Seeking Persephone

by Sarah M. Eden

  She’d kissed him. She had kissed him. At first he’d been too surprised to do anything but stand there, smelling her. Then she’d touched him. Touched those blasted, bloody scars, exactly the way Mother always had when he was little. She would run a finger down the longest one, the one that followed his jaw. “My poor boy,” she’d say.

  Adam wanted no one’s pity.

  “I’m sorry,” Persephone had said. She might as well have offered a “my poor boy.” A man comes to his wife’s aid after she’s thrown from a horse, and what does he get in return? Pity. He’d all but carried her back to the house, but Persephone didn’t see him as her champion. All Persephone saw were the scars.

  “It is too blasted quiet in here,” Adam grumbled, sitting up again.

  A howl sounded outside. Adam watched the door. It didn’t open.

  “This is ridiculous.” Adam got to his feet again. He couldn’t sleep, and he knew deuced well it was because Persephone wasn’t there.

  He hadn’t had insomnia since childhood. The first few weeks after Mother had moved to London, he hadn’t been able to sleep. Nothing Nurse Robbie said or did had helped. He’d eventually learned to force himself to sleep—not an easy feat for a six-year-old.

  Mother never had come back. Persephone was going to.

  Adam marched to the connecting door and opened it. Persephone wasn’t asleep, Adam realized, seeing the bed empty. He found her in the next instant, sitting on the window seat, holding back the thin, blue curtains and gazing out into the darkness.

  “Persephone.” He kept his tone detached and neutral.

  She jumped at the sound of his voice. “Adam!” Persephone turned to look at him, dropping the curtain.

  “Aren’t you asleep?” Adam asked, feeling like an idiot for posing such a pointless question.

  “I couldn’t seem to get to sleep.”

  “Are you stiff from your fall?” The memory of her accident flashed quickly through his mind.

  Persephone shook her head. A howl echoed outside the window, and she visibly tensed. She turned to the window, pulling back the curtain once more.

  “They are loud tonight,” Adam said.

  Persephone nodded mutely.

  “How long do you plan to sit at that window and worry over the wolves?” Adam fought down a surge of empathy for Persephone. He knew how nervous the howling made her.

  “Until they stop,” she answered in a tiny voice.

  She meant to sit there all night instead of coming into his room, where she would actually be able to sleep? No point in both of them being awake.

  Adam crossed to her bed and pulled off the blanket. He reached her at the window and draped it over her shoulders.

  “Adam?” Persephone looked up at him, so obviously confused.

  “You should have come in when the wolves first started.” Adam made his way to the door.

  “Come in?” she repeated.

  “And curled up on the bed.” He stopped at the door and turned toward her, waiting.

  “You knew?” Persephone whispered, her face paling noticeably. “I . . . I thought . . . I thought you were asleep.”

  “Asleep?” Adam answered, with an ironic raise of his eyebrows. “That’s the problem.”

  “Problem?”

  “I can’t sleep.” He shook his head at the ridiculousness of it. “You’ve ruined the room for me.”

  “What do you mean, I’ve ruined it?” Her forehead creased with confusion.

  “My bedchamber used to be quiet. Then you started coming and making all those noises—”

  “Noises?”

  “When you sleep.”

  “I make noises?” Her pallor began to pink.

  “And you move,” Adam added. “Constantly.”

  “Good heavens,” she whispered, pressing her hands to her cheeks. The blanket slipped to the floor.

  Adam let out a frustrated sigh and crossed back to her.

  “I have never been so embarrassed in all my life.” Persephone turned away from him. “I was so sure you were asleep.”

  Adam picked the blanket up again and wrapped it around her. Lavender. Adam stepped back. Distance, he reminded himself.

  “You must think I am an absolute coward,” Persephone whispered. “And presumptuous. And . . . and . . .”

  Adam held his hand out to her. She stood there, silently, just looking at his hand. Adam let it drop. Obviously, she didn’t want his company any more than his own mother had, any more than every other person he’d ever known.

