Sown Seeds | Seeking Persephone Oneshot
MAIN MASTERLIST | gif by @emma-ofnormandy
Summary: After his impulsive kiss in the drawing room, Adam is forced to reckon with the truth of what he wants, and whether it's possible. Persephone finds herself choosing between an unknown and a known fear: which is more intimidating, her husband, or the wolves' fearful howling? WC/Rating: 3k, rated L for longing T
Seeking Persephone is a lovely 4 part series adapted from the book of the same name. It was initially a kickstarter! It's available on Amazon for $4.99 per episode, which I initially balked at-- until I realized it's about the same price as a movie ticket for 3+ hours of period romance. SOLD.
A scarred, surly duke offers marriage to the oldest daughter of a nearly destitute but respectable family, thinking she would be an ugly spinster. Oh, how wrong he was... For those reading fandom blind, Persephone has been sneaking into Adam's bed when she thinks he's asleep, for fear of the sound of howling wolves outside.
SOWN SEEDS
Adam couldn’t stop pacing. Even the act of chasing Harry away had lost some of its ability to soothe, and deep down, he knew why.
Physical closeness was a bugbear of sorts. Harry had earned three days’ worth of bread and water once for asking if Adam was rude to his peers just to avoid the ‘horrors’ of camaraderie. The very reason he’d chosen the eldest daughter of a desperate family was to find the kind of woman who had given up on the prospect of intimacy. He’d spent the time between proposal and wedding secretly hoping for an ugly, meek wife entirely overcome with both gratitude and enough terror to leave him alone. Consummation would, he’d imagined, be achieved entirely in the dark, mostly clothed, with both of them thinking only of their duty to pass on the family name.
Instead, the fates had gifted him Persephone. He’d been just as unprepared for her beauty as he was her keenly felt emotions and sweetly expressed opinions.
Adam paused at a window, head down, left hand bracing himself on the centerpiece as if struggling to breathe. He’d kissed her. The adrenaline of the moment was undoubtedly the reason for his current uproar, but not at all because of regret. He wanted to do it again. He wanted her to want him to. The very thought should have sent him to hide away until he’d mastered his physical reaction to her, but he couldn’t. In fact, by his earlier inaction, he’d set himself up for a truly untenable situation.
“You’ve lost your wits,” he told himself, shocked by how raw he sounded.
Persephone had crept into his bed every night that week, driven by her fear of the howling wolves. Each time, he’d lain still, pretending to be asleep until she was, sometimes simply listening to her sleep noises. At first, he’d thought she was suffering from a nightmare, but even so, he hadn’t dared to wake her. Adam himself was certain to be more horrible than anything she might be dreaming of.
Last night, though… last night her soft, plaintive little sleep noises had struck him entirely differently. He hadn’t slept well, mentally forcing himself into frigid baths and half-frozen streams in a desperate bid to stymie his imagination. It had all been for naught. Persephone’s soft lips on his cheek had put paid to all his pathetic self-control, and he’d stolen a brief, devastating kiss.
What would lying next to her in his own bed do to him?
Persephone had felt very much like two distinct versions of herself. There was the person who’d received Linus’s letter… and the person she became after her husband had kissed her. Once alone, she’d read her brother’s words over and over again, but her rational mind had completely fled. Perhaps to combat that dissociation, she’d chosen to wear a dress she’d almost left behind when she came to Falstone, a favorite that was a bit too small for her adult figure. Dressing had taken long enough that she hadn’t truly looked at herself in the glass before hurrying down to eat.
She soon wished she had, as her husband froze for a few surprised seconds when she walked in, then immediately drained his glass of wine. He moved to pull back her chair, and she noticed Harry’s absence only when she sat down.
“Oh, am I so very early? I thought sure I would be the last to dinner.”
“Harry has chosen to be troublesome by eating alone in his rooms, tonight,” Adam groused.
Persephone had thought she was gaining at least some understanding of the two men’s dynamic together, but this was beyond her. “What could be troublesome about that?”
“Forget it.”
There wasn’t as much heft behind his statement as there had been in the past, so she decided to let things lie. The next minutes were taken up by the arrival of their food and her careful movements made necessary by the tightness of her sleeves. Persephone made the mistake of noticing that Adam was looking over more frequently as they spoke to each other, to the point of sometimes forgetting the food on his fork. Only then did she realize what was so distracting. As her figure had progressed with age, the neckline of this particular dress needed a lace tucker to shade and de-emphasize her bosom. She’d forgotten it.
Her lack of propriety had to be why Adam had been staring!
From that moment, every action felt more weighty, each bodice-tightening breath precious as she considered her options. Persephone decided on holding her wine goblet in her right hand where possible, though this soon became complicated, given that she took a small sip each time she lifted it up. Adam soon became more listener than participant in their sporadic conversation, the food on his plate dwindling while hers remained mostly untouched. Eventually, she fell silent, and the only sounds in the room were made by their silverware and, she imagined, their breathing.
