Page 2 of The Good Duke (The Licentious Lords #1)

20 years later

U pon her father’s death twelve years earlier, Miss Persephone Forsyth, having no relatives and few resources, had been forced to take on employment at Mrs. Belden’s Finishing School.

It was a post she’d both appreciated for the security it provided and hated for how dreadfully dull and miserable her role, in fact, was.

Twelve, however, would mark the most years she would ever work at Mrs. Belden’s if she didn’t start thinking, and fast . For there could be no reason, except a bad reason, for a summons from the headmistress while an instructor was mid-lecture.

Standing outside the headmistress’s office, Persephone brought her shoulders back, donned a smile, and stepped into the unencumbered and surprisingly cozy-looking space.

The pallid, thin-lipped headmistress, Mrs. Belden, stared at Persephone from across the immaculate surface of her mahogany kneehole desk.

“Mrs. Belden,” she greeted. She sank into a deep, graceful curtsy the mulish woman behind the desk would have been hard-pressed to fault. “I always enjoy meeting—”

“You know my opinion on smiling,” the headmistress said in her crisp, frosty tones that could bring snow to the summers. “I don’t like it, Mrs. Forsyth.”

Even with the number of years she’d been employed by Mrs. Belden, Persephone never had, and likely never would have, grown accustomed to being addressed as “Mrs. Forsyth.” Alas, Persephone’s role as an instructor at Mrs. Belden’s Finishing School required such pretense. After all, it would be scandalous if Mrs. Belden’s clients knew the instructor she’d hired to help school their daughters make an advantageous match had never herself managed the feat.

“Forgive me,” Persephone murmured. “It is just I always en—”

“Enjoy meeting with me.” The old harridan took the liberty of completing Persephone’s lie for her. “Yes, yes.” Mrs. Belden pointed a wrinkled finger at the single, straight-backed chair across from her throne-like seat. “Sit, Mrs. Forsyth.”

Persephone hesitated. “Are you certain? I know how busy you—”

“Now.”

Oh, hell.

Clasping her hands in the prayer-like positioning Mrs. Belden expected of instructors and students alike, Persephone came forward. Remaining dutifully silent, she sat.

The stern headmistress pressed her fingertips together and peered at Persephone over the tops of them.

In her life, Persephone had come to both dread and despise absolute silence. Nothing more than a hush had ushered in some of the darkest moments in her life. The night after Persephone’s father and her best friend Simon’s father had a falling out, she’d discovered her father alone in the kitchen, silent and staring so intently into nothing he’d not even heard her approach.

Then, years later, the stillness she’d encountered after returning home from a visit to Pickmere Lake to discover her beloved papa dead in his favorite chair.

And then the time, she’d lost her heart to an employer’s son and been sacked for that unforgivable offense.

The stern headmistress finally spoke. “Do you have anything to say?”

Persephone opened her mouth.

“I’d encourage you to continue with caution, Mrs. Forsyth,” Mrs. Belden warned.

Persephone’s heart pounded as she searched for something to say.

Without a word, the leader of this miserable institution pushed a drawing across the desk—a very familiar drawing.

Her gaze locked on the dashing visage of Lord Silas Keefe, the prized and beloved son and heir of her former employer.

Once, when she’d traveled to London with her father, she’d witnessed a coach turned on its side and people scrambling to fetch the screaming passengers out. As their carriage passed by, she’d stared on, held captive by the horror of the scene.

This moment felt remarkably like that one of long ago.

Her stomach roiled.

The day when she’d captured his likeness came back as fresh as if not even a day had passed. Lord Silas Keefe stretched out in the high grass, wearing a dashing half-grin as he dared her to sketch him.

She’d been a fool then but had proven a bigger fool these past years for never having burned the page.

She searched for something to say. Anything to say.

“It is just a drawing,” Persephone said carefully, keeping her voice calm in a bid to keep from turning herself over to the panic knocking at her breast.

“And since when did your responsibilities include the role of art instructor?” Mrs. Belden shot back.

“Never,” she demurred.

Alas, Persephone had been assigned—and only ever taught in—the unenviable role as Instructor of Mores, Manners, and Matchmaking at Mrs. Belden’s Finishing School.

Mrs. Belden’s nostrils flared in a rare display of pique. “A drawing that, according to Lady Claire, you drew, Mrs. Forsyth.”

Her mind raced. In the brief but precious spare time she managed for herself, she’d found joy in drawing. Unfortunately, she’d been discovered by several of her students, who’d begged to see her renderings of the human form. In the end, she’d stepped neatly into a well-laid trap.

This meeting with the headmistress, however, was not about any prior bad behavior on Persephone’s part, but rather the sketch she’d done of a gentleman.

Mrs. Belden collected the cane resting against her desk and thumped the bottom against the floor in her familiar I’m-annoyed-with-you three tap rhythm. “Nothing to say, Mrs. Forsyth?”

“I didn’t realize there was a question?” Persephone added a slight uptilt, transforming her own words into a query.

“Is the drawing yours ?”

Alas, it appeared Mrs. Belden had run out of all patience.

