Page 1 of The Good Duke (The Licentious Lords #1)

Cheshire, England

Twenty years earlier

S imon Broadbent, the future Earl of Primly, once thought there was nothing more shameful than his stutter.

Seated on the oak settle hall bench outside his father’s office, and still soaking-wet from his earlier—and interrupted—swim in Pickmere Lake, Simon discovered he’d been wrong.

He’d been so very wrong.

Just then, the current Earl of Primly and his country neighbor, Mr. Forsyth, a local member of the gentry, remained shut away; two lifelong best friends—undoubtedly, now former best friends—were embroiled in a heated fight.

“I should have known better,” Mr. Forsyth fumed on the other side of the door. “Boys and girls, men and women, cannot be friends. It isn’t natural. There’s a reason society forbids it.”

“Well, you allowed it,” Simon’s father pointed out.

“And more’s the fool am I.”

Nauseous, Simon fiddled with the curved edges of his black beaver hat he’d not bothered to hand off to a footman.

God, what had he done?

What had he and Persephone done?

She was the only person who’d ever been kind and a friend to him.

It was why, even against his better judgement, he’d gone ahead and let her do that which she’d begged. But he’d known better and should have demurred.

Now, I’m going to lose my only friend.

His gut continued roiling, and Simon fought to get air into his lungs.

Needing to assure himself he’d not lost her yet, that she remained part of his life still, Simon looked over at the sixteen-year-old girl who shared the bench with him. Not for the first time in a lifetime of knowing her, Simon marveled at her strength.

They couldn’t have been more different—in this moment, and in anything and everything.

Simon—freakishly tall, raw-boned, and easily disquieted.

Persephone was delicate, perfectly proportioned, and always unflappable.

Unlike Simon, who remained excruciatingly attuned to the row occurring on the other side of the Italian painted and lacquered door, Persephone sat next to him with her usual insouciance.

Why, with the way she had her knees drawn up close to her chest so they formed a makeshift desk for the sketch pad on her lap, it may as well be any other carefree day between her and Simon.

How was she so…bloody calm ?

There came another ear-splitting back-and-forth between his father and Persephone’s father.

“Are you hearing this?” Simon whispered furiously.

“Hmm?” She directed that distracted response at her page.

“This is bad, Seph. Very bad.” Dire and disastrous and deleterious, and every other doom-filled D word.

At last, Persephone looked up. That slight bob of her head sent her thick, dark brown plait flopping. She pushed it back over her narrow shoulder.

“You’re going to ruin it,” she chided.

He stared uncomprehendingly at her.

While balancing her book on her lap, Persephone wiggled closer and laid her small, ink-stained hand over his much larger one.

“Your hat, Simon.” She tapped the tip of her pencil against the white-knuckled death grip he had on the article in question. “See? You’re crushing the edges.”

“My hat ?” he asked incredulously, his voice creeping up. He looked at the object in question. “ That is what you’d express concern over?” That and not the likely end of their friendship?

Her cupid’s bow lips formed a small frown. “They’ve quarreled before, Simon.”

She wasn’t oblivious, then.

“Not like this , Seph.”

He may as well have spoken to himself. Persephone had turned her focus back to her drawing.

“Your boy is a deviant,” Mr. Forsyth bellowed. “It isn’t normal. He isn’t normal.”

In the course of Simon’s sixteen years of life, he’d been leveled by both words and fists more times than he could count. He’d been regularly beaten, tormented, and bullied for his inability to get his words out.

This was, however, the first time Persephone’s father had leveled the charge.

Mr. Forsyth wasn’t even close to being done with his verbal flogging of Simon.

“The only reason, the absolute only reason, I’ve allowed my Persephone anywhere near your addle-pated son is because I took him as harmless,” Persephone’s father shouted. “I assumed, in addition to his altered mind, he was altered in other ways.”

“Other ways?” Simon’s father barked back.

Please, don’t ask it, Father. Please, don’t ask…

“What exactly are you suggesting about my son?” the earl demanded.

He’d asked it.

Holding his hat in front of his face as a futile shield, Simon slunk lower in his seat, all the while wishing he could continue dissolving all the way down and through the floor and disappear forever.

“I didn’t believe him capable of using that part either and considered him safe for Persephone to be friendly with,” Persephone’s father was saying.

Funny that. One would expect after the verbal abuse Simon encountered throughout his life, he’d be immune to any insult, leveled by anyone , only to be proven wrong in this instant.

The two men continued shouting over one another; venomous invectives flew.

