Page 54 of Courting Miss Lancaster
“Youpaid for my schooling?” Harry was torn between a surge of gratitude and the sting of injured pride. “You were only eight years old, Adam.”
“My mother paid for Harrow,” Adam answered, shrugging casually, but there was a surprising amount of emotion in his eyes that he was obviously trying to disguise. “I think she was so shocked that I actually had a friend that she couldn’t bear the idea of your not being at Harrow with me. When she heard that you were going to be pulled out for financial reasons, she arranged a sort of silent scholarship. I found out about it and took it over personally just before we left for Oxford.”
“I amnota charity case, Adam,” Harry protested.
“I rather felt like the charity case myself,” Adam said quietly. “I had to pay to have a friend. And I wasn’t ever entirely sure you didn’t stick around for the protection or because you felt like you owed me something. That doesn’t say much for the value of my friendship, does it?”
“It was never like that,” Harry insisted.
“It still is not like that,” Adam corrected. “On my side, either. You are like family, Harry. I take care of my family—the ones who aren’t imbeciles, anyway.”
Harry smiled. Adam even took care of the imbeciles, thoughhe would never admit it.
“If you had fallen in love with a penniless girl, I would have found a way to see to it that you could marry, Harry,” Adam said, looking uncomfortable as he admitted to the kinder side of himself that he generally kept locked out of sight. “If it meant making up some dead relative of yours, or the girl’s, or something like that, I would have done it. Gads, man, I already did. Athena has a pathetically enormous dowry. Problem solved.”
“No, not solved. What marriage could be successful when one partner brings all the money and the other nothing but poverty?”
Persephone’s laugh caught Harry entirely off guard. What could she possibly find funny?
“It sounds as though our marriage is doomed, Adam.” Persephone grinned. “If only I hadn’t been so poverty-stricken and you so lopsidedly rich. I’m afraid there is absolutely no chance for us.”
Harry felt himself begin to smile again. “Touché,” he acknowledged.
“Well, where’s Athena?” Adam asked. “Let’s get these two engaged so we can pack up and return to Falstone Castle.”
“It’s not that simple, Adam,” Harry said. “Athena doesn’t return my feelings.”
Persephone laughed again. It was more of a snort, really. “Good heavens, Harry. Why do you think she has been so emotional since you left?”
“Because she is angry with me?” Harry replied.
“Because she finally realized she is in love with you and is afraid you won’t ever come back,” Persephone said. Harry looked for a twinkle of mischief in her eyes that would turn her words into a joke. Persephone was entirely serious.
“Are you certain?” Harry asked, his heart suddenly pounding in his neck.
“She told me so herself.”
Harry had to sit down.
“You see, Harry, Athena has always had a very detailed picture in her mind of how she would meet the man of her dreams,” Persephone said. “She was so anticipating an exact reenactment of her expectations, had been praying for it, in fact, that for a while she mistook her feelings entirely. It was not until you left that she began to realize what she had lost.”
“She figured out that the man of her dreams doesn’t exist?” There was something about the wording in Persephone’s explanation that left Harry oddly deflated.
Adam muttered something under his breath.
“She realized youarethe man of her dreams,” Persephone said. “You simply arrived differently than she’d expected.”
“How had she expected?” Harry asked, curious.
Persephone’s expression turned thoughtful again. She eyed Harry rather closely as a slow smile slid across her face. “Harry,” Persephone said, “listen closely. You are going to make the Techneys’ ball magical.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
VW
Athena sat on a chairnear the wall at the last ball of the Little Season very much the way she had at the first ball more than two months earlier. Adam was just behind her. Persephone was at his side, in contrast to her determined socializing of that evening so many weeks before. Mr. Dalforth had danced with her but, as they had decided was best, had not paid her any more attention than that. Several of the remaining members of Athena’s court had already left London for their country homes. Mr. Howard was still in London providing nearly constant proof that his knowledge of trees was unparalleled in its enormity.
Sitting out the majority of her dances was not as disheartening as it had been when Athena had first embarked on her debut in society. She found, in fact, that she rather preferred it. Her mind was too full of Harry to spare any thoughts for conversing with a dancing partner.
