Page 18 of The Good Duke (The Licentious Lords #1)

T he following morning, Persephone led Simon through the bustling crowds of the Covent Garden markets. His long-legged strides made keeping up with Persephone easy work. As such, she kept her gaze forward.

“You’re going to run us square into someone,” Simon called loudly over the noisy commotion of vendors and patrons haggling over prices.

Persephone snorted. “Come, Your Grace.” She didn’t even break stride. “I am quite familiar with the Covent Garden markets, and I’m skilled in navigating through—”

Someone snatched her wrist.

Persephone gasped. Her heart hammering, she raised her reticule and brought it down quick on her offender.

Smack.

Simon flinched and rubbed at his offended upper arm. “What the hell was that for?”

“We are in Covent Garden, Your Grace,” she said on a noisy whisper to penetrate the din. “A lady must always anticipate a bounder either sneaking a touch or stealing her coin.”

Annoyance brought his tawny brows snapping together. “ I’m here.”

When it became apparent, Simon didn’t intend to offer any elaboration beyond that, Persephone prodded her old friend. “ And? ”

“ And , do you doubt my abilities to look after you?” he asked in apparent pique.

His abilities to look after me?

Her heart jumped a beat. “No,” she said quickly. “It is just… It is just…”

She tried to find the words. After her father’s passing, Persephone had been forced to fend for herself in the world. It’d been so long since anyone had worried after her, she didn’t even know what it was to feel safe and secure because of someone .

To admit as much to Simon, however, would only stir a pity she did not want from anyone, but especially not him.

Lords, ladies, and maids trailing after their mistresses swarmed past, so it felt like Persephone and Simon stood still in time while the world rapidly carried on around them.

He nodded his head, urging her on. “ Yes? ”

She spoke past a suddenly dry lump in her throat. “As I said, it is just there are fiendish men about who think nothing of accosting a woman.” On her own , she silently tacked on. “That is all.”

Simon sharpened his gaze upon Persephone’s face and opened his mouth to no doubt persist.

Yap-yap-yap.

Lady Chloe’s piercing bark slashed through the chimerical moment where only Persephone and Simon existed.

Unnerved and needing some clarity of thought and space from all these new feelings roused by Simon, Persephone bent and patted the pretty pup on her head. “You sweet girl,” she crooned. “I am ever so sorry for not giving you the attention you deserve.”

Persephone properly composed herself, straightened, and turned to go.

Simon lightly caught her by the wrist in a discreet but determined hold.

An obedient Lady Chloe plopped down and, with her tongue hanging out sideways, stared up at her two handlers.

A hard glint iced Simon’s eyes; his features froze in a savage mask he’d never before donned—at least not as long as Persephone had known him.

With a contradictory gentleness that threatened to shatter Persephone, Simon drew her around a brick column so that they had some shelter from the world around them.

“If a man tried anything with me at your side, Persephone”—he moved a narrow-eyed gaze over her face—“that misstep would prove the last thing the bastard ever did.”

Simon’s silky promise managed to turn a menacing vow into a heartwarming blandishment.

“Do you hear me, Persephone?” he asked on a quiet murmur that contained enough steel to compel a response.

His penetrating gaze bore into her and stole her breath; it left her incapable of offering more than a shaky nod as her answer.

Simon released her, and Persephone felt that loss all the way to her soul.

Her throat worked painfully. This was all becoming too much. Knowing pleasure in his arms had been vastly easier and more uncomplicated. She didn’t know what to do with a protective, devoted Simon Broadbent.

He stared perplexedly at her. “What is it, Seph?”

Seph.

Oh, God, make him stop showing glimmers of who he truly was. Let him be the harsh, condescending rake who’d said all manner of wicked and horrible things to her.

“Miss Forsyth,” she whispered.

Simon shook his head.

“You cannot call me Persephone, and I cannot call you Simon,” she said thickly. “At least not in public.”

His expression darkened. “That is ridiculous.”

“That is a rule of Polite Society, Your Grace,” she reminded him.

“But our familial connections—”

Our fake familial connections.

Persephone quickly interrupted him. “Would still require we refer to one another by our proper forms of address.”

A muscle rippled along his jaw. Then Simon gave his head a terse shake, an adorably boyish nod that conveyed a wealth of regret and annoyance and stole a corner of her heart.

Yap-yap-yap.

Simon glanced away first, turning his attention to Lady Chloe.

The dog panted and pranced restlessly back and forth in canine excitement.

“You have been remarkably patient, my dear,” he crooned, affectionately stroking Chloe between her ears.

Persephone stilled and took in that exchange; she struggled and fought—to no avail. Another piece of her heart fell away, lost to tender, dog-loving Simon.

She stared wistfully while he stroked Lady Chloe’s ears in a way the dog favored so much, she leaned into his petting. And how very glad she was that when she left, he’d have the loving dog still part of his life.

There’d been a lifetime of years since she and Simon had seen one another, but when Persephone left this time, a part of her would remain with him still.

As if he felt Persephone’s gaze upon him, Simon glanced up.

A gold curl fell across his brow. His lips tipped up in a sheepish grin.

“I told you so,” she said good-heartedly. “Lady Chloe will make you the most wonderful companion.”

His expression grew serious, and his sudden frown chased away the sun of this moment.

Simon stood, claimed the leash from Persephone, and led them onward.

Worrying at her lower lip, she stared after his retreating form.

He stopped in his tracks and glanced back to where Persephone remained.

