Chapter Twenty
“What is that infernal noise?” Adam grumbled, standing on the first-floor landing.
“I believe that would be described as lively conversation, Your Grace,” Barton answered quite straight-faced. But Adam hadn’t missed the irony in his tone. Barton had never before broken the slightest bit from his proper butler’s demeanor.
“And who,” Adam answered quite severely, “is responsible for all of this ‘lively conversation?’”
A twitter of a laugh rang through the entrance hall. That was a sound with which he was unaccustomed. Adam raised an eyebrow.
Barton cleared his throat, sounding almost as if he barely held back a laugh of his own. “Mrs. Pointer.” He managed an almost serious tone.
“No doubt the vicar is here as well,” Adam said.
“No doubt.” Again he detected a hint of dry humor in the butler’s tone. What had gotten into the man?
“Are you feeling quite yourself today, Barton?” Adam genuinely wondered if perhaps Barton was a little touched in the upper works. The man had to be at least sixty. He’d been a footman at Falstone when Adam was a boy, elevated to butler while Adam was away at Harrow.
“I assure you I feel better than I have in years, Your Grace.” Something in Barton’s expression marked it as a significant statement.
Another twitter echoed up from below. “It sounds as though Falstone is infested with birds,” Adam muttered.
Just then Mrs. Smithson, the housekeeper, followed by a footman and trailed by two maids, reached the doors of the drawing room below. The footman bore a large silver tray, laden with every type of finger sandwich and sweet cake imaginable. Mrs. Smithson bore the silver tea service.
“A full tea?” Adam felt rather shocked, not having seen such a thing at Falstone since the days before his mother had relegated herself to the ranks of guest at the family seat. “For the Pointers?” It seemed a little overdone for only two guests.
“I believe Cook was exceptionally excited at the prospect of preparing a tea tray once more,” Barton answered. “It has been a while, Your Grace.”
His words held censure. But Barton knew how Falstone was supposed to be run.
“How is it that the vicar and his wife came to be in the drawing room?” Adam used the tone his mother had often called his “duke voice.” He’d perfected it some time around seven years of age, and it had never failed him, except with Harry, but Harry was the exception to most rules.
“I do not recall altering my requirement that all guests be informed I am ‘not at home.’”
“The vicar quite specifically asked for Her Grace.” Most of the cheek had left Barton’s voice, though he certainly wasn’t quivering with concern.
Adam had always liked that about Barton—he knew precisely how to act, but he had backbone.
“When I presented Her Grace with Mr. Pointer’s card, I thought she would actually run down the stairs, she was so pleased to have callers. ”
Adam felt a momentary prick of guilt at that.
If Barton had been turning away callers, then Persephone hadn’t had any company, either.
She might actually wish to see people. A picture of the Falstone drawing room filled to overflowing with the neighborhood elite, curious and barely tolerable, flashed through Adam’s mind. That would never do.
“How long have the Pointers been here?” Adam asked Barton, who still hovered nearby, as he walked slowly down the staircase.
“Only a few minutes, Your Grace.”
“A few minutes is more than most get,” Adam reminded no one in particular.
Falstone was his home, where he determined the rules.
He had long ago declared that there were to be no visitors, no callers, no formal teas for neighbors pretending politeness for the chance to gape and stare and slake their thirst for gossip fodder.
“Cream, yes.” Mr. Pointer’s voice reached the drawing room door as Adam stepped inside.
Persephone filled the vicar’s teacup and handed it to him.
Mr. Pointer noticed Adam’s entrance and smiled at him.
Only Mr. Pointer, and perhaps Harry, would dare smile when he knew he’d broken one of Adam’s cardinal rules.
Adam gave him a pointed look of warning, which had no visible effect whatsoever.
“Would you like a cup of tea, Adam?” Persephone asked, apparently seeing him enter.
Adam turned to face her. “No,” he answered, unable to completely keep the exasperation from his voice.
Persephone smiled serenely back at him, returning to her duties as hostess, and placed a small slice of lemon cake on a plate for Mr. Pointer. Something in her demeanor seemed different from what he’d seen lately, but Adam couldn’t identify it.
“It is a pleasure to see you again, Your Grace,” Mr. Pointer offered conversationally.
“I doubt that.”
Mr. Pointer smiled as if he were quite thoroughly amused. Mrs. Pointer appeared on the verge of fainting. Her teacup had begun to rattle. Adam hoped she put the blasted thing down before it went crashing to the floor below.
“What, precisely, is the reason for your presence here?” Adam stood over the visitors, his mouth set in a very serious, interrogative line.
“A social call, of course,” Mr. Pointer said.
“Of course?” Adam repeated, making his doubt obvious in his tone. “And why ‘of course,’ Mr. Pointer? When, in the fifteen years you have served as vicar here, has Falstone Castle received visitors?”
“Not once, Your Grace.” This conversation seemed to be entertaining to the vicar.
“And what, sir, led you to believe that had changed?”
“Wishful thinking?” Mr. Pointer hazarded the guess with barely masked amusement.
“There will be no callers at Falstone Castle.” Adam’s tension at the idea of hordes of gaping guests at Falstone affected his tone. “Not today. Not in the future.”
“Falstone is not receiving, Your Grace?” Mr. Pointer asked, as casually as if he were inquiring after the weather. “Or you are not receiving?”
“It is the same.”
“Forgive me, but it is not.” Mr. Pointer rose, placing his cup and saucer on an end table nearby. “Thank you for your hospitality, Your Grace.”
Mr. Pointer no longer addressed Adam. The vicar crossed past him to Persephone. Adam followed the man’s progress with his eyes.