  Adam walked away, moving to the door. He should never have come in. The Duke of Kielder begged favors of no one. He’d learned to force himself to sleep once—he could do it again. And he didn’t care!

  “Adam?”

  He stopped on the spot.

  “Do I really make noises in my sleep?”

  He nodded.

  “Loud noises?” She sounded uncomfortable.

  “No.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his dressing gown. “Like . . . like a puppy. Little noises.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?” She wore the blanket wrapped around her precisely the way she had every night for weeks.

  “I’ve grown used to it.” He found himself too uncomfortable with the conversation to continue looking at her.

  “I don’t want to bother you.” She sounded closer.

  “You won’t.”

  “All right.”

  “All right?” Adam looked over his shoulder at her.

  “The wolves don’t bother me as much in your bedchamber.” Persephone even smiled a little. She passed through the connecting door.

  “Are they quieter in there?” Adam followed her through the door.

  “No,” she replied. “The way I’ve figured it, if the pack ever actually makes it into the castle, they’ll eat you first.”

  Adam was grateful he walked behind her. That comment brought a smile to his face before he could stop it. One look at his disfigured smile, and they’d be right back to “I’m sorry” and “my poor boy.”

  A minute later they’d returned to the established routine. Persephone lay curled in a ball, securely wrapped in her blankets. Adam could feel himself growing tired already.

  How was it that in only a few weeks he’d come to depend on her for something as vital as sleep? Adam had promised himself after Mother had left twenty years ago, he would never depend on anyone.

  “People depend on dukes. Dukes do not depend on people,” Father used to say. He’d never said that before Mother moved to Town.

  “Good night, Adam,” Persephone said from the ball of blankets.

  Nurse Robbie used to say that: Good night, little Adam. No one else ever had. Adam closed his eyes. He could almost picture her rocking beside his bed. Why were memories of his one-time nurse suddenly flooding back? In twenty years he hadn’t thought of her once, and in the past month those memories wouldn’t stop.

  “Good night, Persephone,” Adam muttered in reply.

  What was happening to him? He’d made a fool of himself over Persephone’s fall earlier. He ought to have stayed calm and detached.

  He was chasing down his wife, practically begging for her company. He needed her nearby just to sleep.

  Now he had turned mawkish over a childhood memory.

  Adam rubbed his eyes. Maybe it was a temporary illness, something that would pass.

  “Adam?”

  Why was it that when Persephone said his name like that, quiet and uncertain, his heart seemed to thud a little harder? He shifted his eyes enough to look at the talking ball of blankets. As usual, she faced away from him.

  “What?” he asked, managing not to snap at her in his frustration.

  She hesitated. For a minute Adam thought he had offended her, and it bothered him. Giving offense never bothered him. What the blazes was happening to him?

  “Why did you decide to get married?” She whispered the question, but without tears, without any threat of erupting emotions. It s
eemed almost as if Persephone was truly just curious about his motivation.

  “At the time it seemed like a good idea.”

  “Does it now?”

  How did he answer that? In a lot of ways it had turned into a horrible idea. Married life hadn’t turned out the way he’d anticipated. His plans had been for a wife desperate enough to marry that she wouldn’t care one way or another what her husband was like. And when a man married a desperate, uncaring woman, reciprocating those feelings was easy.

  But he had married Persephone. Instead of life as usual at Falstone, he wondered about her and worried about her. She was supposed to have been plain and unappealing, but was pretty—more than pretty, really, with an aura of determined joy about her that was unlike any person he’d ever encountered. She attempted to smile through tears. She stood up in adversity. She wasn’t cowed or browbeaten.

  She wasn’t what he’d wanted. A lady like her, he was discovering, could not be easily dismissed.

  “Mrs. Adcock said you would.” Persephone’s reply caught Adam off guard. In his reflection, he’d almost forgotten her there.

  “Said I would what?” It felt strange talking to a pile of bedclothes.

