Chapter Fifteen
“Adam?” Dinner had been completely silent through the first three courses, and, with dessert all but finished, Persephone felt the tension acutely.
“Another complaint, Persephone?” Adam replied with deceptive calm. Persephone could hear the anger just below the surface. “I have refrained from standing anywhere near you all day.”
How had she allowed her tongue to get away with her? They’d reached something of an accord in the garden the day before, over his unexpected gift. Now he was on his guard again, borderline hostile and cynical.
“I am sorry for what I said.” Persephone hoped he heard the sincerity in her voice. “I really haven’t been myself these last few days.”
In the little more than a week since news of Evander had arrived, Persephone had been completely at loose ends.
One moment, she felt calm and quite in control; the next, she was either weeping with unbearable sadness or angry or exhausted beyond all reason.
It was unnerving. And, worst of all, she felt completely alone in her suffering.
Seeing Mr. Hewitt, who had been her one source of empathy throughout the horrific ordeal, depart had pushed her past her limit, and she’d spoken a thought she’d never intended to voice.
She’d noticed Adam’s tendency to hover nearby when Mr. Hewitt was in the room.
At first she’d allowed herself the flattering thought that Adam had developed a preference for her company, followed by the equally heady sensation that he might be a touch jealous.
She’d soon noticed, however, that Adam’s attentions dwindled back to nonexistence when Mr. Hewitt was not nearby.
It hadn’t taken a great deal of thought to understand what actually lay behind the odd behavior.
Adam intended to convince Mr. Hewitt that theirs was a happy marriage—one that would, no doubt, destroy his claim to the Kielder title.
She’d been nothing but a puppet in Adam’s ongoing efforts to upset and belittle his cousin.
“Harry wrote today.” Adam spoke quite as if Persephone’s apology had never been uttered.
She lowered her eyes to her trifle. “I hope he is well.” She managed to squeeze past the sudden lump in her throat.
There she went again, emotions swinging like a pendulum. Adam had certainly been indifferent before. Why this particular moment of apathy should so undo her, Persephone could not say.
“He is remaining in Scotland for a week longer than anticipated,” Adam said.
“Harry must be enjoying his visit with his aunt and uncle.” Her voice dropped to little more than a whisper. Trying to muster another bit of volume would surely reduce her to tears.
She had apologized, blast him! Couldn’t he have had the civility to acknowledge that?
Adam continued eating with as little discomfort as one could possibly have. He didn’t care at all. This was the man she’d been so certain only the day before was kind and shy underneath his harsh exterior? How had she been so blind, so gullible?
Oh, why had she ever left Shropshire? She could have been at home at that very moment with her family, with a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, surrounded by people who cared deeply for each other.
Persephone rose hastily to her feet, fighting back a flood of bitter, lonely tears. “Excuse me,” she said, her voice shaking. She ran in an unladylike manner from the room.
One of the first things she’d learned about the castle was how to get outside.
While outside, she could orient herself far easier than when indoors.
But orientation was the last thing on her mind as she fled the drain of Falstone Castle for the sanctuary of her garden.
It was the only piece of Falstone she, albeit secretly, claimed for herself.
That alcove of greenery had shared her deepest sorrows in the month she’d been the Duchess of Kielder.
No human being could lay claim to such an involvement in her life during the short weeks she’d been at the castle.
She dropped onto the patch of earth directly in front of her bench, laid her arms across the stone seat, and dropped her head onto her arms.
“I just want to go home,” she cried. “I need my family.”
Quite as if she hadn’t wept more times than she cared to remember over the past week, Persephone sobbed as she sat there on the cold, damp ground.
Evander was far too young to be gone. He’d not even reached his fifteenth birthday. Someone ought to have been looking out for him. Someone ought to have been keeping him safe. He should have been at school with nothing more threatening than exams and teachers.
Persephone had married to secure his fortune. What good was that fortune now?
Her throat burned, her lungs shuddering with each breath. She could not regain control of her sobs.
Something dropped onto the stone bench near her face, rustling and whooshing as it did.
She raised her head from her arms just long enough to look.
She could make out only a pile of brown fabric.
Persephone laid her head back on her arms, just looking at the material through the tears that continued to fall.
“You didn’t bring a coat.” Adam’s clipped tone was easily recognizable.
The lump of wool, apparently, was her brown coat.
Her breaths continued to shudder. Words were not possible.
“That’s all.” And his footsteps began sounding a retreat.
