Seeking Persephone

by Sarah M. Eden

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to cry,” came a male voice from not very far behind her.

  Persephone had all but forgotten about Adam in her distress over Artemis.

  “Artemis is crying as well, I guarantee it.” Persephone wiped the two trickles of moisture from her eyes.

  “Then why make the promise?” From the sound of Adam’s voice, Persephone would guess he was rolling his eyes, though she didn’t look back at him.

  “To lessen her pain,” Persephone replied. “If my sister knew I was crying, it would break her heart.”

  “But you know she is crying,” Adam pointed out, still remaining behind her. Persephone couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a conversation with someone from that position.

  “I know her better than she knows me.”

  “Ah, yes. The best mama she ever had.”

  Now why had Artemis gone and said that? She could have borne almost anything other than the reminder that she was to be separated from the girl whom she thought of as her own child. Persephone had raised her from the day she was born. They had never been separated.

  The enormity of what she’d done by accepting Adam’s proposal suddenly hit her. She’d done this, almost exclusively, for the benefit of her family. But she hadn’t truly understood that in doing so, she would have to let go of them. She was leaving Artemis.

  Tears streamed at an alarming rate down her face. “I’ve lost my baby,” she cried in an anguished whisper.

  Persephone knew she’d be sobbing in a moment’s time if she didn’t wrest control of her emotions. She could never do that unless she had a moment alone, away from the sight of the now empty archway and carriage drive.

  She turned back toward Adam, to offer her excuses, to beg his pardon before fleeing. But he was gone. In her distress she hadn’t heard him go. And he hadn’t said a word before departing.

  Her throat constricted against the sob forcing its way out. Desperate not to disgrace herself in front of any of the staff who seemed to constantly be coming and going outside the castle but knowing she’d never get to her room in time—she had difficulty finding it still—Persephone ran as swiftly as her feet would carry her through the break in the hedgerow and into the first of the formal gardens.

  She ran quickly, taking turns at random and working her way deeper, behind bushes and hedges, until her lungs and feet would not carry her further. In a small outcropping, surrounded by bushes she imagined would be filled with blooms come spring, she found a small stone seat. Persephone sat, lowered her face into her hands, and did something she hadn’t done since her mother’s death. She wept with such force that she was certain her heart would break with the effort.

  * * *

  For a moment after she awoke, Persephone had no idea where she was. She forced her eyes open despite the burning. Hedges and plants surrounded the stone seat she was curled upon. And she was chilly.

  Flashes of memory bombarded her hazy mind as she pieced together the morning. Her family had left. She had fled to the garden for refuge.

  I must have fallen asleep, Persephone thought to herself. Her joints protested as she uncurled. She was tempted to close her eyes again; they stung and throbbed, as did her head. She had forgotten how miserable one could feel after an elongated bout of tears.

  Persephone took a deep breath, wrapping her arms around herself against the slight chill seeping through even her pelisse. She must have been more tired than she realized to have fallen asleep on a stone seat. Of course, she hadn’t slept much of late, especially the night before.

  She’d waited up for Adam, it being their wedding night. Hours had passed, and he’d never come. Not even to bid her good night. She’d thought he would, at least, do that.

  She’d sat up until the clock in her sitting room had chimed one in the morning. Light had flickered under the door that led to Adam’s bedchamber. Still she’d waited. The light was eventually extinguished, and silence descended on the house. She sat at her window, watching the door. As the clock had struck two, she’d climbed into bed feeling completely rejected and utterly alone.

  “You are no quitter, Persephone Iphigenia La— Boyce,” she told herself. “This simply needs time.” Squaring her shoulders, Persephone rose, trying to ignore the pounding in her head. “And no more tears,” she instructed herself.

