“I plan to,” she said. “Right there will be fine.” She spoke the last to someone apparently behind them.
Adam glanced over his shoulder to see a footman, accompanied by an upper maid, setting a heavily laden dinner tray on Adam’s desk. Both appeared anxious and uncertain. Why shouldn’t they? Neither was among the few on the staff permitted in his book room. After a bobbed curtsy and a bow, the servants quit the room with all the speed of a fox during hunting season.
“I told you I wasn’t hungry,” Adam grumbled.
“I know.” Persephone appeared entirely unperturbed. “But I am.”
“Mother—”
“Is taking her meal with Harry,” Persephone cut across him. “And I am eating here.”
“No one eats in this room.” Adam called forth his authoritative duke’s voice.
“You would rather I starve?” He heard not the slightest catch in her voice or quiver of apprehension.
Adam turned to look at her. Persephone stood with her chin raised, voice determined, but eyes betraying a nervousness that cut him to the quick—the same look he’d seen in her eyes these past two weeks when the wolf pack made their presence known. She was trying to be brave again.
Adam’s steward had confirmed that the pack had drawn closer to the castle than usual, something their sheer volume had already made obvious. The two of them had taken turns reassuring Persephone that there was no danger, and she had made a valiant effort to appear reassured. But there had always been that look in the back of her eyes, the one that lingered there now.
“If you truly are on the verge of expiring, by all means, take some nourishment,” Adam answered impatiently as he crossed to the fireplace and deposited himself in his usual chair.
The sounds of a plate and cutlery being set out clanged around the room. She was invading every aspect of his life, changing his rules, his routine. He ought to be growing angrier, more frustrated. Instead he found the noises and the aroma of her dinner and her very presence soothing.
“Blast it,” he muttered.
“It does smell good, doesn’t it? It really is too bad you aren’t hungry.”
Adam turned his head enough to watch her fill her plate with a selection of the courses laid out there. Suddenly Adam, who had, in fact, earlier lost his appetite, was extremely hungry. “Is that a hint, Persephone?”
“A hint?” she asked, far too innocently.
“You are trying to convince me to join you.” Adam suspected she knew that. Was she teasing him? No one teased the Duke of Kielder.
“Join me?” she repeated. “I told you this meal was provided for me. If you want something, you will simply have to send to the kitchens for it yourself.”
Adam eyed the extensive spread of victuals doubtfully. There was more than enough food there for two people. She couldn’t possibly have expected to eat it all on her own.
“You plan to eat an entire chicken?”
“It is not an entire chicken.” She continued filling her plate. “And not such a very large one, at that. In fact, it is a very good thing the kitchen sent along a great deal more to go with it. Otherwise I would be in very real danger of wasting away.”
Adam shook his head and muscled back a laugh. He had the strangest conversations with Persephone. And yet he enjoyed them. Just last night she’d told him rather dryly of her latest difficulty with Atlas. The horse had decided several minutes into her daily ride that he would much rather stand still than move about the paddock. Her retelling had him chuckling despite his determination otherwise.
He’d told her several weeks earlier that her presence in his room helped him sleep. That was becoming less true all the time. When she wasn’t entertaining him with stories from her day, he was watching her sleep or thinking about her or wondering what else he needed to do to make her happy at Falstone.
Obsessions cannot possibly be good for a man, Adam had been telling himself for days.
A plate of food was placed on the end table beside his chair. Adam shifted his gaze from the low burning fire to Persephone, where she stood next to him. How could she possibly be happy at Falstone with him?
But she offered a friendly smile. “You didn’t expect me to eat the entire chicken, did you?”
Shewasteasing him. Even the novelty of that did not break through his pensive mood. Persephone continued to stand there, but Adam kept his gaze diverted from her face. He did not want to see any revulsion now that she stood in such close proximity or, worse yet, pity.
He found himself, quite without intending to, focusing on her hand hanging at her side so near his own. Women always seemed to have such tiny hands. Adam lifted his fingers from the arm of his chair just enough to brush her fingertips with his own.
Persephone stood perfectly still. Adam looked up at her from his position in the chair. There was something almost painful in her expression. He dropped his fingers immediately.
“Thank you for dinner, Persephone.”
