usually think we have to live in the present, but you? You do not even allow yourself to think of the future, and that has to stop. You need to dare to believe. You need to dare to believe you’re going to be an old man, nurturing a country with new ideals, raising children who will change the world, and living with a wife who loves you very much. ”

Octavian swallowed. Was it true? Could it be true? Was the duke right?

And just as his own heart and mind began to realize that, yes, it could, a cry pierced through the air. He spotted it soaring overhead.

An osprey. It dashed down and landed on the cottage roof. Gazing at him, tilting its head side to side.

And then another soared down, joining it. The two birds sat side by side, majestic and fierce.

“They mate for life, you know,” the duke said. “Once they find love, even if they must part for a time to migrate, they always return to each other.”

For life.

Octavian looked at the glorious creatures and felt a moment’s peace, a moment of belonging, a moment in which he knew that this was happening just as it should, and that he was going to go back down into the glen after the storm, freer than he had ever been.