Seeking Persephone by Sarah M. Eden Read Free Book Online

morning?”
    “Harry.”
    “Earlier this afternoon?”
    “You are keeping rather close tabs on her.” Adam raised an eyebrow.
    “Do not change the subject,” Harry said. “That is a bad habit of yours, you know.”
    “So is breaking other men’s noses.”
    “You’ve done that already, Adam. When we were fifteen.”
    “Then I’ll straighten it for you.”
    “Did. We were sixteen.”
    “Remind me again why you’re still here.” Adam leaned back again and stared into the fire.
    Harry shrugged. “Someone has to slay the dragon.”
    “And that would be me?” Adam asked dryly.
    “Dragon. Lion. Ogre. Take your pick.”
    “I am not an ogre.”
    “You’ve convinced a lot people otherwise.”
    “Idiots.”
    “She wouldn’t be the first person to hide from you.”
    “She? You mean Persephone?”
    “I certainly don’t mean your mother,” Harry answered. “You could shoot a man dead in the drawing room, and she’d just smile indulgently and say, ‘My—”
    “‘—poor boy,’” Adam finished with him. “The woman will still be calling me that when I’m eighty.”
    “When you’re eighty, she’ll be dead.”
    “Shut up, Harry.”
    “So are you inviting the Lancaster clan for Christmas?” Harry asked. Why was the man suddenly so intent on unpredictable changes of topic?
    “We will be buried under several feet of snow, remember?” Adam crossed his feet on the footstool.
    “So have them come early.” Harry sounded quite enamored of the idea. “Then we can all be cozily snowed-in together.”
    “I will not have hordes of people roaming around my house.” Adam tensed at the thought of the stares and the whispers, the noise and chaos. He preferred his days quiet and predictable. Harry was enough of a nuisance.
    “Not even for your wife’s sake? I am certain she would—”
    “I am not a monster keeping her prisoner here, forcing her to stay against her will.”
    “I know that, Adam,” Harry said.
    “She chose to accept me.”
    “Yes, but without the benefit of the rather ingenious postscripts we composed last night,” Harry pointed out. “I’m not sure she realized—”
    “You think I’ve made her miserable already?” Adam asked, piercing Harry with a disapproving look.
    “I didn’t say that.” Harry held up his hands in a show of innocence. “Only that she seemed to take the farewells particularly hard. You ought to have insisted her family stay longer.”
    “I didn’t make them go.”
    “You didn’t ask them to stay, either.”
    “They chose to go,” Adam said with finality.
    “And that’s it? That’s all the consideration this whole thing gets?”
    “What whole thing?”
    “‘What whole thing?’” Harry repeated his words in a tone of utter disbelief. “You’ve been married for an entire day, and you’ve already driven your wife to her rooms.”
    “I haven’t driven her anywhere,” Adam snapped, his jaw and shoulders tensing. “She is indisposed.”
    Harry rolled his eyes.
    “You don’t believe that?” Adam asked. “You think she’s in her rooms, quaking in some corner?”
    “She wouldn’t be the first. I’m pretty sure Addington sucked his thumb for a week after you walked out of Lords. You do have a tendency to overrun people.”
    “So I am the villain already, am I?” A steel-edged calm had crept into Adam’s tone, and he felt a familiar surge of determination as he rose swiftly to his feet.
    “Well, what other gentleman can you think of who has managed to alienate his wife within twenty-four hours? I wouldn’t be surprised if you never saw the poor woman again as long as you lived. In a place as enormous as this pile of rock, she could avoid you for years.”
    Adam set his jaw. Wouldn’t that be fodder for the laughing throngs? The Duke of Kielder commands the notice of society, the ears of his Peers in Parliament, the awe of his contemporaries, but his wife will have nothing to do with him.
    Suddenly, Adam was angry.
    “Where are you