“That stutter,” the gentleman shouted. “And n-now…and n-now…”

In that moment, even as Simon himself was the subject of the disparagement-laced tirade, he commiserated with the other man’s inability to just say what he wanted and needed to say.

“ Thisssss? ”

Simon winced.

He was never going to speak to Persephone again.

It was official.

In fairness, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to her. It was just that there was no way her father…or his would ever dare allow it.

“I’m sorry, Simon,” Persephone whispered.

Simon glanced over.

For the first time since Simon and Persephone had been discovered at the shore of the lake by her father, Simon noted details that had previously escaped him: her enormous brown eyes were ravaged. Her well-formed lips were tense and white at the corners.

Then, through his own panic and misery, it hit Simon— she is afraid .

His intrepid, ebullient friend, whom Simon had never before seen shaken by anything, now sat on the edge of tears.

“It is…fine, S-Seph.” It was often hard getting his words out, but nervousness made talking impossible. Never with this girl. That was before . Now, everything had changed.

He managed a smile for her benefit, and she brightened. Her earlier worry faded so quick, he thought he may as well have imagined those signs of misery.

Persephone went back to her work, and Simon returned his attention to the still volatile exchange between their fathers.

“How dare you?” Simon’s father shouted. “My boy isn’t an abomination.” There came a hard thump as the earl’s fist struck some wood surface.

“Isn’t he, Melvin? Isn’t he? ”

While the pair went on to violently debate the state of Simon’s normality, Simon stole a glance at the oak longcase clock nearby.

“…he is a deviant!”

Eighteen minutes.

He’d now endured eighteen interminable minutes of being called every last insult by the previously always jovial, kindly Mr. Forsyth.

The scratch of Persephone’s pencil upon her page fell in discordant time to the ticking of the Thomas Crawshaw clock.

Simon’s gaze slid away from the Roman numerals upon the exquisitely decorated round dial and up to the swan’s neck pediment that protruded like Satan’s horns—taunting Simon. Mocking him.

What have I done?

There was certainly no going back from everything each gentleman now hurled about one another’s child.

“…it begs the question, what other scandalous behaviors have you allowed that son of yours to get away with? And here I thought he was perfectly harmless. All the while, I let my daughter be alone with him.”

Simon looked at the clock again. Twenty minutes.

Make that twenty minutes of this fresh hell.

“You have the audacity to call my son scandalous? Have you even met your daughter?”

Mr. Forsyth sputtered. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with my daughter.”

And Simon agreed wholeheartedly with the gentleman. She had a curious mind and wished to know everything…and often did .

His father, however, who’d even engaged Persephone in scientific discussions, was of an altogether differing opinion on this day.

“No, there is nothing wrong with her. There is everything wrong with her.” The earl raised his voice to make himself heard over the other man’s outcry. “She is a shameful, wicked creature without any hope for a respectable future. No man will ever have her.”

Simon winced and stole a sideways glance at the current recipient of the wrath from the other side of that door.

And it had long been the reason why he’d been endlessly fascinated by Persephone Forsyth.

Unlike the earlier horror and hurt that had wreathed Persephone’s features when Mr. Forsyth had been insulting him, she gave no indication that she so much as heard his father’s own hate-filled words about her. No, Persephone remained intently focused. With her head bent over her heavily marked up sketchbook, she meticulously completed her rendering of—

Simon’s entire body went hot, and he looked away from the drawing—the subject of which had found them here and on the cusp of losing their special friendship.

Moisture popped up on his brow, and his gaze inadvertently went to the ornate Louis XV frame fixed upon the painted plaster wall directly opposite Simon.

His late mother’s softly smiling visage stared benevolently back. Aside from his father and Persephone, the only other person to have loved Simon and seen him different than the flawed figure mocked by all had been his mother.

Taken too soon, she’d been stolen by a sore throat that had become an unrelenting fever, and now he’d lose Persephone, and there’d only be his father.

But parents—they were not friends. Not in the same way. The connection a parent shared with a child was forged by blood. But Persephone? She’d chosen him. She’d been the only person to choose him as a friend and confidante. Life for a bullied fellow was bleak; he couldn’t fathom the desolateness of a world without her.

Sweat popped up on his entire body.

“They don’t mean it,” she said simply, recalling his attention back from the swift spiral of panic he’d found himself trapped in.

Perplexed, Simon stared dumbly at her.

“The terrible things our fathers are saying,” Persephone explicated. “They’re just angry because I saw your penis.”

