Something dropped onto the stone bench near her face, rustling and whooshing as it did. She raised her head from her arms just long enough to look. She could make out only a pile of brown fabric. Persephone laid her head back on her arms, just looking at the material through the tears that continued to fall.
“You didn’t bring a coat.” Adam’s clipped tone was easily recognizable.
The lump of wool, apparently, was her brown coat.
Her breaths continued to shudder. Words were not possible.
“That’s all.” And his footsteps began sounding a retreat.
It was such cold civility. Any one of her family members would have urged her to return to the house, offered words of solitude, or simply sat beside her in empathetic silence. Persephone turned her head away from the lump that was Adam’s sole offer of comfort: a coat he’d dumped on the seat beside her.
“I want to go home,” Persephone whispered in agony to herself.
* * *
Adam watched as Persephone continued to sit on the cold earth, head turned away from the coat he’d brought her, as if she had no intention of putting it on. “It won’t do you any good on the bench,” he muttered under his breath. He stood not more than twenty paces from where she sat, close enough to see her shudder.
He’d brought her the coat. What more did she want? He had no idea why she’d left—she’drun.Adam knew she was upset about something. He’d seen her out in the garden where she always went to cry, on the ground, at night, without a coat. He’d made an effort. And she couldn’t be bothered to put the bloody coat on!
“What more do you want?” Adam muttered. He knew exactly what she wanted. He heard her say as much only moments before. She wanted to go home.
No doubt to be with her family in her grief. Adam wondered for a brief moment if his mother would grieve so all-consumingly should he meet an untimely end. They’d never been close, so he couldn’t really say. It was an insight into himself with which he was not at all comfortable. Would anyone cry for him the way Persephone wept for her brother?
“Hewitt won’t,” Adam muttered. Every one of the Brothers “G” would rejoice should Adam be struck down by a bolt of punitive lightning.
Harry might miss him once in a while. Persephone certainly wouldn’t. Except during the occasional round of howls from the Falstone wolves. She might think of him then.
Adam’s eyes drifted back to Persephone. She had made no move to leave. She still didn’t have her coat on.
“Foolish woman,” Adam mumbled. But he was already retracing his steps to where she sat.
Her sobs had relented somewhat. Adam actually felt relieved to hear some steadiness return to her breathing. Only because he disliked crying, he told himself.
“You’ll catch an inflammation of the lungs,” Adam told Persephone after he’d stood uncertainly over her for more than a few awkward moments. “Everyone in London will accuse me of poisoning you.”
A strangled sort of laugh broke Persephone’s silence. Adam couldn’t remember making anyone, other than Harry, laugh. But Harry laughed at everything. Persephone seemed more selective.
He had the sudden, impulsive desire to wrap that deuced coat around her, carry her back into the castle, and deposit her safely in front of the largest fire he could find, where she could thaw out. He shook his head to dislodge the thought, but it wouldn’t be dismissed.
Opting for a compromise, Adam lifted her coat—it looked serviceable enough, no doubt a leftover from her days of poverty—from the bench. “You’ll be warmer inside,” he told her, knowing what would have been a gentle invitation from a decent sort of husband had come across as an order from him.
But she seemed willing to comply. Persephone shifted from her position, sitting back from the bench but not looking up at him.
“With Hewitt and Harry gone, the castle will be quiet.” Adam tempered his tone in a way he hadn’t in some time, and didn’t plan to again soon. “You can find a . . . private spot and . . . do . . . whatever it is you do after you cry.”
“I usually sleep,” Persephone answered quietly. “And wake up with a headache.”
“Sounds awful.”
She nodded and slowly rose to her feet. Adam handed her the coat, which she did little more than drape over her shoulders.
“Then why cry?” It seemed a rather ridiculous thing to do, knowing ahead of time what the end result would be.
“Generally, I can’t help myself.” Persephone wiped her cheek with the palm of her hand.
She, then, hadn’t learned the art of securing a tourniquet around her emotions.
“Come on, then.” Adam felt ever more uncomfortable now that the dim light of the half-hidden moon and the light spilling from the castle windows made Persephone’s continued drip of tears visible. He led the way out of the garden, hearing her footsteps behind him.
