“I am beginning to suspect, Adam, that you do not like me very much. Your Grace.” Harry bowed to the dowager. “Your Grace.” Then to Persephone. With a grin, he bowed to Adam. “Your Grace.”
“Clod-head,” Adam grumbled.
“This could get confusing,” Harry said as he walked to the door. “We really ought to think of names for the three of you.”
Persephone smiled. She hoped Harry did stay for a while. His optimism was infectious, and she needed every drop she could come by.
“Do not leave without saying good-bye, Mother Harriet,” Harry requested.
“Of course not, Harry.” The dowager smiled at him.
“Are you really leaving?” Persephone asked after Harry had gone.
“Later this morning,” was the confirmation.
“Oh.” That upset her plans. She had hoped for a few weeks of instruction.
“It is sweet of you to look so downcast at my departure, my dear.” The dowager smiled kindly. “But it really is for the best. I am more comfortable in Town. And I think every newly wedded couple appreciates the absence of any and all of their parents.” She smiled at Adam as she passed him and floated out the door with all the dignity and grace a duchess ought to possess.
Persephone managed to bite back her sigh of frustration. Her plans for the day had just, essentially, gone up in flames. Her duchess-tutor was hying herself to London. Persephone’s attempts at improving her appearance had not even been noted. And Adam was sitting as far away from her as possible without actually leaving the room. He also seemed to be completely oblivious to her presence.
“Now what?” Persephone silently asked herself. And the trouble was, she had no answer.
Chapter Eight
“Haven’t you any relatives willing to endure the sight of you for a few days?” Adam asked as he and Harry rode back through the outer gate of Falstone after a particularly bruising mid-morning ride.
“Is that a not-so-subtle hint that my indefinite visit is coming to a rather definite end? Or are you simply curious about the state of my relatives’ affection for me?”
“I have no doubt your relatives are as heartily sick of you as I am. They, however, are far less likely than I am to draw and quarter you. Probably only because they do not have a conveniently located dungeon as I have.”
“It amazes me, Adam,” Harry said, keeping pace with him as they passed under the arch of Falstone’s inner wall and brought their mounts to a halt at the front steps of the castle, “how you can feign such dislike for me. I am generally considered a very likable fellow.”
Adam dismounted, handing Zeus’s reins to one of the stable lads who’d met them there in order to take their mounts back to the stables.
“You don’t think I’m all the crack?” Harry asked, with a laugh, as they ascended the stone steps leading to the solid front doors of Adam’s home.
“Using cant, Harry?” Adam despised slang. “You sound more like those idiotic young London fops every day.”
“And you sound more like my grandfather every day.”
“I knew your grandfather,” Adam reminded him.
Harry laughed. “In other words, I’ve offended you.”
“I doubt I remind you of your rapscallion grandfather in any way.” Adam handed his gloves and hat to Barton and continued across the entry hall.
“Certainly not in your choice of wife,” Harry said.
Adam followed Harry’s suddenly fixed gaze up the stairwell to the first-floor landing, where Persephone stood with her back to them and her head bent over as if studying something in her hands.
“My grandmother was something of a dragon,” Harry went on. “Never left a fellow bellows to mend, I’d wager.”
“It is generally not a good idea to tell a short-tempered man that his wife has left you breathless,” Adam warned, Harry’s observation inexplicably raising his hackles.
“He might shoot me in my sleep?” Harry hazarded the guess with a barely held-back laugh.
“He might shoot you where you’re standing,” Adam answered with a growl.
