Harry grinned at that. “Just like you. I suppose, though, when one’s lessons are given in the shadow of a well-used gibbet, dirty is the only option.”
“I thought you would faint like a schoolgirl when you first caught sight of the gibbet.” Adam chuckled at the memory.
“At least you didn’t make me sleep in the Orange Chamber.”
They’d spent the two weeks in the nursery. “Do you remember Nurse Robbie?”
“The one who used to sing that song?” A smile was obvious in his voice. “The one about the boy who was small as a dandelion or something.”
“It was a thistle.”
Just then a movement down below caught his attention. Persephone was walking in her garden. Why did she wear that old, brown coat? Certainly she had the pin money to buy herself a new one. She ought to be wearing something warm but fashionable, the way the ladies in London dressed. The black of her day dress peeked out beneath the long coat, a perpetual reminder of her grief.
Had she retreated to the garden for another bout of weeping? Adam watched her more closely, hoping she hadn’t.
“So why this sudden interest in our colorful childhoods?” Harry asked, moving to Adam’s side.
Adam shrugged, watching Persephone make her way slowly along the hedge. He could see her breath condensing in the cold, even from so far away. She had to be freezing. He ought to send word to the kitchen to have a pot of tea or chocolate ready for her when she returned.
“Looks bloody cold out there, doesn’t it?” Harry said.
“It does.”
“She must really like that garden to stay out there when it is so much warmer inside,” Harry said.
“Why does she stay?” Adam muttered to himself, not particularly thinking of the garden.
“If there is one thing I will never understand, Adam, it’s women. Why does she walk through the garden in the freezing cold? I don’t know. There must be something about it she likes, something worth being out there for.”
What, Adam asked himself, made the hedge garden so appealing to Persephone? She went out there every day. Adam had watched her wandering about when he ought to have been seeing to estate business. Something drew her back day after day. If Adam could just figure out what that was and implement it elsewhere around Falstone, then Persephone would never want to leave.
“What is it that women love about gardens?” Harry could have been reading Adam’s thoughts.
“I have no idea.”
“My mother spent hours in her garden whenever my father was away from home.” Harry shook his head. “One would think if she was lonely, she would have visited the neighbors instead of the shrubbery.”
“The garden kept her company?” Adam asked doubtfully.
“Like I said, there is very little about women that I even remotely understand.” Harry moved away from the French doors. “Persephone looks cold, Adam,” he said as he made his way across the room. “You should go keep her warm.”
“Keep her—?”
“The fact that my suggestion confuses you does not bode well, my friend,” was Harry’s parting shot.
“Didn’t confuse me,” Adam muttered, turning back to watch Persephone. He simply couldn’t imagine her wishing for the sort of attention Harry had suggested.
She did look cold. What kept her out there? Harry’s mother had been lonely. Could that be Persephone’s reason as well?
Adam thought back on the vicar’s visit. She’d been so disappointed when she thought Adam would bring the call to a premature close. She made the trip to the Pointers’ twice a week to visit with the local ladies. He’d seen her face light up whenever Barton delivered another letter from her family.
“Sheislonely,” Adam said with bleak resignation. He watched Persephone turn another corner of the garden, walking alone. Isolation was heaven for Adam. It seemed quite the opposite for Persephone.
I require people, Joseph,Mother had said so many times to Father, though Adam hadn’t thought about those conversations in years.There are more people in one neighborhood of London than in all of Falstone.
So Father had hosted countless balls and dinners. Mother had been “at home” to callers every day for hours on end. Still, she’d left dozens of times, and always when Adam had needed her most. She hadn’t even been at Falstone when Adam and Harry had been sent down. Jeb Handly and Nurse Robbie had looked after them.
Adam turned his head and looked up into the frozen face of his father. “The balls didn’t work,” he said, as if his father hadn’t noticed that the endless diversion he’d provided for Mother hadn’t kept her at home. “I—” The words stuck, but Adam pushed them out. He could always talk to his father. “I don’t want Persephone to leave me.”