  Persephone had ever been the optimist in her family. Every situation had a glimmer of hope, she’d discovered early in her life. They’d lost Mother but had gained Artemis. The boys had left for the sea but had become strong and sure—more so than they would have had they remained at home. She was married to a perfect stranger who seemed to want nothing to do with her, but . . . but . . . But, she told herself sternly, she had a home to call her own and the hope that he would turn out to be a friend, at least, and perhaps, eventually a good husband.

  Rising with what dignity her stiff joints would allow, Persephone shook out her skirts, grimacing at the havoc she’d wreaked on her appearance. She shook her head at herself. “And I wonder why my husband has no interest in my company.” More attention to her appearance, an attempt to be attractive, couldn’t hurt matters.

  Persephone moved along the garden trail, her mind clamped onto that train of thought. What else might she do to improve her situation? She couldn’t come to know Adam if they never spoke to one another. Adam certainly hadn’t made any attempts. Persephone had never been terribly bold, but she did know how to hold up her end of a conversation.

  After several minutes of walking, and a few wrong turns, Persephone finally reached the garden entrance. She’d been asleep longer than she’d realized. The sky had already dimmed with approaching dusk, and the air had grown colder.

  Conscious of her rumpled appearance, Persephone walked up the stone steps to the front door of Falstone Castle. The door opened at her approach.

  “Your Grace,” Barton the butler said, his face not revealing even the slightest surprise at her appearance.

  “Thank you, Barton,” Persephone answered with a faint smile, too exhausted for enthusiasm.

  She crossed the spacious entry hall, still awed by the scale of everything. “I will never fit here,” she thought morosely.

  What had happened to the determined duchess she’d momentarily been in the gardens? Weariness, it seemed, had robbed her of her resolve. Her head throbbed with every step she took, her eyes burned anew, and her legs were ready to drop out from under her.

  Persephone began to climb the wide stairs, determined to lie down at least for a few minutes. At the first-floor landing, she came face-to-face with Adam’s mother.

  “Good eve—” the dowager duchess’s greeting ended abruptly. “Are you feeling well, child?”

  “I am a little tired.”

  “Of course, you are,” she answered empathetically. “You had a long and tiring day yesterday.”

  Persephone nodded.

  “Do not fret yourself over dinner, dear,” the dowager instructed. “I shall have a tray sent to your room. You rest.”

  “Thank you.” With a wan smile, she stepped past her mother-in-law.

  She only had to backtrack once before finding her room. She didn’t even bother ringing for a maid to help her undress but dropped onto her bed fully clothed.

  The tears threatened to spill again, but Persephone forced them back. She was done crying. After a night’s rest she would face the future.

  Chapter Six

  “I told you to pack up and go,” Adam grumbled as Harry sauntered into the book room.

  “You also told me you’d call me out today,” Harry replied. “Never did. Always knew you were afraid of me.”

  “I’ve decided to shoot you in your bed instead.” Adam looked out the French doors and out over the formal garden below, though little was visible in the nearly moonless night. “Go to sleep so I can load my pistols in peace.”

  “Your mother said the new duchess was indisposed this evening.” Harry, as usual, was unaffected by threat
s. “Any idea what she meant by that?” He obviously thought Adam knew precisely what Mother had meant.

  He did, actually, have a pretty good idea.

  Adam had stood at the door he was standing at now for the better part of a quarter of an hour that morning, looking out over the gardens to a small alcove among the back hedgerow, where Persephone sat with her face in her hands. He knew she had been crying. It had bothered him. Quite a lot, actually.

  Twenty-four hours into this ill-conceived marriage and his wife was already sobbing in the back of a garden. Watching Persephone’s teary farewell with her family was enough to, most likely, convince half the staff that he was some kind of ogre holding the fair maiden against her will. And then the littlest sister—what was her name? Archipelago, or some such nonsense—had all but dissolved into a puddle there on the front lawns.

  “The best mama she’d ever had,” Adam muttered under his breath.

  “What’s that?” Harry asked.

  “Nothing.” One would think he’d married the girl’s mother then sent her off to some orphan asylum.