The very air around the dinner table felt alive, like it did in the late afternoon when a storm rolled in. When she was finished eating, Persephone simply laid down her utensils, closed her eyes, and let herself breathe in and out for a long moment. Upon opening her eyes, she saw that Adam was regarding her, a curious expression on his face. Something about it made her remember the feeling of his lips on hers, and a thrill struck her, locking her into the eye contact.
Instinct told her to flee. Her husband was often at his most volatile when a moment required him to choose between safety and risk, and this felt like they both stood on a precipice.
“I bid you good evening,” she whispered, suddenly afraid to use his name.
“Are you—” he began, but she was already stepping swiftly into the hallway, so the words ‘quite well?’ chased after her.
Her reply was spoken under her breath on the stairs, heard by none but her own ears. “I wish I could tell you.”
The duality of her words struck her just as she stepped into her bedroom, and Persephone leaned against the door, breathing heavily.
Adam chastised himself severely as he changed his clothes for bed. His instinct had been to do something physical to exhaust himself before attempting to sleep, but instead, he’d sat brooding in his book room. Even Harry had stayed away, and the understanding of exactly why had set Adam’s teeth on edge. His friend was a meddlesome bastard.
They’d spoken only a few times about his reason for marrying, specifically the actions that needed to be taken to ensure his family’s legacy. He winced as he pulled his nightshirt over his head, remembering his foolish assurances of his planned gentlemanly behavior towards his presumed spinster of a bride. He would make it quick, for both of their comforts.
That was not at all what he wished for now, but the chasm between himself and his beautiful wife was much larger than that imagined one.
The first howl of a wolf broke through his furious reverie, doing nothing to settle his body or his mind. He should have taken to horseback, ridden hard, and damn to the dangers of twilight. Zeus wouldn’t have minded the exercise, and it would have sent his muscles into the kind of buzz that didn’t feel so full of anxious potential. Just the idea that Harry had deliberately left him alone to think about that kiss and what it meant to the future of Falstone made him want to march to his friend’s bedroom door and punch him in the face.
More wolf howls brought Adam back to his senses. As much as he both looked forward to and dreaded the temptation of his wife’s nightly escape to his bed, as soon as she knew he was consciously aware of them, they would stop.
He closed his eyes only to be presented with an image of her beside him, eyes wide as he brushed his fingers against her cheek and leaned down to claim another kiss. He wanted that.
Perhaps tonight he ought to feign sleep with his back to her side of the bed?
Her side?
“I didn’t ask for this!” he blurted out, immediately recognizing the strange, twisted truth of the words. He didn’t ask for this, but he was strangely, achingly grateful, as much as he felt he was in a purgatory of his own making. Adam got into bed, defiantly facing the empty space in his bed that she’d soon fill, every nerve on edge with anticipation. He closed his eyes and hoped his deception would hold, tonight of all nights.
Persephone sat on her window seat, back pressed to the side wall, her attention on the blanket on the foot of her bed. It stood for both safety and the unknown, this time. Could she creep into her husband’s room and slip into his bed without acknowledging that she belonged there in an entirely different context? He always seemed to sleep so deeply that she couldn’t decide whether he knew she’d been there, though that couldn’t possibly be the case.
The two of them had been keeping to a physical contract, of sorts. The duties of marriage loomed in theory, but she’d imagined that neither of them were interested in pressing the issue. But then… his kiss. In a way, it had torn through the wall of expectation she’d built up between them, and her embarrassing observation about his skill had scattered the bricks.
A group of howls made up her mind for her. There was no sense in getting no sleep only to end up even more disorganized tomorrow. Persephone got up and marched over to the bed, draping herself in the white blanket and heading across the hall to Adam’s room with determination. She opened his door, her resolve melting away by a sudden shyness. Every other night, she’d been so taken up by fear of the wolves that she’d only thought of the safety his room symbolically provided. Tonight, she saw the man.
His nightshirt was thin and open at the neck. Given the number of layers he usually wore in her presence, the difference was far more stark than her own attire at dinner. He was less intimidating like this, almost approachable. Her moment of reflection passed, driven away by the wolves, and Persephone hurried forward into the bed, choosing at the last minute to face him rather than curl protectively away.
She felt a surge of gratitude for what he’d done for her. His choice to seek out her brothers’ fates had truly been lovely, but the act had been practically pushed aside by the kiss that had dominated her thoughts since. She quietly thanked him again, the words tumbling out as she told him of her fears that Linus was avoiding his grief. Emboldened, she lifted her eyes to Adam’s sleeping face.
“You don’t like it when I thank you for the things you do, but I really am grateful,” she said. In that moment, it occurred to her that both of their behaviors had shifted considerably since his surly gift of her riding habit. They were making progress, of sorts. The thought helped her to relax, and as always seemed to happen here, she felt a wave of calm and security that pulled her toward sleep. “I only wish you could do something about the wolves,” she added.
