Seeking Persephone by Sarah M. Eden Page A

say she escaped?”
    “She was eventually permitted to leave, but only for part of the year. While she is free, they believed, the world saw growth and warmth and harvests. During those months when she returns to the underworld, the earth again mourns for her.”
    “Such a sad story,” John said.
    “It was merely an attempt by the ignorant to explain the changing of the seasons,” Adam grumbled.
    “I have always thought it a very touching story,” Persephone said, in obvious disagreement with Adam’s assessment.
    “That the poor gel got stolen off?” John asked her, disbelieving.
    “It is a story so full of love. Her mother’s love and grief is what brings Persephone back to her family. And when she returns to her loved ones,” Persephone said, a look of sentimental longing on her face, “their joy is so full that the entire earth comes to life with the enormity of it.”
    “Laws, that is a rather fine thing to think about.” John nodded. “Makes a man wish his parents had thought to give ’im a name with some kind of grand story to it. There must be loads of them stories from the Greeks.”
    “I will not have you rechristening my stable staff with mythological names.” Adam worried at the moment that she might actually select a new name for John.
    Persephone laughed, precisely as Harry would have. Harry did, in fact. He stood on Persephone’s other side. If Adam hadn’t kept his head turned in the other direction, he might have seen him there, and Harry’s sudden burst of laughter wouldn’t have been nearly so unexpected.
    “Nonsense, John,” Persephone addressed the stable hand. “The Bible is filled with Johns who have rather fine stories attached to their names.”
    John seemed to ponder that. “And them stories are true,” he said, as if discovering an added bonus.
    “Precisely,” Persephone answered. “The story of my name may be touching, but it is not true.”
    Then John, he of the gapped teeth and sun-ravaged face, smiled at Persephone with so much admiration, it was all Adam could do not to yank the man off his feet by his hair. Not that it was the poor man’s fault. A duchess ought not to be speaking so familiarly with a stable hand. It confused things. And Adam’s duchess ought not to have been the sort of lady to inspire admiration in all and sundry, in the first place. If Persephone had been anything like what he’d expected, Adam’s life wouldn’t have been plunged so suddenly into confusion.
    And John was still smiling.
    “Are you going to saddle Her Grace’s mount, or shall I be forced to do it personally?” Adam growled.
    John seemed to snap to attention. “’Pologies.” He pulled his forelock. “Would Atlas be suitable, Yer Grace?”
    “Fine,” Adam snapped.
    John disappeared into the stables. Adam took a few breaths to compose himself. He’d never before had to try so hard to control his emotions. He’d always been one to hold to a steely calm.
    “So you are really going to try riding again?” Harry asked Persephone.
    “To be perfectly honest, I am not certain one could accurately call my previous experience ‘riding.’ Our neighbors, the Uptons, allowed me to ride a pony of theirs on occasion when I was a child. If memory serves, that particular pony was in his second decade and did little more than shift his weight.”
    “Then you have never truly ridden?” Harry sounded astonished.
    “Impoverished grandsons of only slightly less impoverished barons do not keep a stable, Harry,” Persephone answered with an ironic laugh.
    Alibi was being led—forced was, perhaps, the more apt description—from the paddock, and Atlas was being brought out of the stables.
    Adam surveyed the gelding with a critical eye. Persephone had never ridden; not if her description of that pony was accurate. Atlas was calm today. But, then, Atlas always was. He was slow, sedate, moving more like a heavy-laden work horse than the riding mount he was. It was the reason Adam had