  “Regret marrying me.”

  Adam felt his jaw tense.

  “At the Pointers’ several days ago, Mrs. Adcock said to Miss Greenburrough that most gentlemen who pay for a wife regret the purchase in the end. It was blatantly obvious she referred to our marriage settlement.”

  Adam’s entire body tensed. He knew Mr. Adcock was a jack-a-napes but hadn’t realized how well suited he and his wife really were.

  “Mrs. Adcock had mentioned her sizable dowry at least a dozen times, so I happened to ask Lady Hettersham, loudly enough for Mrs. Adcock to hear, whether or not it seemed odd that some ladies found it necessary to offer money to a prospective bridegroom in order to bring him up to scratch. No gentleman would accept a horse so ill-recommended that he had to be bribed to accept it.”

  He laughed. Adam Boyce, Duke of Kielder, actually laughed out loud. He could not remember once, in the past twenty years, laughing out loud at anything.

  “I thought Mrs. Adcock’s tea would come flying out her ears—she looked so livid.” Persephone laughed as well. “Mrs. Pointer was hard-pressed to maintain her countenance. She later informed me that Mrs. Adcock had been singularly proud of her dowry for years. Lady Hettersham very much doubts Mrs. Adcock will be as fond of mentioning that as she has been—at least amongst the ladies of the neighborhood.”

  “You compared her to a horse? I doubt even I could have produced such a cutting retort.” He chuckled again. “Well done, Persephone.”

  “I have not pulled caps with anyone in years.” Persephone giggled.

  Giggled? Somehow Adam had never pictured that sound coming from a grown woman. And, stranger still, he found himself smiling at it.

  “I felt like a regular warrior.” Laughter rang in her tone. “Perhaps before I next call at the vicarage, I should try on one of the suits of armor for size. I could check the armory for a jousting lance and simply unseat my adversary as she rides up to the vicarage. I would be the terror of the neighborhood.”

  She laughed at that. So did Adam. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized how good it could feel to simply laugh. And at what? A fanciful picture of his wife riding around the neighborhood knocking people off their horses.

  “If it comes to full combat, let me know.” Adam heard the smile in his tone. “I am rather handy with a crossbow.”

  Persephone laughed. Knowing he’d made her laugh was, for Adam, a strangely satisfying experience.

  “Maybe Harry could be our page, and we could go conquer Adcock Manor.”

  “Harry would make an abysmal page.” Adam shook his head. “But he might be trusted with a battle ax.” It was, beyond a doubt, the strangest conversation Adam had ever had: lying in the dark, talking to a lady wrapped cocoon-like in a blanket, planning a medieval-style siege of a neighboring estate.

  “Mr. Hewitt could be page,” Persephone said, then burst out laughing.

  Adam smiled into the darkness. “You have finally hit upon an occupation at which he could excel.”

  “The four of us would make a wonderfully fearsome team,” Persephone said with something between a sigh and a yawn. “You see, Adam, marriage to me might not be such a terrible thing for you after all.”

  There was no answer to that.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sometime between Adam blatantly refusing to return her obviously unwelcome kiss and their remarkably unusual discussion the night before about laying siege to Adcock Manor, Persephone had realized something she’d only vaguely acknowledged before: she was trying to make her marriage fit the dreams she’d always harbored about her future.

  She’d spent countless hours, as all girls must, imagining a dashing young gentleman riding into the neighborhood, falling desperately and wonderfully in love with her. He would offer his heart, his home, his devotion. There would be love and tenderness. They would be the best of friends. They would raise a family and chickens—she wasn’t sure why the chickens, but they’d always been clucking merrily around the yard whenever she’d pictured her future home. They would be surrounded by friends and family.

  In the nearly two months she’d been at Falstone, none of that had appeared. Waiting for it, continuing to dream of it, was making her miserable. She could not make Adam fall in love with her. She could not transform him into the man she’d dreamed of—the man whom, admittedly, she had seen glimpses of in him. She could not force Falstone Castle to be warm and inviting. There would be no visitors. The chickens were clear on the other side of the inner wall. And, as far as she could tell, they would never have children.

