Page 9 of Duke of the Underworld (Regency Gods #2)

CHAPTER 9

“ G irls, do you typically eat dinner in the dining room or up here in the nursery?” Persephone asked, trying to sound lighthearted as she brushed Grace’s hair.

The little girl had been positively thrilled to learn that “Aunt Percy” knew how to do a few simple coiffures, so Persephone had spent the better part of the afternoon pinning and curling and adding in ribbons while Martha pored over yet another book (the child could very nearly read on her own at only six years old, Persephone had noted with astonishment and pride) and Lucy played with a papier-maché sword, which she swung at imaginary enemies.

Bitterly, Persephone had wondered if the duke knew that one of his wards had actual weaponry, albeit one made from paper and paste. Why, if some magical event occurred to promote disaster (as seemed to happen quite frequently in his mind), then maybe Lucy could lop off her own arm or some such nonsense!

Mostly, though, she kept her attention on Grace’s curls in order to avoid the churn of guilt in her gut.

Her comment about the girls not really being his children had been rather out of line.

“We eat with Uncle Hugh and Aunt Daphne unless there are guests over,” Grace said. Her own hands were busy doing one of her doll’s hair, though the locks, made of yarn, were somewhat limited in their stylistic capacities. “Are you a guest, Aunt Percy?”

“No,” Persephone answered absently, fiddling with a recalcitrant ribbon. “I live here now.”

“Yay,” said Martha, looking up from her book to give Persephone a grin.

All afternoon, the children had been doing things like this, things that steeled Persephone’s resolve.

She could very likely have been a bit more tactful when she’d squared off against her husband about how to bring up the girls, but she hadn’t been wrong . These sweet, earnest children deserved all the love in the world, and that included love enough to bear the fear of watching them take risks, learn how to be .

And Lord only knew they were easy enough to love. Persephone adored them already.

“Right,” she said, clapping her hands swiftly as she fixed the last pin into Grace’s hair. It was rather more ornate than the average six-year-old wore for a dinner at home, but Persephone considered the social faux-pas well worth it for the shriek of delight that Grace let out when she peered at her reflection in the looking glass.

“Let’s finish tidying, then,” Persephone said, nodding to the girls’ nursemaid, who had been watching the afternoon’s proceedings from a corner, basket of mending at her feet and a look of fond approval on her features. “You’ll all neaten up, I’ll dress for supper, and then we shall meet downstairs shortly, yes?”

“Yes, Aunt Percy,” the girls chorused agreeably enough. Persephone smiled, then shook her head. Her husband really was fussing terribly over children that were remarkably well-behaved.

She ought to send him out to the country school where she’d worked as an assistant. Some of the boys there would teach him a whole new meaning of dangerous and recklessness before a single afternoon was up.

The thought made her chuckle, albeit a bit ruefully, as she headed down to her own bedchamber to dress for dinner.

She didn’t want to cause conflict, not when her new husband had all but saved her from total destitution. But she couldn’t back down from those girls, either.

She, like Grace, ended up slightly over-primped for dinner, though Persephone’s delay was more due to nerves than anything else. Eventually, though, there was no more stalling to be done, so she went down to dinner.

Which was excruciating.

Things started out all right. The girls came down to the table, all cheer and good humor, and piled into chairs with an ease that suggested they’d been telling the truth about regularly dining with the adults.

It took the children about three minutes to pick up on the tension between Persephone and their uncle—and, to a lesser degree, Daphne, as well.

Lucy’s cheerful chatter abated. Grace started tugging at one of her hair ribbons. Martha shrank so far back into her chair that she practically disappeared.

Even Daphne fiddled anxiously with her cutlery.

The duke, meanwhile, seemed to take up even more space than usual, as if his irritation—frustratingly righteous as it was—made him taller, broader, more .

It made Persephone want to shrink back because, drat it all, she did owe him an apology.

But she also wanted these girls to see that she would champion them.

And so she squared her shoulders and dug deep and pulled upon the greatest tool in a gentlewoman’s arsenal.

Aggressive politeness.

“This is a very fine spread we’ve been given tonight, I daresay,” she commented cheerfully, spearing a piece of herbed and roasted potato on her fork before taking a dainty bite. “My heartiest compliments to the cook.”

The duke glowered.

The four young ladies ate silently.

“Look at this beautiful fish!” she exclaimed when they were served a perfectly normal looking fish. “Simply divine.”

The duke glowered some more.

By the time they got to the sweets course, Persephone was no longer certain if she found this excruciatingly awkward or if she was having a fantastic time. Well, no, she knew it was likely the most awkward dinner she’d ever experienced by a significant margin, but there was something perversely satisfying about the way her husband’s cheek twitched every time she made a senselessly positive comment about something utterly ordinary.

