“Why do I get the feeling my presence is not particularly appreciated just now?” Harry spoke with a touch of amusement.
“I would think, Harry, that you must feel that way often,” Adam replied dryly. He turned from the paddock, walking away. “But if you go now, you’ll have plenty of time to pack.”
“Ah, but you’d miss me.” Harry laughed, following Adam.
“I never miss anyone.” Adam did not pause nor look back nor seem to care if Harry followed.
He certainly wasn’t missingher,Persephone thought as she watched the distance between them grow. George Sanford, one of her two best friends all the years she was growing up, had always remembered to offer his arm. He’d never once left Persephone behind to walk alone.
Persephone let out a whoosh of air. It condensed in front of her face. She rubbed at her cold, probably pink nose and turned back toward the paddock. Buttercup continued acting up. John Handly seemed rather content to let the troublesome horse get out her frustration.
Lucky filly. She, at least, could snort and pound her hooves in frustration. Persephone could do little more than stand out in the cold and wonder if she’d given up everything the day she’d accepted Adam’s suit.
“An unhappy filly, wouldn’t you say?”
Persephone looked up to see a vaguely familiar face smiling a lopsided, gap-toothed smile as he watched Buttercup kicking and snorting.
“It would certainly seem so.” Why did the man, dressed as an undergardener, look so familiar to her? She watched Buttercup snap her vicious-looking teeth at John. “Perhaps her disposition is bad.”
The man turned down his heavily lined mouth and shook his white-haired head. “Came here a few months back. Badly treated, she was. She don’t trust people. Figures they was bad to her once, they’ll be bad to her again.”
“But John would never hurt her.” Persephone watched Buttercup continue to storm about.
“Don’t matter.” The old man sucked a breath through his sparse teeth. “She won’t give him a chance to. She’ll fight him ’til holy perdition.”
Persephone colored a little at the unaccustomed sound of such a coarse phrase. “It seems a lost cause. Why does John keep at it, I wonder?” Buttercup attempted to kick John, who managed to skirt the flailing hooves.
“There ain’t no lost causes, Yer Grace,” the man said, looking at her full on. His face was lined, but his eyes were bright. “Every creature has someone who could save ’em if only they would try.”
Why did Persephone get the feeling she was missing something vital in this extremely odd conversation? “So is Buttercup more afraid or more angry?”
“Afeared.” The man nodded with emphasis. “Been afeared fer years.”
“I thought you said she’d only been here a few months.”
“Used to be different.” The man turned to face the paddock once more. “Didn’t go after every person that came near. Friendly like.”
“What happened?” How did he know so much about Buttercup? Had he accompanied the horse from her previous owners’?
“Got torn apart. Left behind.” The man leaned against the fence and watched the ongoing power struggle out in the paddock. “Decided to bite before anyone bit first.”
“That is tragic.”
John stood closer to the troubled creature than he had a few minutes before, approaching slowly and cautiously the way he had for weeks.
“Aye.”
The conversation ended there. The two of them stood silently beside each other, both watching John and Buttercup size each other up. An odd pair, to be sure. Both the two in the paddock and the two watching.
Every creature has someone who could save ’em if only they would try.Persephone glanced back at her companion. It seemed an absurdly philosophical observation for a man who, at first glance, gave the impression of poverty and the ignorance that, sadly, inevitably accompanied it.
“John is doing well with Buttercup.”
Persephone spun around so quickly at the sound of Adam’s voice that she felt herself topple. He reached out and righted her.
“The snow makes the ground slick,” Adam said quietly, uncomfortably. His hands lingered the slightest moment on her waist.
Persephone could only nod. He wore a look she knew well but had never seen on him. She remembered it haunting her in the mirror the morning after her mother died. The midwife had handed her the baby, Artemis, and she knew in that moment that she had lost something profound. More than just a mother, she had lost her childhood.
