Seeking Persephone by Sarah M. Eden Page A

effort to please his host, Hewitt threw back his entire portion and promptly found himself in the midst of an all-consuming bout of sputters and coughs. “I . . .” He coughed, making an almost pained face. “. . . that was . . .” He cleared his throat several times. “. . . delicious.” Hewitt wiped a tear from his eyes. “Delicious.”
    “Yes.” Adam nodded, taking a more moderate portion from his own glass and watching Hewitt quite as if nothing untoward had just occurred. “What brings you to Falstone?” Adam set his glass on the table and turned his intense gaze on his cousin.
    Hewitt went just a touch pale. Coward. “My—my mother.” His voice even cracked as he spoke, despite his being several years Adam’s senior. “She suggested I stop on my way back to Yorkshire.”
    “Unless you were returning by way of Scotland, I seriously doubt Falstone was ‘on your way’ to Yorkshire.”
    Hewitt cleared his throat and looked very much as if he wished for another glass of port, sputtering or no. “I did tell Mother that.” Hewitt tugged at his cravat. “She felt certain you wouldn’t mind.”
    No doubt she also wouldn’t mind if Hewitt fingered a few things to take back with him to the bevy of “G”s at home.
    “How do you find your accommodations?” Adam propped his elbows on the table, interlocking his fingers and resting his chin on them, keeping his eyes glued to Hewitt’s face. The scrutiny made Hewitt fidget. People always revealed more than they planned when they felt uncomfortable.
    “The Orange Chamber is . . . is very . . .” Hewitt finally decided on “quiet.”
    “Quiet?”
    Hewitt looked away. The Orange Chamber could be very quiet—it being the most remote of the castle’s fifty-plus guest chambers.
    “It has a fine view,” Adam added. The Orange Chamber overlooked the back courtyard of Falstone, where the remains of a still-usable gibbet and stocks stood. Adam wondered if Hewitt recognized what he saw out his bedchamber windows.
    “Yes,” Hewitt said quietly.
    Adam stood. “Let us join Her Grace in the drawing room.”
    Adam let his eyebrows furrow as he led the way from the dining room, Hewitt only a few steps behind him. The man was as much of an idiot as he had been on his last visit, even if he had refrained from summing up the value of his future acquisitions. Probably because there was nothing left for him to assess.
    A footman opened the drawing room doors as Adam and Hewitt approached, effectively warning Persephone of their arrival. In fact, she watched the door as they entered, a smile touching her face, though not the blinding smile she’d offered Harry the morning before.
    Adam felt an inexplicable twinge of regret.
    “I am afraid we haven’t much to offer by way of entertainment,” Persephone said to Hewitt. “I am hardly a musician, nor am I much of a conversationalist.”
    The apology grated at Adam. She ought not to feel the need to apologize to Hewitt. He was the interloper, the uninvited guest. Hewitt ought to be whimpering and sniveling and taking himself off in a fit of devastation at her very presence. Persephone’s arrival at Falstone, as far as Hewitt knew, spelled the end of any hope the G. Hewitts had of getting their hands on the Kielder legacy.
    “Then we must simply speak of Shropshire, Your Grace.” Much of Hewitt’s early discomfort dissipated. “I passed through your home county only this week, you must realize.”
    “Did you, indeed?” Persephone’s eyes widened with obvious pleasure. “How did you find Shropshire?” She motioned for Hewitt to take the chair near the sofa where she sat.
    Silently daring both Hewitt and Persephone to gawk at him, Adam took his seat directly beside his wife and attempted to appear enthralled by their discussion of various types of trees and wildlife. He found, however, that his gaze, which he intended to have shifted between Hewitt and Persephone as they spoke, kept returning to his wife.
    He