“Could I speak with you? Please?” Where was the pitying tone? She addressed him almost as if he were a grown man.
Adam was decidedly uneasy. He moved warily into the drawing room, keeping one eye trained on Mother. She was acting strange: fidgety, nervous.
“Perhaps you should sit down,” Adam suggested.
“I am so sorry, Adam. I know you wished me to help with Persephone.” She seemed to pale a little further. “I am sure I let you down. You must be so disappointed . . .” Her voice broke. Mother took several gulps of air.
“Sit down, Mother.” Adam cupped her elbow with his hand and guided her to a seat.
She smiled shakily at him. “Sometimes you are so like your father,” she said, her eyes misted, “the dear man.”
Adam’s eyes must have grown to twice their size. Mother had never compared him to his father. He would not have been able, until that moment, to guess whether she would consider a likeness a positive or a negative trait.
“Are you quite well, Mother?” Adam watched her with increasing alarm.
“Oh.” She waved a hand, though her face was a study in overset emotions. “I had hoped you would never discover my most mortifying flaw.”
“Flaw?”
“I have always been . . . beenhorriblein the sickroom. Horrible, Adam!” She wiped at her eyes. “Even as a child, one of my siblings would come down with a cold, and I would fret our poor nurse into a fit of nerves. My mother always told me it would be different when I was a mother—that some maternal instinct would take over.”
Adam was completely lost. Mother quite obviously needed soothing. “There was a great deal of blood, earlier, with Persephone. I do not blame you for not being up to the task.”
“But I am certain I only made the situation worse.” Mother rose to her feet once more and began pacing as she wiped and dabbed with a shaking hand. “I always did.”
“Did?” Adam could hardly believe what he was seeing. Mother was ever calm and collected, undisturbed by anything. The poor woman looked on the verge of collapse.
Poor woman.Adam shook his head.
“The second surgeon actually sent me to the vicarage for two days,” Mother said, a sob making the last few words difficult to discern. “Banished from my own home. From my poor boy.”
“Wait.” Adam froze. “Banished? The second surgeon?”
“I am certain I made it worse. I was so nervous, so concerned through the first one—”
“The firstsurgery?” Adam pressed.
She nodded and continued. “And I didn’t get better. Worse, in fact. The second surgeon sent me away. The next few insisted I be gone before they even arrived. And . . . and . . .” She very nearly wailed. “I was grateful to go. Happy to. What kind of an unnatural mother wishes to leave her child at such a time?”
Mother dropped onto a sofa, crying loudly.
Adam sat, too. All the times she’d left before Adam’s surgeries, she’d done so at the surgeon’s request—no,requirement,if her retelling wasn’t exaggerated. Could her eagerness to go really have been an indisposition toward the sickroom?
She always had come back once he was well into his recovery, after all difficulties and dangers had passed. But there had been other times when she had left Falstone, times unconnected to illness or surgeries or injuries. At least that was how he remembered it. Perhaps he’d had a stomach illness or a head cold and simply didn’t remember it. Adam couldn’t recall Father being ill during that time.
“Your Grace?” a voice politely inquired from the doorway.
Didn’t anyone in this house realize he had a great deal on his mind? Every few minutes, it seemed, someone was vying for his time.
“What?” he snapped.
The young maid at the door shrunk back a little. Adam recognized her—the maid who’d provided him with fresh water to clean his hands and words of encouragement during the ordeal caring for Persephone.
“Her Grace is asking for you,” the maid said. “She seems anxious.”
Adam was on his feet before she’d finished the first sentence. “Excuse me, Mother,” he said as he crossed the room.
The little maid stood at the door as Adam passed through it, eyes cast down and expression hurt.
