Persephone pulled her attention to the present and realized her husband was offering to hand her into their waiting carriage. He wasn’t looking at her, something he’d avoided doing throughout the ceremony. Odd.
“Thank you.” She placed her hand in his, stepping carefully onto the lowered step of the exquisite landau, its roof fully collapsed. She seated herself on the forward-facing seat and quickly arranged her skirts, feeling suddenly nervous at the idea of being alone, even for the length of a carriage ride, with her husband of less than ten minutes. He stepped up and sat beside her without looking in her direction.
The carriage smoothly began its forward journey. Persephone saw the duke nod to the well-wishers. She, herself, smiled as they pulled away. Most of those assembled would be at Falstone Castle for the wedding breakfast, so there need be no farewells as yet.
Persephone watched her husband as they pulled further away from the churchyard. What little of him she’d been able to see, thus far, was not unpleasant. He wore his dark hair a little long, falling in waves around his face, completely covering his ears. He had strong features, which seemed to hint at an underlying strength of character and determination. His build was that of an active man. Persephone wondered how he spent his days, whether he preferred riding or fencing.
She saw the duke’s eyes dart quickly in her direction. Persephone dropped her gaze to her lap, embarrassed at being found out studying him. They continued in silence for a few more minutes before the duke spoke abruptly.
“Is your name really Persephone?” His voice wasn’t raised enough to be heard by the driver over the pounding hooves of the team pulling them swiftly on their way.
“It is.” She kept her voice low. She glanced up at him once more. He watched the passing landscape, face turned a little away from her.
“What were your parents thinking choosing a name like that?”
She hadn’t heard him wrong during the ceremony, after all, it seemed. At first she’d told herself that he hadn’t referred to her name as “ridiculous” in the midst of their wedding. Now it seemed likely that he had done just that, and only moments after muttering a curse loudly enough to stop the vicar mid-sentence.
“My father is a scholar. He is particularly fond of Greek mythology.”
“Entirely too fond, it would seem,” the duke said. “Are the rest of your siblings similarly afflicted?”
“In what way afflicted?” Persephone refused to acknowledge his further disparagement of her dear papa.
“What absurd names did your parents assign the other members of your family?” His tone clearly indicated he was not impressed with her mental prowess.
“Athena is just younger than I. Evander is fourteen. Linus, thirteen. Daphne will be twelve toward the end of the year. The youngest is Artemis.”
“Fates save us from short-sided scholars,” the duke muttered.
Artemis would surely have deemed the duke “grumpy,” one of her favorite descriptors. Persephone had never met anyone who fit the word so well.
She watched him as they passed into dense forest, the road the only visible break in the trees.
“Do you have a middle name?” the duke asked, as if it were highly unlikely.
Persephone fought down an ironic smile. “I do.”
“I suppose it would be too much to hope that it is something common.” He still did not look at her.
“Iphigenia,” Persephone said.
The duke’s head turned instantly in her direction. His expression registered shocked disbelief, just as she knew it would.
He was looking at her full-on for the first time, and Persephone barely managed not to stare. For the right side of his face, from hairline to nearly the corner of his eye, was a spider’s web of scarring—not hideous or frightening, but absolutely impossible not to notice.
“Persephone Iphigenia?” the duke said in something like amazement, and not the flattering kind of amazement, either. He had already returned his gaze to the landscape. “Did no one ever call you anything else?”
“Only ‘Miss Lancaster.’”
“Well, I cannot call youthat,” the duke answered with an obvious grasp of the irony. “I suppose I will have to consign myself to ‘Persephone.’”
“It would seem so.” Persephone was baffled.
She’d never met anyone quite like the Duke of Kielder. He was gruff and not at all personable, and yet there was enough intelligence and wit in his conversation to make him intriguing. Then there were those scars, which made a person wonder how he’d acquired them, want to know more of his history.
“You, of course, will call me Kielder.”
“I will not call you Kielder,” Persephone answered almost immediately.
