Chapter Twenty-Nine
“It is one o’clock in the morning, Persephone.”
She turned toward the door of the nursery. She truly hadn’t expected Adam to come looking for her. He’d been quiet and distant during their dinner in his book room. She’d hoped to reach out to him, as a friend would. But her attempt to be supportive and comforting hadn’t seemed to work.
Persephone closed her eyes as the memory of his feather-light touch on her fingertips flashed painfully through her mind.
If he were fond of her—if theirs were the type of marriage Persephone had always wanted—that touch might have felt affectionate.
Instead, it had been excruciating, almost torturous.
She’d wanted, in that moment, to hold his hand, but she knew that doing so would only open her up further to feelings that would hurt her in the end.
“I cannot help but think that Linus would not be happy in here.” Persephone kept her warring emotions out of her voice. “I have been trying to determine what I ought to do about it.”
“You would place a midshipman of the Royal Navy in the nursery?” Adam asked.
“He is only a child.” She crossed the room toward the door, running her fingers over a tabletop as she passed.
“A thirteen-year-old is not precisely a child,” Adam said. “Especially after two years in the navy.”
She didn’t want to hear that. In her mind Linus was still her little boy, the affectionate child whom she’d taught to read and write, the brother who had retaught her to play spillikins.
She wasn’t ready to accept that he had changed so much.
She felt unaccountably nervous at the thought of seeing her little Linus again. How much had he changed?
“I should select a different room for him, then?” Persephone tried to sound less affected than she was.
Adam stepped aside to allow Persephone to pass through the doorway. “There are plenty of rooms in the family wing,” he said.
“Within Harry’s sphere of influence?” Persephone smiled, walking down the corridor.
“Perhaps a room on our end of the wing would be best,” Adam said.
Persephone wondered if he was smiling, even a little. He walked behind her, so she couldn’t say for sure. She pulled her dressing gown more firmly around herself as the chill of the corridor began to penetrate her nightdress. “It is hard to imagine Linus grown up.”
“How long has it been since you last saw him?” Adam followed her down the stairs to the family wing.
“Fifteen months.” She did not even have to think or calculate. She knew precisely how long she’d gone without seeing her brothers.
“You’ve missed him.”
“I have missed all of them,” she replied.
A sudden lump formed in her throat. Good heavens, she missed her family. She had once been a central part of all their lives, but now she no longer felt part of anything.
“Mr. Pointer has volunteered to bring Linus back from Newcastle,” Adam said as they stepped inside her sitting room. “He will be there on personal business on that day, as it is.”
Persephone turned swiftly toward him. “I wanted to meet the Triumphant myself.”
“There is a ball to plan, Persephone,” Adam argued. He stepped past her.
“Mrs. Smithson can certainly do without me for a day or so,” Persephone insisted. “And your mother would be more than happy to take over while I am gone.”
Watching Adam cross the room into her bedchamber, Persephone could see him tense. “You will not be going. So there is no need for either of them to take charge of the preparations.”
She followed him in. “But he is my brother.”
“And he will be arriving with Mr. Pointer.”
“A stranger.” Persephone did not like it at all.
“After more than two years in the navy, I doubt Linus will be reduced to childish tears by a sixty-year-old vicar.” He employed that dry, sarcastic tone that always seemed to cut at her.
“Now you are making fun of me,” she muttered, crossing away from Adam to sit on her window seat.
Disappointment and frustration surged within her. She’d had her heart set on going to Newcastle and not just to retrieve Linus. Persephone had never been to Newcastle and was curious to see the town.
“You really wish to leave, then?” Tension sat thick in Adam’s voice.
“I do, yes.” She watched his reflection in the window.
His face hardened in the next moment, something flashing in his eyes that made her instantly nervous. “Go, then,” he snapped. Suddenly he was the Adam she’d met on her wedding day: distant, intimidating, unfriendly. “Go wherever you bloody well want to. I don’t care.”
The connecting door slammed behind him, rattling the windows and Persephone’s nerves.
What had just happened? The Adam she’d been so afraid of losing her heart to had disappeared in an instant. She’d gone from feeling content, if not happy, to feeling very much alone.
* * *
Perhaps Harry had been right. He had flatly refused to accompany Adam on his morning ride. “In all this fog?” Harry had asked incredulously. “A man’s likely to run directly into a tree and not even realize it.”
But Adam had needed to get out, to escape the castle. Mostly, he admitted with frustration, to avoid Persephone.
She wanted to leave Falstone—she’d said so the night before. A brief journey, to be sure, but that was how it always began. A day away here and there, then a week, then a month. Eventually she simply wouldn’t come back.
He told himself he didn’t care, which was, of course, a blatant lie. He’d told her he didn’t care, which meant he’d lied to Persephone—something he’d promised never to do.
It was no wonder she was ready to “jump ship,” as Harry would have said.
He could learn to live without Persephone.
Father had gone on without Mother. He’d been miserable, but he’d gone on.
And Adam had long ago reached the point where he no longer needed anyone.
Only since Persephone’s arrival had that begun to change.
Well, he’d changed once; he would simply change back.
The Duke of Kielder was an island, beholden to no one, dependent on no one. He simply had to convince himself of that.
The air swiftly grew almost too cold to breathe. The fog turned thicker with each passing moment. It was time to return to Falstone. Adam turned Zeus toward home.
