An understanding smile tugged at the maid’s mouth. “I got lost a few times when I first came,” she said. “Falstone Castle is awful big.”
Persephone nodded.
“I can show you where the breakfast room is,” the maid offered.
“I don’t want to keep you from your duties . . . ur . . . I am afraid I don’t know your name.”
“Fanny, Your Grace.” She bobbed again. “An’ you won’t be keeping me from my work. Not if I’m doing what you asked me to do. You being the mistress of the house, and all.”
“True.” Persephone smiled a touch ironically.
“This way, Your Grace,” Fanny said, and turned on her heels to walk back the way she’d apparently come.
Persephone followed at a close distance. After a minute or two, the passageway opened into a larger corridor. “This looks vaguely familiar,” Persephone said, mostly to herself, eyeing the paneled walls and pointed-arch windows.
The corridor spilled onto the first-floor landing, the wide staircase leading down to the entrance hall and its fan-vaulted ceiling. A long, crimson banner hung just above the double front doors displaying what Persephone had decided upon arriving two days earlier was the family coat of arms.
The Lancasters had no family crest or motto or any of the hundreds of other things that set families like the Boyces so far above the rest of society. The Boyces had history. They belonged to hundreds of years of their own existence. No doubt there were Boyces long before the Domesday Book. The Lancasters weren’t known to have walked the earth more than four or five generations back.
“I’m an intruder here,” Persephone whispered to herself.
“Just this way, Your Grace,” Fanny said, leading the way across the landing.
They passed the doors to the dining room where the wedding breakfast had been served, and Fanny stopped at the next door, motioning for Persephone to enter.
“The breakfast room,” she said quietly, as if passing on a secret.
“Thank you, Fanny.”
The girl bobbed a curtsy then quickly disappeared back down the corridor. Persephone took a deep, fortifying breath and stepped inside.
“Explain to Harry before you leave that you are not going because I forced you to do so,” Adam’s voice reached Persephone as she stepped into the room.
She looked up at the sound, finding him seated at the round breakfast table, obviously addressing his mother, who sat across from him and watched him with obvious motherly concern. Adam spoke over the top of a newspaper, lowered to reveal only the left half of his face. Persephone thought of the brief glimpse she’d had of Adam the morning they were married and the scars that marked the right side of his face. She wondered if he purposely hid it.
Adam continued addressing his mother. “Harry seems to think I drive every person who ever comes here away with a scythe in one hand and a flaming torch in the other.”
“A regular one-person bloodthirsty mob—that’s what you are.” Harry’s reply drew Persephone’s eyes to where he sat, a few places removed from Adam. “You really ought to think about employing pitchforks when you—”
Harry looked up at that moment and spotted Persephone. He rose abruptly to his feet, acknowledging her entrance. Persephone let her eyes wander back to Adam. He had risen as well but did not look in her direction. Adam seemed mesmerized by something just outside the windows.
“Persephone!” the dowager duchess exclaimed, hurrying to the doorway where Persephone stood. Adam’s mother had taken to Christian names early on, though Persephone could not bring herself to so much as think of the duchess asHarriet. “Are you feeling better this morning?”
Persephone nodded, color staining her cheeks as she remembered running into her mother-in-law when she was certain she looked less than presentable: red-rimmed eyes, mud-stained dress, wrinkles from bodice to hem.
“Come break your fast, dear,” the dowager instructed. “Eggs? Kidneys?”
“Yes, please.” She hadn’t eaten a thing since breakfast the morning before and was ravenously hungry.
“Harry, will you please—”
“I will prepare a plate for her, Mother,” Adam interrupted, sounding none too happy about it.
“I can—” Persephone began to protest.
But Adam had already turned to the sideboard and was placing eggs on a plate.
Persephone sat at the first empty seat she came to. A delicate china plate was placed in front of her. “Thank you, Adam,” Persephone said on something near a whisper.