It was such cold civility. Any one of her family members would have urged her to return to the house, offered words of solitude, or simply sat beside her in empathetic silence.
Persephone turned her head away from the lump that was Adam’s sole offer of comfort: a coat he’d dumped on the seat beside her.
“I want to go home,” Persephone whispered in agony to herself.
* * *
Adam watched as Persephone continued to sit on the cold earth, head turned away from the coat he’d brought her, as if she had no intention of putting it on.
“It won’t do you any good on the bench,” he muttered under his breath.
He stood not more than twenty paces from where she sat, close enough to see her shudder.
He’d brought her the coat. What more did she want?
He had no idea why she’d left—she’d run.
Adam knew she was upset about something.
He’d seen her out in the garden where she always went to cry, on the ground, at night, without a coat.
He’d made an effort. And she couldn’t be bothered to put the bloody coat on!
“What more do you want?” Adam muttered. He knew exactly what she wanted. He heard her say as much only moments before. She wanted to go home.
No doubt to be with her family in her grief.
Adam wondered for a brief moment if his mother would grieve so all-consumingly should he meet an untimely end.
They’d never been close, so he couldn’t really say.
It was an insight into himself with which he was not at all comfortable.
Would anyone cry for him the way Persephone wept for her brother?
“Hewitt won’t,” Adam muttered. Every one of the Brothers “G” would rejoice should Adam be struck down by a bolt of punitive lightning.
Harry might miss him once in a while. Persephone certainly wouldn’t. Except during the occasional round of howls from the Falstone wolves. She might think of him then.
Adam’s eyes drifted back to Persephone. She had made no move to leave. She still didn’t have her coat on.
“Foolish woman,” Adam mumbled. But he was already retracing his steps to where she sat.
Her sobs had relented somewhat. Adam actually felt relieved to hear some steadiness return to her breathing. Only because he disliked crying, he told himself.
“You’ll catch an inflammation of the lungs,” Adam told Persephone after he’d stood uncertainly over her for more than a few awkward moments. “Everyone in London will accuse me of poisoning you.”
A strangled sort of laugh broke Persephone’s silence. Adam couldn’t remember making anyone, other than Harry, laugh. But Harry laughed at everything. Persephone seemed more selective.
He had the sudden, impulsive desire to wrap that deuced coat around her, carry her back into the castle, and deposit her safely in front of the largest fire he could find, where she could thaw out. He shook his head to dislodge the thought, but it wouldn’t be dismissed.
Opting for a compromise, Adam lifted her coat—it looked serviceable enough, no doubt a leftover from her days of poverty—from the bench. “You’ll be warmer inside,” he told her, knowing what would have been a gentle invitation from a decent sort of husband had come across as an order from him.
But she seemed willing to comply. Persephone shifted from her position, sitting back from the bench but not looking up at him.
“With Hewitt and Harry gone, the castle will be quiet.” Adam tempered his tone in a way he hadn’t in some time, and didn’t plan to again soon. “You can find a . . . private spot and . . . do . . . whatever it is you do after you cry.”
“I usually sleep,” Persephone answered quietly. “And wake up with a headache.”
“Sounds awful.”
She nodded and slowly rose to her feet. Adam handed her the coat, which she did little more than drape over her shoulders.
“Then why cry?” It seemed a rather ridiculous thing to do, knowing ahead of time what the end result would be.
“Generally, I can’t help myself.” Persephone wiped her cheek with the palm of her hand.
She, then, hadn’t learned the art of securing a tourniquet around her emotions.
“Come on, then.” Adam felt ever more uncomfortable now that the dim light of the half-hidden moon and the light spilling from the castle windows made Persephone’s continued drip of tears visible. He led the way out of the garden, hearing her footsteps behind him.
He knew he probably ought to have said something, but he couldn’t think of a single thing worth verbalizing.
Empty reassurances about her brother’s bravery or heroism wouldn’t ease her pain.
Saying he knew how she felt would be a bald-faced lie.
Professing any tender attachment or caring concern on his part would be no less untrue.
Adam cared for no one. Just as no one cared for him.
Persephone’s little sister, the tiny one—Artemis was her name, he thought—had asked who would take care of Persephone, before Artemis had left for Shropshire.
Adam heard a shaky breath on the path behind him and thought he could picture the girl’s tiny face—one so much like her sister’s, her mouth twisted in a line of disapproval, brow furrowed with worry the way it had been during that brief conversation.
No one, it seemed, was watching out for Persephone.