“I couldn’t say.” Harry looked genuinely perplexed.
“Oh.” Her prospects were growing dimmer.
“He really doesn’t look at you?” Harry asked.
Persephone shook her head. Adam hadn’t once taken more than a very passing glance in her direction. He turned away almost instantly when she came into the room.
“That is strange,” Harry said. “He usually faces problems head-on.”
“I am a problem, then?” Persephone asked in a small voice.
Harry smiled at that. “Poor choice of words on my part.”
Persephone managed the smallest of answering smiles.
“It may just be that Adam is unused to the idea of a wife,” Harry offered. “He tends to get more, I don’t know,pricklywhen he has a lot on his mind.”
“So I should give this some more time?” Persephone felt a bit of her natural optimism returning.
“Definitely. Look at me. If I’d given up on Adam for being grumpy, we wouldn’t be friends.”
“How long did it take for him to not be prickly with you?” Her determination was building once more.
“He still is. But after a while he quit landing me facers every few days. I figured that was something.”
“Landing you facers?” Persephone had never heard that particular phrase before.
“It’s cant. Slang. Means punching a person in the face.”
“Good heavens,” Persephone muttered.
“Adam hates it when I use cant.” Harry smiled mischievously.
“But you do, anyway?”
“That’s why I do. Every time I’m in Town I try to pick up a new phrase. Drives him mad.”
“Doesn’t that worry you? Suppose he actually follows through with one of his threats?”
“He won’t.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Adam would never admit it,” Harry said, “but he knows I refuse to be bullied, and I think he respects that. He keeps trying. But I think he hopes it’ll never work.”
“So he doesn’t like people who are intimidated by him?” Persephone rose to her feet. She needed to think about this new information.
“Doesn’trespectthem,” Harry corrected.
“I guess that is a little different.”
“It is a great deal different to Adam,” Harry said. “Adamlikeshis mother.”
“But he doesn’trespecther?”
Harry shook his head rather adamantly. “Mother Harriet—I have called her that since I was a boy—has made something of a hobby out of pitying Adam.”
“And he doesn’t like that?”