There’d been many times throughout the course of Simon’s life when he’d felt the all-too-cruel sting of humiliation.

At age eight, a pair of bullies in the parish had given him chase. When they inevitably caught Simon, they’d shoved him onto his arse in the middle of a muddy puddle and then forced him to march through the village. All the while, they’d spread the lie that Simon had shite his trousers.

But this? Hearing Persephone talk about his—

“Why do you look so distressed, Simon?” Persephone asked. With her sketch pad in hand, she gestured back and forth between them. “You and I aren’t prim.”

The long-running jest between him and her—that play on Simon’s future title—now fell flat.

Because this of all times, with their friendship about to be severed, was hardly a time for quips.

Frowning, Persephone sat up straighter. “I don’t like you like this.”

“And how am I?” he asked between gritted teeth.

“Uptight and aloof and short.” Persephone slapped her book closed and set it down hard on the bench. “We have done everything together.”

He slammed his hat down so hard it promptly tumbled onto the floor, forgotten. “We have not done every—”

“We took our first steps together, discovered the Great Bard together.” Persephone ticked each item off with a finger. “We learned to ice skate, throw snowballs. We shared our first kiss, and both agreed it was disgusting .”

She’d thought so. Enough so that all these years later, she still emphasized that latter word. He , on the other hand, had concurred but silently marveled at the feel and taste of a girl’s mouth. That secret would someday follow Simon deep into his grave.

“Furthermore, we’ve both been naked in front of one another before, countless times, Simon.”

“Surely you’re not likening what happened today to when we were babes in the nursery, stripping out of our garments and cutting them up into different shapes?” he asked disbelievingly.

“A penis is a penis is a penis.”

“Shhh,” he whispered, slapping a finger against his mouth. He glanced over at the door, more than half-expecting both of their fathers to storm the hall and bring their fight out to Simon and Persephone. “Stop saying…that word .”

“Should we give it a different name so only we know what we’re speaking about?”

“No,” he bit out that single syllable. “We should decidedly n—”

“Gerald,” she said.

Simon glanced about for the man named Gerald, except he knew all the people she knew, and none of them bore the name Gerald. “Who?”

Persephone leaned up, cupped a palm around her mouth, and whispered, “If they intend to censor our speech, we shall find a way around it.”

Oh, for the love of all things holy.

And wonder of wonders, his prayers continued to go unheeded.

“Gerald is and will always be Gerald, Simon. Regardless of how old he is, he’s the same, and so you needn’t feel…embarrassed by me seeing y—” Persephone stumbled and then swiftly corrected herself. “ Gerald. ” She paused. “Not that he looks the same.”

Simon choked, strangled by his own humiliation and shame and unable to interrupt her horrifying flow of words.

“Gerald has definitely gr—”

“W-Will y-you please stop ?” He struggled to get that last word out and pulled it from himself with an added ferocity. He slammed a fist on the arm of the bench. “Just stop! Can you not see the trouble we are in?”

Persephone went ashen and followed his gaze to the earl’s still-closed door.

Their fathers’ muffled shouts spilled out into the hall.

Persephone lifted her eyes back to Simon’s. “You don’t really think they’ll make us stop seeing one another, do you?” she asked haltingly.

“ Really? You’ve only just deduced that now ?” Simon spoke sharply. He didn’t allow her a chance to answer. “And the truth is, Persephone, if they are wise, then, yes, and perhaps it will be for the best.” Because they were always landing one another in scrapes, but the abasement was too great this time.

Hurt filled Persephone’s expressive, big brown eyes, and she went absolutely silent.

Silent, when Persephone was only ever chatty.

She picked up her sketch pad and redirected her attention to labeling her drawing, scratching in big, bold, swooping letters as “the Male Penis.” And he would have laughed at her tenacity in not letting the matter rest, even on her page, but caught a glimmer of sadness in her eyes.

And for the first time in the whole of his life, it happened: Simon had become… the bully .

Granted, she’d been yammering on about his manhood, but that was neither here nor there. As long as he’d known her—which was forever—if troubled, she’d prattled on. The thing of it was, she possessed such self-assurance that the times of her rambling were few and far between.

He stole a look from the corner of his eye at the crestfallen girl beside him.

He’d always failed to understand the pleasure boys had taken in humiliating him and hurting him. Being on the other end of it now, feeling as miserable as he did at the forlorn look of her, he understood that cruelty even less.

He’d not have a heated argument be the last exchange they shared.

