Page 25 of The Duchess’s Absolutely Delightful Dream (The Notorious Briarwoods #14)

Five years later

Scotland

Summer

O ctavian had not been wrong.

The Battle of Waterloo had been one of the greatest battles the world had ever known. It would likely be remembered as one of the greatest as well.

No doubt, men and women would recount it for centuries.

It had changed the world, and thousands of men had died or been wounded and had not gone home.

Their bodies had littered those far-off fields. Those lost souls would become a part of that land. They would never go back to the countries of their births. But Octavian was not one of them.

No, Octavian had come home.

And there were days when the war still came to him at night or in the quiet afternoons as he walked through the Highlands.

He could still see the faces of all those men. He could smell the gunpowder on the wind. He could hear the cannons roar and the horses scream as they fell to fire.

But here, in the peace of the Highlands, with his wife’s hand in his, he was healing. How he loved the feel of her hand in his, leading him through life’s difficulties.

He’d thought when they met that he was the one who was supposed to teach her how to be happy, how to let the past go, how to live life fully.

How foolish he had been! For it was she who had taught him all those things instead. Or perhaps, in truth, they had taught each other.

They were still teaching other. They always would. Which made their love even more wonderful.

Here, he knew how beautiful the world actually was, how pain and death could make something beautiful. And as they crossed up into the little glen where the cottages still remained, he gazed at those little homes.

Now, in high summer, the roofs were covered in wildflowers. The yellow and pink flowers bobbed on the thatch that was retiring to the earth.

It was a beautiful sight.

True, they were a sign of that which had been taken, but the flowers were a promise of what was to come.

Octavian’s small son and his smaller, feisty daughter ran and laughed through the glen, climbing over rocks, chasing rabbits.

And overhead, two ospreys wheeled, dancing in the sky, crying out their song, united. They had returned to each other, as they always did. They were one.

As was he with the woman of his heart.

The End