“I am sorry for snapping at you,” Adam said, hardly believing he was apologizing to anyone, let alone a chambermaid. “I have had a very trying day.”
“Thank you, Your Grace,” she answered quietly.
“Thank you?” Adam asked as he walked toward the stairs that lead to the second story, the maid following.
“For apologizing,” she said. “I know you don’t have to, probably aren’t supposed to, even.”
Adam shrugged. “Probably not.”
“You know, you’re not much like people think you are.”
“How is that?” Adam asked, beginning to regret his slip in rigidity.
“You’re supposed to be fearsome and unkind, but I ain’t never seen a man care for his wife the way you did for Her Grace. And you apologize to someone who really ought to be beneath your notice. It’s not what people would expect from the Duke of Kielder.”
“Then perhaps you would be so kind as to keep that a secret from the masses.” His tone had lightened a bit, his mood actually improving after such a short conversation.
“Yes, Your Grace.” The maid curtsied as they reached the door to Persephone’s sitting room. “If you don’t tell Mrs. Smithson I been talking to you instead of disappearing like I’m supposed to.”
“What is your name?” Adam asked.
“Fanny Hartly, Your Grace.”
“Hartly? Jeb Hartly—?”
“My pa’s uncle.”
“I will keep your secret, Fanny Hartly, if you will keep mine.”
She smiled, the same uneven smile all the Hartlys seemed to have.
Adam found Persephone awake when he entered the room. She was sitting up, something that surprised him to no end. She would have been more than justified in remaining prostrate in bed for days. Adam discovered with each passing day just how many ways he’d underestimated her.
The look in her eyes stopped him in his tracks. She looked worried, afraid, even.
Adam sat on the edge of her bed. When had that become a favorite place of his to perch? “What is it, Persephone?”
“I have been thinking back on my ride.” She spoke quietly.
“Surely that can wait until you are more fully recovered.” He allowed his fingers to inch closer to hers. He wanted to hold her hand but didn’t dare reach out, knowing she’d pulled back the last time.
“There were some strange things, Adam.”
He brushed his fingertips along hers. She didn’t seem to notice.
“Things I thought at first were just oddities, but . . .” She shifted, wincing at what must have been a sharp stab of pain, no doubt in her leg. “But there are too many to be coincidences.”
“What do you mean?” Something in her tone told Adam that Persephone was in deadly earnest.
“What happened today,” she said, “I don’t believe was an accident.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
The fact that Adam seemed to believe her so instantly worried Persephone even more. She’d hoped that her suspicions were the result of a rather telling blow to the head or perhaps the piercing pain in her leg.
“Tell me these coincidences.” Adam looked her full in the face without a hint of discomfort.
“John didn’t help me mount,” she said. “Usually the stable hand waits for him, but this time he didn’t. John seemed surprised but didn’t say anything. And—I know this will sound strange—the groom who helped me smelled like . . . well, like—”