Not that the food wasn’t delicious, but Persephone would have been a bit excessive in her praise if she’d had literal ambrosia before her.

She didn’t let that stop her. She praised the hothouse fruit.

Twitch.

She praised the wine.

Twitch.

She praised the way the napkins had been folded with such precise and sharp corners!

Twitch twitch twitch.

Nobody was disappointed when the meal ended.

Persephone was certain she’d never seen children scamper off for bedtime as quickly as the girls fled the dining hall. She might have felt a bit bad about scaring them off, except for how she caught the tiniest glimpse of a smile on Martha’s face as the girl looked over her shoulder on her way out, or the way Lucy warbled, “Goodnight, Aunt Percy! Goodnight, Uncle Hugh! Goodnight, Aunt Daphne!”

Persephone tried not to feel too smug about being first on that list.

Daphne, too, excused herself with a muttered comment, dabbing her lips politely before fleeing to her bedchamber.

Which left only Persephone and her husband. Just as she’d planned.

“Your Grace,” she began. This time, she really had intended the politeness to be just that—genuinely politeness, not perversity disguised with good manners. She had it all planned out in her head. She would calmly apologize for her harsh words, then explain that she’d merely gotten a bit carried away in her defense of the girls.

He would understand that, she thought. He was being completely unreasonable, of course, but she could see that he was doing so out of a desire to protect those sweet children.

Then, she would—just as calmly—explain that children really did need sunshine and fresh air, and couldn’t they come to some sort of compromise?

She really did feel optimistic about it.

Except she never got any further than his title, because no sooner had the words passed her lips then he surged to his feet.

“I have business,” he said, not even really looking at her before he swept out of the room.

She stared after him, dumbfounded.

He’d just…left.

And, well, yes, she had been a little ridiculous during their meal. But she hadn’t been unkind . Would he truly have preferred dour silence?

She feared the answer was yes.

And yet… She hadn’t asked him to propose marriage! She had only asked for a little leeway in repaying debts. He had been the one who had asked—nay, demanded!—her hand. He had been the one who wanted her to play nursemaid and broodmare.

It wasn’t her fault that he was blocking every one of her attempts to do as he had demanded.

So if he thought he could just run roughshod over her, if he thought he could ignore her…

Well.

She would just have to set him straight.

With this in mind, she left the dining hall behind and walked (with only the slightest bit of stamping of her feet) up to his study. She knocked, waited what she felt was an adequate amount of time (two and a half seconds), then barged inside.

The room was empty.

No, she amended to herself, it was not merely empty but aggressively empty. It was empty in the way of a room that wanted you to know that not only was nobody present at that very moment, but that nobody had been present for some time, and, what was more, nobody would be present in the near future, either, you poor, dumb fool. The fire was out—not even banked, but fully out. The curtains were drawn. And there was an air of quietude about it.

Persephone blinked.

“Oh, fie!” she murmured.

Because she was a fool of the highest caliber. Her husband’s business wasn’t here, in his home, at his desk.

It was at Underworld.

And while she’d been dithering and storming about, knocking on doors and planning civil conversations, her husband had been escaping to a gaming hell. And he would not return until all hours of the night.

Which meant that she had no choice but to wait.

She went back to her bedchamber in a huff. His gambit was not a bad one, as far as things went. She certainly didn’t have his ability to glower everyone around her into submission. All she could do was try to talk him around to her way of thinking. And so, if he avoided conversation with her, there was nothing else she could do.

She sat on the edge of her bed and kicked her heels peevishly.

Except…

Except she did have another choice besides waiting. She didn’t have to let him get away with his little evasive game.

All she needed was courage.

She’d done it before. She could do it again.

Persephone dug through her armoire for her old, battered cloak and threw it around her shoulders.

Then, she left the house like a shadow, preparing to slip back to the Underworld.

Hugh was already so consumed with thinking about Persephone, that at first, he assumed he had conjured her whole cloth. It was, after all, the most logical explanation. She simply couldn’t be foolish enough to come to his club again , could she?

She could, he realized, when her eyes swept along the upstairs balcony, finding him in his shadowy corner with impressive accuracy, given that she’d only been to the establishment the once.

“Bloody hell,” Hugh swore.

She threw back the hood of her cloak—where in the hell had she gotten such a hideous garment, he wondered absently? She would need a better wardrobe posthaste, one that befitted her new status as his duchess.

Without the battered covering on her hair, however, she drew eyes quickly, her gleaming locks garnering attention and her big eyes and sweet features retaining it. Hugh was already moving toward the stairs as he saw a man standing near her elbow his companion. They exchanged an entirely unsavory grin and turned in unison to face his wife.

Damn it all, Hugh was going to have to beat some respect into them, wasn’t he?