The words were spoken from a need to eradicate her fear, but as soon as they left her lips, their full implications struck her. Without the wolves, she would have no reason to sneak across the hallway and into the comfort of Adam’s bed. She didn’t want to give that up.
Persephone lay as still as she could with her heart pounding in her chest. Did she truly just admit that she wanted to sleep with her husband every night, wolves or not? What of the expectations that would surely result?
The barest sense of movement chased away the tumult in her head, and seconds later she felt the gentle brush of Adam’s hand at her cheek. His fingertips traced lightly along her hairline, and the sweetness of it forced her eyes open.
Adam froze, his expression morphing from a heart-stopping tenderness into that of uncertainty.
“Is this a dream?” she breathed. His eyebrows lifted in a slight, sleepy challenge, and she moved to rest her hand on his wrist as if to check. The deliberate contact tingled so much she pulled her hand back.
“Yes,” Adam answered, and then, in a movement that was as right as it was unexpected, he moved his caressing hand to drift his thumb across her lips.
The sensation was intense, so much so that she drew in a shocked breath. “Is it your dream?” she whispered, captivated by the play of emotions on his face. He seemed to be surprised, hesitant, and hungry in turns.
“Yes,” he groaned, sliding his hand into the hair at the nape of her neck and moving to kiss her. The drag of his lips on hers was both a plea for acceptance and spilt liquor, stimulating her senses and her mental understanding of who he was all at once. Persephone tried to anchor herself with her hand at his collar, but this wasn’t enough, not when Adam was making her feel so wonderful. Her hand crept upward even as his slid down across her back, drawing her closer. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever need or want to breathe again, but just as he captured her lower lip between his and set her blood on fire, her fingers touched his scarred cheek.
Adam pulled back and gasped, the hand at her back curling into a fist, gathering both her blanket and her nightdress along with it.
“I’m sorry!” she cried, immediately trying to move back, but his grip made that impossible.
“No, no,” he said, releasing her to scrub his hand into his hair. He turned fully away from her.
Persephone felt like the worst possible person, forgetting his injury in the midst of her own delirium. He seemed utterly stricken. She threw herself from the bed and started for the door, the blanket forgotten behind her.
“Please,” Adam said, rushing over to catch her hand right as she reached the door. It was hard to breathe, but the thought of turning to look at him was harder still, so she just stood where he’d stopped her, her other hand at the door handle. “Please?” he repeated, his thumb brushing across the back of her hand. The pleasure from that simple gesture was overwhelming, and she let out a sound. His answering sound finally overcame her fear, and she looked over her shoulder.
Her husband looked vulnerable in a way he never had before. Despite that, he met her eyes unflinchingly, tipping his head down like a soldier focused on his target.
“You did not hurt me, Persephone,” he said. “My scars transmit feeling—” he broke off, closing his eyes and tugging slightly at their joined hands. With his eyelids closed tight, he said, “I can’t predict how they will react. Sometimes the lightest touch feels as if I’ve been struck by lightning, other times it’s as if I could drag a knife across them and feel nothing.”
The relief she felt was total, and Persephone turned to face him, reaching over to clasp his hand with both of hers.
He let out a long breath and opened his eyes. “You didn’t hurt me. Quite the contrary.”
His meaning was perhaps more obvious than she was willing to acknowledge, and she made a small, embarrassed sound, covering her mouth with both hands. Adam walked towards her, his expression only slightly guarded. A pale version of the fire he’d lit in her veins passed through her, exciting and intimidating.
“Come back to bed? To sleep, if you wish,” he asked, reaching out to trail his fingertips across her cheek as he’d done just a short while earlier.
The tentative offer of more than sleep hung between them. Persephone could feel the weight of his words, but instead of letting herself examine the deeper meaning, an errant thought struck her.
“Oh!” she said. “This was just as when you first touched my cheek. Your fingers were cold and startling, but you saw it as a rejection, didn’t you?”
“A justifiable one, Persephone.”
“Not at all, Adam.”
Outside, the chorus of howls converged, and she shivered. Adam stepped forward and pulled her to his chest, resting his lips at her temple.
“Take comfort tonight. Anything else can wait until its own time, yes?”
“Perhaps not as distant as expected,” she admitted, pressing a kiss to his chest and laying her cheek there. His physical presence was just shy of overwhelming, but in an exciting way that promised things she’d thought she’d given up forever by marrying a stranger. “But, however will I sleep?”
She felt the rumble of his light laugh before she heard it. “I can promise to face away from you all night, if that’s what you wish.”
Persephone drew back and looked up at him, seeing for the first time a husband, not just a confusing, oddly dear stranger. Driven by a strange exhilaration, she lifted her right hand to brush her fingertips against his unscarred cheek. There was an almost unbearable intimacy in the way his face changed at her touch, and found herself needing to soften the moment with humor. Someday soon, that might not feel quite as necessary.
“As long as the wolves eat you first.”
Thank you for reading! I think this fic was the 5th of the pairing posted to AO3; none of the tags are even filterable yet.