  “Old Jeb Handly says winter will come in early this year.” Harry abruptly changed the subject. “Says we’re bound to see a foot or two of snow before Christmas.”

  “Hmm,” was all the reply Adam offered, despite Old Jeb’s legendary ability to predict the weather. The man had to be approaching his eightieth year and hadn’t made a wrong guess in sixty-five of those years. “Two feet of snow ought to be enough to keep you from coming to visit.”

  “I was born and raised in Northumberland,” Harry scoffed.

  “Maybe it will turn out to be ten feet and you’ll never come back.” Adam stepped away from the French doors and back toward his chair near the fire.

  Harry grinned. “Don’t worry, Adam. If you’re really lucky, we’ll get that ten feet of snow before I leave.”

  “Then I really would shoot you in your sleep.”

  “I’m quaking.” He obviously was doing nothing of the sort.

  “You should be.” Adam glared across at him.

  “So why was your new wife not at dinner this evening?” Harry casually studied his fingernails.

  “Mother said she was indisposed.” Adam infused his voice with utter lack of interest.

  “She also was not at tea?”

  “She was out.”

  “Luncheon?”

  “Harry.”

  “Late this morning?”

  “Harry.”

  “Earlier this afternoon?”

  “You are keeping rather close tabs on her.” Adam raised an eyebrow.

  “Do not change the subject,” Harry said. “That is a bad habit of yours, you know.”

  “So is breaking other men’s noses.”

  “You’ve done that already, Adam. When we were fifteen.”

  “Then I’ll straighten it for you.”

  “Did. We were sixteen.”

  “Remind me again why you’re still here.” Adam leaned back again and stared into the fire.

  Harry shrugged. “Someone has to slay the dragon.”

  “And that would be me?” Adam asked dryly.

  “Dragon. Lion. Ogre. Take your pick.”

  “I am not an ogre.”

  “You’ve convinced a lot people otherwise.”

  “Idiots.”

  “She wouldn’t be the first person to hide from you.”

  “She? You mean Persephone?”

  “I certainly don’t mean your mother,” Harry answered. “You could shoot a man dead in the drawing room, and she’d just smile indulgently and say, ‘My—”

  “‘—poor boy,’” Adam finished with him. “The woman will still be calling me that when I’m eighty.”

  “When you’re eighty, she’ll be dead.”

  “Shut up, Harry.”

  “So are you inviting the Lancaster clan for Christmas?” Harry asked. Why was the man suddenly so intent on unpredictable changes of topic?

  “We will be buried under several feet of snow, remember?” Adam crossed his feet on the footstool.

  “So have them come early.” Harry sounded quite enamored of the idea. “Then we can all be cozily snowed-in together.”

  “I will not have hordes of people roaming around my house.” Adam tensed at the thought of the stares and the whispers, the noise and chaos. He preferred his days quiet and predictable. Harry was enough of a nuisance.

  “Not even for your wife’s sake? I am certain she would—”

  “I am not a monster keeping her prisoner here, forcing her to stay against her will.”

  “I know that, Adam,” Harry said.

  “She chose to accept me.”

  “Yes, but without the benefit of the rather ingenious postscripts we composed last night,” Harry pointed out. “I’m not sure she realized—”

  “You think I’ve made her miserable already?” Adam asked, piercing Harry with a disapproving look.

  “I didn’t say that.” Harry held up his hands in a show of innocence. “Only that she seemed to take the farewells particularly hard. You ought to have insisted her family stay longer.”

  “I didn’t make them go.”

  “You didn’t ask them to stay, either.”

  “They chose to go,” Adam said with finality.

  “And that’s it? That’s all the consideration this whole thing gets?”

  “What whole thing?”

  “‘What whole thing?’” Harry repeated his words in a tone of utter disbelief. “You’ve been married for an entire day, and you’ve already driven your wife to her rooms.”

  “I haven’t driven her anywhere,” Adam snapped, his jaw and shoulders tensing. “She is indisposed.”