He hadn’t been able to identify what had been different in Persephone’s face earlier, but seeing her now, he knew. He knew because it was no longer there. She had been brighter, more alive and less haunted. Now the aura of sadness that had seemed to envelope her lately had returned.
“Do come ag—” Persephone stopped mid-word, her eyes darting anxiously at Adam then back at the vicar. “Thank you for—” She stopped again. With a look of disappointment, she finally settled on, “I will see you on Sunday.”
Mr. Pointer gave her a look filled with empathetic concern. “Smile, child.”
Persephone did. A smile shouldn’t look unhappy.
“Wait,” Adam grumbled, annoyed with himself for his uncharacteristic ability to be influenced.
“You might as well stay and finish your tea.” He knew he didn’t sound welcoming but didn’t remotely care.
He could do without the dramatic exit Mr. Pointer obviously meant to enact.
And, blast it all, Persephone looked near tears, and she hadn’t cried in days.
“Cook will be offended if the tray is sent back untouched.”
He expected Mr. Pointer to smirk. He was enough like Harry to do just that.
The vicar looked intrigued, perhaps even a little surprised, but didn’t smirk.
As if the man hadn’t known precisely what he was about leaving in such an overblown manner.
Mrs. Pointer hovered half-in, half-out of her seat, rear end jutting awkwardly over the deep red upholstered sofa.
“Perhaps you would like to try some of these fine cakes.” Mr. Pointer moved quite casually back to the seat he’d vacated beside his wife. “Or a cup of tea.”
“A dram of brandy might be more helpful,” Adam muttered.
“Do sit, dear,” Mr. Pointer said to his wife, as if Adam had made no comment. “And do try the lemon cake. Delicious.”
Persephone didn’t miss a beat, offering a plate with a slice of the praised cake to the vicar’s wife with a polite smile.
“Thank you.” Mrs. Pointer’s voice shook. Adam almost wished she’d produce one of her twittering laughs. People who quaked in his presence quickly lost their appeal.
Persephone moved to his side. “Are you sure you wouldn’t care for some tea?”
Adam shook his head. The sooner this visit came to an end, the better. He still couldn’t believe he’d allowed it. He never permitted visitors.
“I didn’t know, Adam,” Persephone said, just louder than a whisper, her eyes darting quickly to the Pointers before returning to him. “If you’d rather they leave—”
“Let them finish their tea.” He shook his head slightly at his continued illogical behavior. She’d given him the perfect opportunity to throw the Pointers out as he’d originally intended.
But when Persephone rewarded his lunacy with a bright smile, Adam felt nearly glad he’d slipped from his usual approach to life.
“I thought no one wanted to meet me.” Persephone kept her voice to a whisper, obviously going to lengths to keep their conversation too low for the vicar and his wife to overhear. “Bridal visits are expected. But there hadn’t been any callers. I didn’t realize they were being turned away.”
She could just as easily have sounded accusatory. Instead, she seemed relieved.
“They probably never came in the first place.” Adam surprised himself by so willingly discussing the situation.
What did he care how Persephone felt about the rules?
But that rang entirely false. He wanted her to understand, wanted her to know that she hadn’t been rejected.
It was an odd impulse for him, but he kept on.
“Every family in the surrounding area knows Falstone is closed to visitors.”
Persephone shot another look in the Pointers’ direction before saying, quietly, “But I could go visit the neighbors.”
Adam’s stomach clenched on the instant. “No. They would be expected to return the visit.”
“But I—”
“I will not have Falstone overrun by people.”
Persephone hesitated, a war of emotions in her eyes: confusion, indecision, frustration. In the end, she managed to look neutral. “Of course not. Thank you for allowing the Pointers to remain. I have been enjoying their visit.”
Adam felt like an ogre. The law gave him the right to dictate everything in his home. But his conscience began to decree otherwise. Persephone’s acquiescence had obviously been reluctantly given.
And why shouldn’t she wish for visitors, for society?
She had nothing to fear at their hands, no reason to reject the company of virtual strangers.
He, on the other hand, knew precisely how it felt to be stared at, whispered about.
The animals at the Tower of London’s Royal Menagerie had nothing on Adam when it came to being a spectacle for the callous and curious.
“You, of course, owe Mrs. Pointer a visit,” Adam conceded, still unsure why he found himself so easily undone by the downcast look in her eyes, why he even discussed this in the same room as the Pointers.
Such conversations belonged behind closed doors without witnesses.
“I understand she entertains half the county on a regular basis.”
“I could meet our neighbors that way, then.” Persephone’s tone remained hesitant and cautious, almost as if she were asking a question rather than stating a fact.
“If you want to.” Adam shrugged. He’d met the neighborhood and wasn’t particularly impressed.
The smile returned to her face. Adam had to force back an answering one. He knew his face looked particularly disfigured when he smiled, the asymmetry made painfully obvious.
By the time the Pointers departed, Adam had no more desire to grin. They’d quickly settled in, looking completely at ease. If they were entertaining any thoughts of returning, they would be sorely disappointed.
Mrs. Pointer filled Persephone’s ears with news of the neighborhood. Mrs. Somebody-or-Other was rumored to be Increasing again, and Mrs. So-and-So was said to be redoing her drawing room in the French style and wasn’t that terribly unpatriotic. Adam was bored to tears.
Her parting comment, however, left Adam wincing.
“I do hope you will attend the assemblies, Your Grace.” Mrs. Pointer smiled at Persephone.
“Once you have passed your deepest mourning, of course.” The vicar’s wife acknowledged Persephone’s black dress with a nod of empathy.
“I understand there hasn’t been a Duke and Duchess of Kielder at our local assembly in thirty years. ”
Adam nearly tossed the woman into her carriage himself at that point. He’d bent enough to allow the Pointers to visit. But he did not dance.