The club being what it was—a haven for dissolute reprobates to let out their rakish inclinations—Hugh felt a frisson of concern that something would happen too quickly for him to reach Persephone. Nothing too grave, of course; the place might be a gaming hell, but there were limits. But someone might insult her, might touch her, might force her to brush up against the tarnish that Hugh worked so hard from reaching the ladies under his protection.

And yet, when he got close enough to hear, he found Persephone to be handling the men capably.

“I do appreciate your offer of a game, gentlemen, but I am afraid I must seek the owner. He and I have a matter to discuss.”

If Hugh had expected her to be the bumbling innocent in face of the men’s outrageous flirting, he would have been disappointed. Persephone was firm, but not insulting, and then offered a reason for her refusal. Not that she needed a reason to refuse those two hangers-on, young bucks who liked to puff up their chests despite having nothing much to offer anyone in the way of looks, fortune, or interesting conversation. Not that she needed a reason to refuse anyone, he thought.

But giving one soothed their masculine pride, and that was a clever thing to do when a lady was in an unknown situation, surrounded by strange men.

He disliked that she’d had reason to cultivate that knowledge and skill, but felt a flicker of pride at her ability, one that he quickly quashed.

She would not need such know-how again.

And what was more, she’d provided him with a perfect entrance.

“Indeed, she does have something to discuss with the owner,” Hugh said, taking Persephone’s arm firmly in his grasp as he came up behind her. She jumped slightly at the unexpected contact, but then relaxed into his side.

Perhaps she was a bumbling innocent after all, then, if she looked to him for safety and protection. If she thought that the tarnish of Underworld hadn’t covered him from head to toe long ago.

The young bucks—why were there always two of them? Did they travel in pairs? Did they come in sets?—cleared their throats uncomfortably and immediately began backing toward the table they’d abandoned when they’d seen Persephone.

“Of course, of course,” one said, holding up his hands like he was being held at knifepoint.

“Good day, then, or, ah, er, good evening, that is,” stammered the other.

Persephone rolled her eyes. It might have made him grin or even chuckle, if not for how he was planning to give her ears a blistering they’d never forget just as soon as they returned to his office.

“Come with me right now ,” he ordered.

She smiled up at him beatifically. Tonight, she hadn’t dressed in muted, drab colors; beneath the hideous cloak, he saw that she still wore the same dress she’d had on at dinner. The incongruity of this—his home life colliding with the chaos of Underworld—felt like a physical shock.

He noticed, too, that upon closer inspection, the frock was a bit worse for wear, a bit frayed in places, though capably mended. Probably by Persephone herself, if the wedding dress was any indication.

She took breaking things and repaired them. She took plain things and made them beautiful. It was a habit of hers, apparently.

It made him feel even more wretched for failing to address matters such as a new wardrobe. She’d been added to all his accounts from the moment they’d been wed, of course, but had he ever mentioned such a thing to her?

He feared he had not.

His movements grew brusque with the self-directed anger.

“You needn’t tug,” Persephone commented with more mildness than he likely deserved. “I came to you, you’ll recall. I am perfectly willing to follow you the remainder of the way.”

He looked down at his grip on her arm as if it belonged to someone else, then forced himself to relax his grip.

True to her word, she followed him placidly enough the rest of the way to his office. Something about her calmness made him even more furious.

The instant the door clicked shut behind them, his pot boiled over.

“What the hell were you thinking coming here, Persephone?” he demanded. “This is absurd. I cannot tolerate this sort of behavior!”

His wife’s manner as she moved into the room was starkly different from how she’d acted during her first visit to her club. Then, she’d been alert, aware, almost twitchy with the knowledge that danger could be fall her. She’d had some of that alertness to her down on the floor, too, he realized—though it was only obvious now, in its absence.

For indeed, she no longer seemed terribly concerned about her personal safety.

As if she trusted him.

The idea caused something hot to surge in Hugh’s chest. He would never knowingly harm her, of course, and he would put his name, his influence, even his life before anyone who tried to hurt her—her or Daphne or the girls. That was his duty and his honor as a gentleman, as a duke.

But the biggest threat to Persephone—to any of them—was him . Him, and the filthy things he’d done, that he still did, in order to keep them, and the dozens more for whom he was responsible, safe and secure and happy.

It was dangerous that she didn’t seem to see that. He would have to correct her. Immediately. Even if the thought felt like poison.

Persephone carefully folded the cloak over the back of one of the chairs, and as she moved, he saw a scorch mark, cleverly hidden, on her skirts.

There was nothing in the marriage contracts that said that Hugh wasn’t allowed to pummel Baron Fielton, was there? He’d forgiven the debts, but surely he’d find some reason to punch the man. God knew he deserved it, for the state he’d cast his daughter into.