  Harry rolled his eyes.

  “You don’t believe that?” Adam asked. “You think she’s in her rooms, quaking in some corner?”

  “She wouldn’t be the first. I’m pretty sure Addington sucked his thumb for a week after you walked out of Lords. You do have a tendency to overrun people.”

  “So I am the villain already, am I?” A steel-edged calm had crept into Adam’s tone, and he felt a familiar surge of determination as he rose swiftly to his feet.

  “Well, what other gentleman can you think of who has managed to alienate his wife within twenty-four hours? I wouldn’t be surprised if you never saw the poor woman again as long as you lived. In a place as enormous as this pile of rock, she could avoid you for years.”

  Adam set his jaw. Wouldn’t that be fodder for the laughing throngs? The Duke of Kielder commands the notice of society, the ears of his Peers in Parliament, the awe of his contemporaries, but his wife will have nothing to do with him.

  Suddenly, Adam was angry.

  “Where are you going?” Harry actually sounded concerned.

  “My wife is indisposed,” Adam flung back at him. “I am going to see for myself that she is well.”

  “Adam.” It was both warning and question. Harry was on his feet.

  “I am not going to hurt the blasted woman,” Adam growled back as they both left the book room and made their way down the hall.

  “Adam.” That same tone.

  Adam spun around, stopping Harry mid-step. “Have I ever harmed a woman?” Adam demanded. “Have I?”

  “No,” Harry finally admitted, with a little smile.

  “I have no intention of starting now. So quit looking at me like I’m about to drown a puppy.”

  “Have you ever drowned a puppy?” Harry asked.

  “Shut up, Harry.” Why did the man like goading him? There were dozens of men in Town who would tell Harry in no uncertain terms that pushing Adam was not a good idea. There were dozens more littering the countryside.

  “Is it really necessary to bother her?” Harry trailed along behind Adam.

  “I am not going to be made the monster in my own home.”

  “Adam.”

  “No. Do not start using that tone with me,” Adam snapped, turning down the hall that housed both his r
ooms and Persephone’s. “Whenever you think you have some great philosophical insight into my—what was it your sister always said, my ‘tortured soul’—you use that tone. It’s enough to make a man want to throttle you.”

  He grabbed the doorknob to Persephone’s sitting room.

  “I cannot go into your wife’s rooms,” Harry reminded Adam.

  “Good.” Adam shut the door in Harry’s face.

  “I’ll just be in my room,” Harry said from the other side of the door. “You know, for when you get around to shooting me.” Harry’s footsteps faded as they retreated down the corridor.

  “Jack-a-napes,” Adam growled under his breath.

  He turned. There was no sign of his wife in her sitting room. Adam crossed to the doorway to Persephone’s bedchamber. She’d be in there looking like some frightened rabbit, apparently.

  He’d married a coward. That was worse than marrying a beauty. If they ever made an appearance in Town, she’d need more than a pretty face to survive the viciousness of the ton.

  Persephone needed backbone. He’d simply have to tell her to toughen up, to seize command of herself. Adam had done so even as a child. If he’d spent his life feeling sorry for himself, he’d be nothing more than his mother’s “poor boy” still.

  Adam set his features and stepped across the threshold to Persephone’s bedchamber. He checked the shadowed corners first—that was where cowards tended to hide. He found her, however, curled in a ball on her bed. She was still fully dressed, wearing precisely what she’d worn that morning when bidding her family good-bye—what she’d worn in the gardens.

  Persephone must have come straight from there to her room and promptly fallen asleep. She hadn’t even gotten under her coverlet. The room, he noticed, was not terribly warm, despite the low fire.

  “Boil and blast,” Adam grumbled. He’d been ready to confront a quaking wife. Instead he’d found her sleeping, obviously exhausted, seeing as how she’d not even dressed for bed. The last thing he wanted was to feel sympathy for the woman. Emotions were best left out of any and all interactions—he’d learned that early on.