Chapter Twenty-Six
“You’re not going to tell me to go pack my bags?” Harry dropped into his usual chair. “Are you feeling well, Adam?”
“Why don’t you ever leave?” Adam jumped right into the topic.
“I knew it was too good to be true.” Harry sighed and rose from his seat, a spark of laughter in his eyes.
“Sit down and answer the question, Harry.”
“Is this a pointed interrogation or more of an intellectual discussion?” Harry regained his seat.
“Intellectual discussion.”
“Why don’t I ever leave? Honestly?”
“Yes, honestly.”
Harry shrugged. “Because I like Falstone.”
“Why?”
“Free food.”
“I said honestly, Harry.” Adam was having second thoughts.
“The food is nothing to disregard, Adam. Cook is a miracle worker. Aside from that, Falstone is, I don’t know, familiar. Comfortable.”
Familiar. Comfortable. Adam doubted Persephone would describe Falstone that way.
“And do you feel the same way about the house in London? You spend a lot of time there as well. And you’ve gone with me to Kent a few times. And on the yacht—”
“This is a pointed interrogation, isn’t it?” Harry speared him with a look. “If you’re trying to tell me to make myself scarce now that you’re married, I completely understand, Adam.”
“It’s not that at all.”
“Then what is it?”
“I just want to know why you’ve stayed around all these years.” Adam paced back to the French doors. Why couldn’t Harry ever just answer a question?
“We’re friends, Adam.” Harry spoke as if that ought to have been obvious. “Friends don’t jump ship.”
“I think your answer about the food was more honest.”
“Did it ever occur to you, Adam, that I honestly consider you a friend? My best friend, in fact.”
“Because of Harrow?” Adam stared out the French doors. He hated to think that Harry had spent twenty years at his side because of some overblown sense of obligation.
“It may have started that way,” Harry confessed. “You saved my skin, so I sort of worshiped you for a while, like an idol who could ward off evil spirits, I suppose.”
Adam smiled a little at that. Harry had come across almost as a religious zealot those first few months of their friendship. Friendship. Adam repeated the word to himself. It felt right describing it that way. Adam had never really thought of himself as the sort of person who had friends.
Father hadn’t had many. It had felt like Mother had too many. She was always away visiting one or more of them.
“But then you landed me a facer for something stupid I did or said—”
Adam remembered that fight well, though he no longer had any idea what they’d been scuffling over. They were eight at the time. The two-boy brawl had been ferocious. It was as if something inside Adam had snapped. He couldn’t have been fiercer if he’d been actually fighting to save his life.
Harry had fought back, hard. By the time the scuffle was broken up—by the headmaster, of all people—they were both bloody and exhausted. And, he remembered with some unnameable emotion, he had been crying. Sobbing, really. And had been unable to stop.
No one but Harry and the headmaster had witnessed his breakdown. Neither one had ever mentioned it to him afterward.
“—and we were sent down,” Harry continued. “My parents were away on holiday so we both came here. In those two weeks of our expulsion I met Adam Boyce. The Duke of Kielder still scared the guts out of me. But Adam Boyce was just a boy like me.”
That was when Harry had started calling him Adam.
Until those two weeks of punishment, which had actually been the happiest days of his life since his father had died, Harry, like everyone else, had referred to Adam as Kielder or Your Grace or the Duke—he being the only duke at Harrow.
But during that time he’d become Adam. He’d never before understood what had brought about the change.
“I remember Jeb Handly teaching me the finer points of fisticuffs on the back courtyard so you wouldn’t beat me so thoroughly the next time.”
“Finer points?” Adam replied dryly. “He taught you to fight dirty.”
Harry grinned at that. “Just like you. I suppose, though, when one’s lessons are given in the shadow of a well-used gibbet, dirty is the only option.”
“I thought you would faint like a schoolgirl when you first caught sight of the gibbet.” Adam chuckled at the memory.
“At least you didn’t make me sleep in the Orange Chamber.”
They’d spent the two weeks in the nursery. “Do you remember Nurse Robbie?”
“The one who used to sing that song?” A smile was obvious in his voice. “The one about the boy who was small as a dandelion or something.”
“It was a thistle.”
Just then a movement down below caught his attention.
Persephone was walking in her garden. Why did she wear that old, brown coat?
Certainly she had the pin money to buy herself a new one.
She ought to be wearing something warm but fashionable, the way the ladies in London dressed.
The black of her day dress peeked out beneath the long coat, a perpetual reminder of her grief.
Had she retreated to the garden for another bout of weeping? Adam watched her more closely, hoping she hadn’t.
“So why this sudden interest in our colorful childhoods?” Harry asked, moving to Adam’s side.
Adam shrugged, watching Persephone make her way slowly along the hedge. He could see her breath condensing in the cold, even from so far away. She had to be freezing. He ought to send word to the kitchen to have a pot of tea or chocolate ready for her when she returned.
“Looks bloody cold out there, doesn’t it?” Harry said.
“It does.”
“She must really like that garden to stay out there when it is so much warmer inside,” Harry said.
“Why does she stay?” Adam muttered to himself, not particularly thinking of the garden.
“If there is one thing I will never understand, Adam, it’s women. Why does she walk through the garden in the freezing cold? I don’t know. There must be something about it she likes, something worth being out there for.”