Simon instantly doubled back. “With the lessons you just schooled me on regarding the peril a lady faces on her own, you’d stay back?” he chided with a gruff concern that sent another wave of welcome heat to her chest.

“I was woolgathering,” she explained.

“Should I fear you’re plotting and planning some next scheme, Miss Forsyth?”

The teasing glimmer in his eyes lightened the seriousness of that question.

Persephone smiled softly. “I’ve already told you, no more games.” With the tip of her index finger, she marked an X across the middle of her chest. “I’ve always been a woman of my word.”

Simon considered her with an indecipherable look she couldn’t make sense of.

Yap-yap-yap.

His new pup saved the day once more.

“Come,” Persephone said, motioning Simon along. “Chloe has been more than patient with us.”

Only, he remained rooted to that spot near the brick column. That same somberness had fallen over his features.

Simon fiddled with Chloe’s leash. “Per—Miss Forsyth,” he began.

Her heart thumped this time with an unwelcome unease. Dread tightened her belly. He is turning me out after all. “What is it?”

“There is something of the utmost importance I must speak with you about.”

“Yes,” she prodded, cutting him off, just wanting him to get on with it already.

“She cannot be named Chloe.”

Persephone cocked her head in abject confusion. “I…”

Simon gestured to the dog seated on her hind legs and staring adoringly up at him. “She cannot be Chloe because I courted a young lady also named Chloe.”

“Oh.”

Suddenly, it made so much sense: the reason her friend of old had become the cynical rake he had. It accounted for the protective walls he’d built during their years apart.

He’d had a former love. One named Chloe. And an irrational part of Persephone resented that woman for having had his heart.

Not that Persephone wanted Simon’s heart. She absolutely did not. For that matter, she didn’t want anyone’s heart. She’d played the game of love and lost mightily.

Nay, this had nothing to do with jealousy of Simon’s Chloe. Persephone simply despised knowing he’d loved a woman who’d been undeserving of his affections.

“You were in love with her,” she said gently when she trusted herself to speak.

Simon blanched. “Egad, n-no.”

“Simon,” she said before she recalled her own rule on using one another’s familiar names. But during this intimate discourse, she couldn’t bring herself to refer to him by his title. “It is all right. Everyone, at some point or another, has suffered a broken heart.” She spoke from a place of experience.

Simon snorted. “I was a mere pup. She loved Shakespeare.”

“As do you.”

“Precisely.” He seemed to register what Persephone implied. “No. No. No,” he said in rapid succession. “Not that she wasn’t lovely. She was. She is,” he corrected, that amendment even worse. “Very much so.”

Persephone hated lovely-very-much-so Chloe even more.

Simon came to his feet, and they resumed walking.

“My father had died shortly prior to that courtship,” he explained as he and Persephone walked through the market. “I felt a sense of obligation to find a countess to carry on the line.”

And now, it was about Simon finding a wife so that he might be free of his responsibilities in London. He’d attempted to marry two times—that she knew of now—but never had those been the right reasons.

As they walked, Persephone considered a young couple standing alongside a flower vendor. The young woman was tall, striking, and with a distinct scar upon her cheek that leant an air of even greater beauty to her. The gentleman was tall and charming and blond, and, judging by the adoration in his gaze, hopelessly in love. Just then, the man plucked a pink rose from a basket and held it near his sweetheart’s nose.

Persephone and Simon continued by until the couple faded behind them.

“Very well.” Simon cast her a sideways look. “Out with it.”

He’d read her thoughts just like he’d always been able to do.

Persephone guided them to a stop and stared up at Simon with an earnest gaze. “Has it ever occurred to you, Simon, that you can actually know the greatest joy in finding a duchess who is…someone you are desperately in love with?”

“You believe I can find a lady of the ton who I’m desperately in love with?” He laughed.

She frowned. “It is not so very hard to believe—”

“I find it impossible to. Any woman who is favorable of my suit only does so because she covets the role of duchess and certainly not out of any true affection for me.”

“You do not know—”

“I do know that,” he said exasperatedly. “I know because any woman and her family who shows me interest now did not do so before I became a duke.”

Persephone gripped his spare hand. “But you have been gone awhile, Simon. Those women are not the same as the ones you left behind.”

“No,” he allowed. “But they do belong to the same families. The same families that decided I, as an earl with a stammer, was unworthy of their daughters.”

“But—”

“Enough, Persephone.” At the same time, those two words contained a firmness that indicated he considered the matter at an end.

Simon gentled his response with a crooked smile that did more of those strange things to her heart and thoroughly jumbled up her thoughts.

No man had a right to possess that entrancing half-smile.

“Now, I believe you have a lesson for me, on what was it, Miss Forsyth?” He waggled his eyebrows. “The importance of flowers in a courtship.”

Miss Forsyth. Simon’s courtship. His impending marriage…to a woman whom I will handpick.

And just like that, she came whirring back from the haze he’d cast.

He continued to stare at her in that concerned way.

“Yes,” Persephone said dumbly. “Our first lesson…locating the ideal flowers for your…for your…”

“Future duchess?”

Her stomach churned. “Y-yes, th-that. Her ,” she corrected.

Simon motioned ahead. “Lead the way, Miss Forsyth.”

His words prompted her into movement once more.

Lead the way , he’d said. That was precisely what she intended to do. Guide him to the ideal companion for him, and as Persephone walked with wooden steps toward the most famous hothouse in all of Covent Garden, she found herself gripped with an overwhelming urge to cry.