“Oh.” She stepped back. Adam wondered if it was an involuntary instinct, for she hardly seemed aware of her retreat. “I am intruding, then?”
It was the perfect opportunity to send her away, to reclaim his last sanctuary. She’d already invaded his bedchamber. He found, however, that he didn’t want her to go. He hadn’t seen Persephone all day, and it was well past noon.
John had told him Atlas still wasn’t rideable. What had Persephone done with her morning, having her usual ride canceled? He wondered how she spent her time, what she thought about. It was an odd feeling for him, thinking about another person as much as he did.
“Not at all,” he heard himself answer her. He even motioned her inside the room.
Persephone moved to the chairs nearest the fireplace, her eyes still wandering around the room. Why was his book room so intriguing to her?
Adam studied her as intently as she studied the room. He’d selected every piece of furniture in it. He had chosen where each painting hung. Did she approve? Approval had never mattered to him before.
A sudden flash of memory took him back twenty years.
“Very good, son. Very good.” Father had said that, eying the picture Adam had drawn of Falstone. He’d worked for days on it, desperate to get each detail correct. The “very good” was exactly what he’d wanted to hear,desperatelywanted to hear. Father, Adam remembered, had always been the one person he could count on to say just that.
Adam shook off the memory only to realize Persephone was staring at the portrait above the mantel. He felt uneasy, nervous. Perhaps the artist should have painted over the scars. Persephone’s childhood portraits were probably the rosy-cheeked cherubic paintings most children inspired.
“Who is this you are standing beside, Adam?” Persephone asked, tilting her head to one side as if studying the painting more closely.
“My father.” He resisted the urge to move to her side.
“I thought he must be. You look very much like him.”
“Do I?” No one had ever told him that before.
“Very much,” she confirmed. “You have the same eyes. And there is something very similar about your mouth and the shape of your face. And, of course, you both have black hair.”
“I suppose there is a resemblance.” Adam moved closer, looking for the likeness.
“Your nose is your mother’s.” Persephone shifted her gaze from the portrait to Adam himself. “I noticed that when I first saw the two of you together.”
No one had ever mentioned that resemblance, either. But then he and Mother were rarely seen together. He doubted many people even noticed his nose when presented with the rest of him.
“Are you like him in other ways?” Persephone looked once more at the painting.
“Like my father?”
She nodded.
“I hope so,” Adam answered more quietly than he’d intended. When Persephone took that response as her cue to turn those scrutinizing brown eyes—why hadn’t he noticed before that they were brown?—on him, Adam shifted topics. “You wanted to speak to me about something?”
He walked abruptly away. The distance, he found, didn’t help. He was every bit as aware of her presence as he’d been standing next to her.
“Yes.” Enthusiasm colored her voice again. “I have a letter from Athena.”
Athena.She was the oldest of Persephone’s sisters. Seventeen or eighteen, if Adam remembered correctly.
“They have received word that theTriumphantwill make port the last week of November and that Linus will be granted three weeks’ shore leave. Isn’t that wonderful?” She smiled broadly, her eyes sparkling in a way they hadn’t since she’d married him. Her face lit up when she spoke of her family. He began to truly wonder if she was at all happy at Falstone. “TheTriumphantis docking at Newcastle. If Linus sends word when they arrive, I could be there to see him before he has to go to Shropshire.”
“Be there? In Newcastle?” Adam tensed.
“It isn’t so very far.”
Newcastle is not far, my poor boy.
“I wouldn’t be gone more than a day or two.”
I will be back before you even have time to miss me.