What, Adam asked himself, made the hedge garden so appealing to Persephone?
She went out there every day. Adam had watched her wandering about when he ought to have been seeing to estate business.
Something drew her back day after day. If Adam could just figure out what that was and implement it elsewhere around Falstone, then Persephone would never want to leave.
“What is it that women love about gardens?” Harry could have been reading Adam’s thoughts.
“I have no idea.”
“My mother spent hours in her garden whenever my father was away from home.” Harry shook his head. “One would think if she was lonely, she would have visited the neighbors instead of the shrubbery.”
“The garden kept her company?” Adam asked doubtfully.
“Like I said, there is very little about women that I even remotely understand.” Harry moved away from the French doors. “Persephone looks cold, Adam,” he said as he made his way across the room. “You should go keep her warm.”
“Keep her—?”
“The fact that my suggestion confuses you does not bode well, my friend,” was Harry’s parting shot.
“Didn’t confuse me,” Adam muttered, turning back to watch Persephone. He simply couldn’t imagine her wishing for the sort of attention Harry had suggested.
She did look cold. What kept her out there? Harry’s mother had been lonely. Could that be Persephone’s reason as well?
Adam thought back on the vicar’s visit. She’d been so disappointed when she thought Adam would bring the call to a premature close. She made the trip to the Pointers’ twice a week to visit with the local ladies. He’d seen her face light up whenever Barton delivered another letter from her family.
“She is lonely,” Adam said with bleak resignation. He watched Persephone turn another corner of the garden, walking alone. Isolation was heaven for Adam. It seemed quite the opposite for Persephone.
I require people, Joseph, Mother had said so many times to Father, though Adam hadn’t thought about those conversations in years. There are more people in one neighborhood of London than in all of Falstone.
So Father had hosted countless balls and dinners.
Mother had been “at home” to callers every day for hours on end.
Still, she’d left dozens of times, and always when Adam had needed her most. She hadn’t even been at Falstone when Adam and Harry had been sent down.
Jeb Handly and Nurse Robbie had looked after them.
Adam turned his head and looked up into the frozen face of his father.
“The balls didn’t work,” he said, as if his father hadn’t noticed that the endless diversion he’d provided for Mother hadn’t kept her at home.
“I—” The words stuck, but Adam pushed them out.
He could always talk to his father. “I don’t want Persephone to leave me. ”
Admitting it out loud somehow drove home how true the words were. The thought of Persephone disappearing the way Mother had made his stomach knot. The thought of hundreds of people prowling around Falstone Castle—be it a ball, a dinner, or a neighborhood invasion—made him feel ill.
“Blast it!” Adam crossed to the fireplace, throwing himself into a chair. Being married wasn’t supposed to be this complicated.
A wolf howled outside. Howling during the day wasn’t entirely unheard of. The noises of the household generally drowned out their cries. But that howl had been uncommonly close to the castle.
Persephone! She would be insane with fear. Adam jumped to his feet again and crossed back to the French doors. He didn’t see her in her garden. A second howl sounded.
Adam spotted her running back toward the castle. She was hysterical, he realized.
He moved swiftly across the room and out into the corridor. A moment later he reached the first-floor landing and watched as Persephone flew through the front door. Barton stood in obvious confusion, but Persephone didn’t seem to notice.
Adam met her halfway up the stairs. Persephone nearly knocked him over. She wrapped her arms around his middle and buried her face into his lapel. She was trembling. So was he, but probably for entirely different reasons.
“I heard them, Adam!” Her words cracked with fear. “The wolves are inside Falstone!”
“No, Persephone.” Adam held her a little closer. She was cold, he told himself.
“I don’t know how, but they must be inside.” Her voice rose in alarm. “They were so loud.”
“They aren’t inside the castle walls, Persephone.”
“Are you certain?” She buried her head more deeply against him.
“Positive.” Adam spotted Barton near the door watching the exchange rather too closely for Adam’s tastes. “Barton, will you send tea up to my book room?”
“Yes, Your Grace.” That took care of the butler.
Adam kept one arm around Persephone and led her up the stairs.
“The wolves sounded so close,” she whispered.
“I will have my steward check on the pack,” Adam assured her. “They always give the castle a wide berth.”
Adam walked her directly to the book room’s most comfortable chair, grateful it sat so near the fire. She’d been out in the cold too long. “Tea should come soon.”
“Thank you, Adam.” Persephone smiled up at him as she sat, but she still looked worried.
“Persephone?”
“Yes, Adam?”
“I think . . . I think we should have a ball.”
“A ball?” She couldn’t possibly have sounded more shocked. Adam was a little surprised, too.
“Unless you don’t want to.” Adam shot a look at Father’s portrait. He should have known the ball wasn’t a good idea.
“I assumed you wouldn’t want to,” Persephone said. “It would mean a lot of people in the castle.”
“Every bride should have a ball,” Adam muttered.
“We are still in mourning.” She spoke uncertainly.
“I think a wedding ball would be permissible.” Anything he did was considered permissible by society. No one dared contradict him.
“Really?” The hint of hope in her voice tugged a smile from Adam’s lips.
“Really.” He allowed the smile to remain, small as it was.
Again a look crossed Persephone’s face, one that seemed to hint that she held something back, a word or a gesture. In the end, she simply smiled. “I think a ball would be nice.”