“I can be indifferent,” he told himself. He had been for twenty years. It wouldn’t be impossible. Then Persephone could make whatever journeys and trips she chose, and he would do what he’d done in Mother’s absence all those years ago. He would ride the estate, manage his finances.
It would be fine.
“Fiends, it’s getting cold,” Adam muttered.
As if to prove his assertion, Zeus shuddered. Beneath his hooves a frozen layer of snow crackled and broke. Yes, maybe Harry had been right.
Somewhere in the distance a howl sounded, only slightly muffled by the thickening fog. It was an eerie sound, almost like a warning.
“Go on, Zeus.” But the horse didn’t appear to be listening.
Smaller footsteps, like a fox or dog, broke the silence. Zeus skittered nervously. The sounds, the feelings of the moment were horrifyingly familiar, though Adam knew he’d never before taken a ride through fog so thick.
A chorus of growls echoed around him.
It was the pack. Hayworth had said they were hunting nearer the castle than usual. Adam’s hand went automatically to the pistol in his greatcoat pocket. He had no plans to use it, but if worse came to worst, he would be prepared.
A series of long, bone-chilling howls had Zeus dancing beneath him. “Steady, boy.” Adam urged him on.
He heard other hooves nearby, perhaps approaching. The fog made sounds bounce unnaturally and made seeing further than a few yards almost impossible. He kept his hand at his pocket, waiting, anticipating.
“Yer Grace!” a voice bellowed, as if calling out in search of someone.
Had someone come looking for him?
“Yer Grace?” the same person repeated.
“John Handly?” Adam thought he recognized the voice. The hoofbeats grew louder.
The howling grew more chaotic. Zeus seemed ready to bolt. In the next instant, Adam spotted John. One look at his face told Adam something was wrong.
“Have you found her?” was the first thing out of John’s mouth.
“Her?”
“Then you haven’t . . . ?” John looked more frantic.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Adam held Zeus steady but barely. The pack sounded closer.
“Her Grace,” John breathed out quickly. “We was riding to Pointer’s, and Atlas bolted. No reason to, just bolted. She ain’t that good a rider yet, and I’m afeared she might’ve been unseated.”
“Persephone?” Adam could manage no other words.
“And with the pack soundin’ so close and angry—”
“Persephone!” Adam shouted, his panicked call dancing in the thick emptiness around him.
“She ain’t been answering, and I’m afeared something must’ve happened.”
“Don’t say that,” Adam snapped. “Persephone!”
The howls had dissolved into aggressive barking. Adam had a horrible feeling, one he refused to even put into words. “I think we need to find the pack.”
“I’ve been thinking that myself.” John sounded as worried as Adam felt.
He wanted to bolt, to charge, but the fog made it impossible. He could only guess which direction the barks and howls came from. The fog rendered his senses unreliable. Then he heard a sound that chilled his very blood: a horse, obviously in pain.
It was his dream come to life.
“I heared it, too, Yer Grace.” John must have seen Adam tense. “We’re getting closer.”
Adam’s heart pounded. The growling and snarling and the sounds of paws on crisp snow were now echoing at them from all sides. They were surrounded.
“Persephone!” Adam called out.
The pack answered with a fearsome chorus of howls.
“There, Yer Grace!”
Adam snapped his head around, first toward John to see which direction he pointed then in the direction of his finger.
Atlas, bloodied and breathing hard, stood not far from them. Persephone was not in the saddle.
Adam looked frantically around, inching closer, not wanting to push the pack into an attack.
As he approached, Atlas snapped at him. Zeus shied back but continued his approach at Adam’s command.
Atlas assumed an aggressive stance, something Adam had never seen him do—his docile nature was one of the reasons Adam had approved of him as a mount for Persephone.
In a flash of fur, a wolf darted across Zeus’s path. Atlas immediately switched his aggression to the snarling newcomer. A second wolf came from behind, and Atlas kicked out at it. The horse shifted, and Adam understood the reason for the horse’s behavior.
Kneeling on the ground just behind Atlas was Persephone. She held a large tree limb in her hand the way a warrior of old might have hefted a club. She swung it at a shadow that instantly became a wolf. Adam drew Zeus up just as the wolf lunged.
He reacted automatically. His pistol smoked before he even registered that he’d drawn it. The wolf lay unmoving at Persephone’s feet. The rest of the pack seemed momentarily startled into a retreat.
“Hand her up, John,” Adam instructed swiftly, John having dismounted already.
John helped Persephone to her feet. Adam saw in an instant that she was injured. Limping and sagging, she barely managed the few steps to Zeus. John helped Adam pull her into the saddle in front of him.
“Take Atlas’s reins,” Adam said.
John nodded.
“Be quick about it. The pack won’t stay spooked for long.”
John remounted and led Atlas away as fast as the fog and the horse’s injuries would allow. Adam turned Zeus about and pulled Persephone close to him.
“John?” Adam asked as they passed him.
“Yes, Yer Grace?”
“If the pack gets aggressive again, you leave Atlas behind and get to safety. Understood?”
John nodded, but Adam couldn’t say with any certainty if the man would actually abandon a horse to save his own skin. He returned the nod and urged Zeus to a faster pace.
“Persephone?” he asked as he negotiated the trees and fog.
She didn’t answer.
“Persephone?” he repeated more urgently. “Are you well?”
“No,” came the sob, tiny and quiet and filled with fear.
Adam tightened his hold on her. Behind him another howl sounded.