  She had been purchased, just as Mrs. Adcock had insinuated. For what purpose, Persephone could not say—other than to make Mr. Hewitt worry over the state of his inheritance. That was hardly a fulfilling role to play for the next few decades.

  So Persephone had come to a monumental decision. The one aspect of her childhood dreams she could even remotely imagine herself still achieving was friendship. Last night had been a start.

  He had come to her room looking for her. After the initial mortification of being found out at sneaking into his room every night had subsided a little, she’d realized that his presence there was a step in the right direction.

  She remembered with a stab of hurt, he had as much as admitted that he regretted marrying her, that he no longer viewed marriage as a good idea, something he’d apparently felt before meeting his bride.

  But he’d laughed. He’d laughed with her over something absurd and lighthearted—something that could now be a joke between just the two of them. That sort of connection built friendships.

  It wasn’t what she wanted, Persephone realized despite her very sound reasoning. She still longed for a loving husband, a growing family, a true home. She wanted love. Other than her family, who were several counties away and feeling more distant all the time, she did not seem likely to have it.

  So friendship, she firmly told herself, would simply have to be enough.

  “His leg’s still not up for riding, Yur Grace,” one of the grooms said, snapping Persephone from her thoughts.

  “Poor Atlas,” Persephone replied. The groom nodded what seemed to be approval but kept his head lowered. Persephone didn’t know this particular groom well. The few times she’d encountered him, he’d been quiet and shy. “Is he better at least?”

  The groom nodded again. “Yes, Yur Grace.”

  “Well, then, I hope he—”

  Thundering hooves pulled her attention to the front gate of Falstone. Adam and Harry had just ridden through and were reining in their mounts. Harry looked better than he had since his return.

  Persephone smiled at the two gentlemen as they approached. Harry returned the gesture. Adam unbent enough to acknowledge her with a slight dip of his head.

  Friends greet each other, she remin
ded herself when the urge to simply leave grew stronger.

  “Welcome back,” she said as they approached. Adam hadn’t walked away, something she chose to view as encouraging.

  “A good morning to you, Persephone,” Harry offered with an informal bow.

  “Good morning, Adam.” Persephone watched him closely. Would today be a friendly-Adam day or a grumpy-Adam day? It was almost impossible to predict.

  “Good morning.” Adam was pointedly not looking at her. Why did he do that? Did he realize how frustrating that was? “How does Atlas fare this morning?”

  She held back a sigh. “I’m afraid he’s not yet up for a ride.” Persephone glanced toward the groom to whom she’d spoken, but he had gone off, no doubt having plenty of work to occupy him. “I suppose we shall be forced to postpone our siege.”

  Adam’s lips twitched. Had Persephone not been watching him closely, she would have missed it. She had expected him to not acknowledge their conversation in any way other than that, and yet she was grateful for even the small reaction.

  Harry’s eyes darted between the two of them, his look one of intrigued confusion. “You two are planning a siege?”

  Persephone let her eyes dart to Adam. He didn’t look at either of them. In fact, Adam seemed remarkably interested in watching John Handly lead Buttercup through her paces. He would have to give her more than that. Persephone’s dreams had been whittled down to mere friendship—she had to have more than silence between them.

  Then Adam’s eyes shifted toward her, for the briefest of moments. And his lips turned up in the slightest, most fleeting smile. Almost before Persephone had registered what she’d seen, Adam turned back again to watch the filly bounding around the paddock. But it had been enough to make Persephone smile in return.

  “Why do I get the feeling my presence is not particularly appreciated just now?” Harry spoke with a touch of amusement.

  “I would think, Harry, that you must feel that way often,” Adam replied dryly. He turned from the paddock, walking away. “But if you go now, you’ll have plenty of time to pack.”