Simon ran a shaky hand through his still-damp hair.

Only, he couldn’t let her see the dread eating him apart. He forced his palm back to his lap.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean what I said. I’m just—” Afraid. Except, if he admitted as much, then it would only further add to her worry. “Frustrated,” he finally settled for. “No one is going to keep us apart, Persephone.”

“They won’t, right?” Hope sparked to life in her dark brown eyes. “We wouldn’t let them.”

He kept up the lie. “They couldn’t stop us if they tried, Seph.”

Simon and Persephone wouldn’t be able to stop them.

Persephone’s full lips formed a slow, wide smile.

God, how he’d miss her and that smile of hers.

Pain squeezed at his chest.

He stuck out his left palm. “Friends?”

She immediately dropped her sketch pad and pencil and slapped her right one against his outstretched hand. They mimicked that slap against the back and then front of their hands two times before folding their fingers in a single fist.

They shared a smile.

“Forever,” she said softly.

Never again.

“For—”

The rest of Simon’s pledge went unfinished.

His father’s office door exploded open so fast and so hard it bounced against the plaster wall and sprung back to nearly hit Mr. Forsyth square in the face.

“Let’s go, Persephone,” Persephone’s father snapped, and even as he ordered his daughter to her feet, Mr. Forsyth glared at Simon. “We’re done with this abomination and his wretched excuse of a father.”

Shame—that all too familiar sentiment—made Simon shrink on the spot. Nay, this was something more, something so powerful it sucked the air from his lungs and left Simon hollow inside—despair.

Persephone came slowly to her feet.

Mr. Forsyth didn’t bother to see if she followed. Instead, without so much as a backward look, he marched off.

If Mr. Forsyth truly knew his daughter, he’d have also known Persephone had a mind of her own and never did what was expected.

But then that was what had gotten her and Simon into their current trouble.

Persephone lingered there. “You are not an abomination. Our fathers are hotheads and proud, and the problem this day…was me . Never you.”

“Thank you,” he said softly, his voice emerging even. Words always came easier with her. That was because he’d known her for so very long, and there was a comfort in having someone like Persephone in his life.

She frowned. “You don’t believe me, but it is true, Simon,” she said earnestly, catching her hands in his. “You’re kind and good and clever and funny and—”

“And you make me believe that.” Not even his father, whose love he never doubted, felt that way about him.

“Well, my papa is wrong for the ill opinion he has of you, Simon.”

His chest lightened.

Persephone spoke with the adamance of someone who truly believed the words she spoke.

Then he recalled— she is leaving .

Despite the assurances he’d given her, he saw Mr. Forsyth’s hate-filled visage, and Simon knew in his heart this marked the end of his friendship with Persephone.

“It would also mean that everyone else is wrong too, Persephone,” he said quietly.

“What’s so hard to believe about that?” She rolled her eyes. “Society doesn’t believe I or any girl has the right or ability to study science and politics. Suddenly, we’re going to let those people decide our worth?”

He managed his first grin since his world had gotten flipped upside down. She always managed to make him feel… normal . God, he’d miss that so damned much. The ache in his chest grew.

“Goodbye, Seph.” Funny his voice should be so even when he now uttered the most painful words he’d ever spoken.

“Simon!” She gave a jaunty wave.

Persephone turned to go, and he spoke quickly, not out of fear of his stutter and the need to get the words out, but rather to keep her here beside him.

“My father is wrong about you too, Seph. He’s always liked talking to you about science and art.”

“He’s not really though.” She gave an unbothered shrug. “Young ladies aren’t supposed to study the human body.”

“And normal people don’t stutter,” he reminded her.

She took a step toward him. “ Of course they do, Simon. People aren’t simply replicas of other people. Everyone is different and has differences.”

Not amidst the ton . That was a world of people who were singularly the same.

“Persephone,” Mr. Forsyth shouted; his sharp, crisp tones echoed down the halls.

Persephone’s shoulders slumped, and she started slowly after her father. She glanced back. “Simon?”

He lifted his head.

“I wouldn’t change you.”

“Nor I you—”

Her father called out again. “Persephone, come here this instant .”

Any other child would have been compelled by those warning tones. Not Persephone. She remained rooted there next to Simon. Just as she’d always been. Just as she’d never be again.

“I’m so sorry, Simon. For everything .”

He lifted his hand, waving off that apology and waving goodbye to his only friend.

With that, she was gone; the bright light that was Persephone walked out of his life.

And never before had Simon been more alone.