“I would not have come here,” Persephone said, drawing his attention from the pleasant fantasy of bloodying the nose of this father-by-marriage, “if you’d spoken to me at home.”

Damn him, but he liked hearing her say home . Perhaps he was coming down with some kind of illness. How inconvenient.

“I’m entirely certain that I indicated that I desired to speak to you,” she said, tapping her chin. “And I am equally certain that you are an intelligent man. Therefore, I can only conclude that you were being deliberately obtuse in an effort to evade me.”

“Persephone,” he said, his tone laden with caution.

She did not heed this warning.

“Thus, I thought how I might best reach you,” she went on, now draping herself into one of his chairs. He couldn’t tell if she was being deliberately alluring as well as deliberately provocative, or if there was just some sort of inherent attractiveness to her. “And, given that you said you had business, I thought I should try to visit that business, as surely it would be more convenient for you to speak with me there, at your leisure. I’m happy to wait.”

And then she made a very expansive show of folding her hands patiently in her lap.

Part of him wanted to laugh, because she really was so very precious in her efforts to manage him. It was the same tactic she’d deployed with the men down on the gaming floor, just with a far more worthy adversary.

Hugh didn’t gamble himself, despite owning a gambling establishment—or more likely because he owned the establishment and had seen too many men throw away good money on a wisp of promise that they might win big. But he’d be willing to bet a sizable fortune that, with those big, blinking eyes and that freckled, guileless face, most people fell for this little act of hers.

He was not most people.

“That,” he said, making his own show of casualness by tugging at the cuffs of his shirt, “is absolute nonsense.”

Surely there had to be some kind of limit to how big her eyes could get, though he did not seem to have yet encountered it.

“It isn’t!” she insisted. “You know perfectly well that I wish to speak with you about the girls?—”

He cut her off. Having Persephone here, in this space, was bad enough. He didn’t want to discuss the girls. Not here.

“Do not pretend that you did so for my convenience,” he countered. “You came here because you are impatient.”

Impatient and foolish and impulsive, he reminded himself, to drown out the parts of him that wanted to think more complimentary things.

She huffed.

“Fine,” she said, “perhaps I am. But you were very clear about the tasks you wanted me to accomplish when you married me, and you are preventing me from accomplishing either of them!”

She sounded genuinely put out by this, and it caused something to click into place in his mind.

“Do you never ask for something for yourself, Persephone?” he asked.

The abrupt shift in topic evidently took her by surprise. She blinked at him.

“What do I need to ask for?” she asked innocently. In some women, this would be an act, Hugh knew. But he rather suspected that Persephone meant it. “I got what I wanted. You forgave my father’s debts.”

So, he had. But that had been for her father, not for her.

“Yes, you are rather stubborn in your defense of others,” he mused. “And yet you seem to have absolutely no sense when it comes to the preservation of your own safety.”

She bristled. “I already told you, if you hadn’t evaded me?—”

“No.” He cut her off, then took a step forward. There were two chairs in his office, one with solid oak arms and one without. The mismatch drove Martin mad, Hugh knew, but some perverse side of him liked the incongruity.

Persephone had sat in the chair with the arms. Hugh took another step forward, slowly enough to give her time to wonder what he was up to, then one more. And then he leaned down, placing his hands on those solid, wood arms.

And she was caged, trapped, at his mercy.

“Let me be clear, Persephone,” he said, feeling a twisted thrill at the way her eyes flared wide at his proximity, at the place where he could see her pulse thrumming in her neck. “I am your husband now. And you will obey me.”

Outrage flickered in her expression. She leaned back in the chair, as if trying to make space between them, but made no move to push him away, nor showed any signs of alarm.

“I—that’s not—” she stammered.

He leaned further into the space between them, until he could feel the way her breath ghosted against his cheek.

“What was that?” he asked.

“You cannot control me,” she said, digging deep into her reserves of stubbornness.

God, that willful streak in her inflamed Hugh. It made him want to battle her and win.

No matter how much of a boor that made him.

“Calm yourself, little wife,” he said, purposefully letting his tone sound condescending. “I do not mean to be a tyrant.” He lifted one of his hands from the chair and used it to tuck a loose strand of hair back behind her ear, then touched the lightest of touches down the side of her cheekbone, then along her jaw, all the way to that pointed chin.

Her breath hitched, and her throat bobbed.

“But,” he went on, crowding her ever closer, leaving her no further space to retreat, “when it comes to this matter, you will obey me. You will heed my orders. And you will keep yourself far, far away from Underworld.”

She almost agreed. He saw it in her eyes that she almost agreed.

But before she faltered, that stubborn flare took hold.

She threw her head back, looked him in the eye, and threw the gauntlet at his feet.

“And what will you do if I don’t, my lord?”