“ Yours is a really such a general word, isn’t it though?” She didn’t let the other woman get a word in edgewise. “Yours. Hers. Ours. Why, it could be anybody’s . When you figure there are four different art lessons each day, comprised of eight ladies in each, with an average quantity of eight pieces of parchment per each student, that is”—she swiftly tabulated those numbers in her head—“two hundred and thirty-four. As such, it is infinitely difficult ascertaining just who specifically a given rendering might belong to.”

And with that, Persephone managed the seemingly impossible—she flummoxed the old headmistress and head proprietress of the finishing school.

Mouth agape, her head cocked, the older woman was a study of perplexity.

Under any other circumstances, Persephone would have taken immense pride in being the first and only to ever knock the miserable harpy off-kilter. But these were not ordinary times. She sat in the headmistress’ office, one word from Mrs. Belden away from being severed, and losing the steady, secure employment she’d known since her father’s passing.

Persephone, however, had never been one to give in easily to surrender. She cleared her throat. “Given the speed with which I calculated all that, this might be the ideal time to suggest a change in my teaching assignment.”

Mrs. Belden found her voice once more. “Your teaching assignment, Mrs. Forsyth?” she returned frostily.

“Oh, it is not as though I’ve not enjoyed my time and tenure as lead instructor in the all-important role of matchmaker.” It was an outright lie. “I have, immensely,” she rushed to assure her employer. “I just feel it might be more beneficial to utilize me in other capacities.”

“And what capacity is that, Mrs. Forsyth?”

Persephone’s mind raced.

Do not say art. Even as she would love that role. Don’t say art because it would only remind Mrs. Belden of the reason she’d summoned Persephone here.

“Mrs. Forsyth?” the older headmistress said, a warning in her tone.

“As a mathematics instructor.” A mathematics instructor? She despised mathematics. But you despise being hungry and houseless more , that silent voice of reason reminded her.

“A…A…”

“Mathematics instructor,” she again supplied when Mrs. Belden failed to get out the remainder of that echo.

“Given the nature of what you’ve been doing in your spare time, it is presumptuous for you to expect that you’ll have any employment, Mrs. Forsyth.”

Persephone’s stomach dropped. She’d not managed to sidetrack the old shrew. It’d been optimistic to believe she could. And yet her papa had said she’d been born with sunshine in her eyes and the belief that good triumphed over all else.

The older woman leaned forward; her painfully thin frame caused not even a creak of the oak chair she occupied. “You drew the human form.”

“It wasn’t as bad as all that,” she said defensively. In fact, it had been one of her better renderings.

“Oh?” her employer managed to wrap that syllable in ice. The old headmistress withdrew another sketch and turned the damning page face-forward. Jagged along the edges from where it had been ripped from Persephone’s sketch pad.

And as she glanced down at the rendering with her initials dashed damningly upon the corners, her stomach dipped.

Ah, it was that the model was nude and his penis exposed.

The penis would prove her downfall…in every way.

It hadn’t been the first time that particular appendage had gotten her into trouble.

This time, however, it would be calamitous.

Refusing to give in to a rising panic, Persephone plastered a pained smile on her lips. “I—”

“Do not smile, Mrs. Forsyth. If you’ve learned anything in your time as an instructor, you should have at least gathered that smiling is garish.”

It’s the devil’s invitation.

“It is the devil’s invitation,” Mrs. Belden finished that oft-stated saying.

Persephone drew a small breath. “I can certainly explain.” Of course, she’d rather not have to.

The headmistress stared at Persephone. “Well?” she snapped when Persephone didn’t rush to speak.

I enjoy studying and drawing the human anatomy.

Persephone gave her head a tight, slight shake. No, that would not do. Her mind raced.

I’ve long been fascinated by the inner and outer workings of the body—both male and female.

Mrs. Belden reached for her cane.

Think. Think back to the scientific discussions and debates you would hold with your former neighbors, the Earl of Primly and his son, Simon.

Panic pulled a defense from her.

“The Greeks,” she exclaimed.

Mrs. Belden hovered with her hand over her cane. “What of them?” she asked grudgingly.

Forcing a calm she didn’t feel, Persephone brought her shoulders back. “It is all very fascinating. Beyond fascinating. Vital to the understanding of human function and our very lives.”

As she spoke, she was unable to tamp down the rising excitement that came from her telling. Goodness, how she’d missed those fascinating talks she’d had about topics that truly mattered.

“Scholars believe the study of anatomy began as early as 1600BC, the date of the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus,” Persephone elucidated. “This treatise shows the heart, its vessels, liver, spleen, kidneys, the uterus—”

Mrs. Belden paled.

“And bladder,” Persephone added.

“The…the…”

“Bladder,” Persephone finished for her. She motioned down toward her stomach and the place where that respective organ rested.

The headmistress wilted in her chair and searched a hand about…finding one of the handles of her drawers.

Mrs. Belden yanked it open and then, after fumbling about, she fetched a small vial, uncapped the smelling salts, and lifted them to her nose.

Persephone sat stiffly with her hands folded on her lap as the older woman recovered.

Oh, hell. Mayhap mention of bodily organs had not been the way to go.

Well, she’d wager her very post that she’d been the only instructor in the history of the dragons to drive the headmistress to vapors.

Unfortunately, such a skill offered no monetary benefits.

As so, Persephone was the young girl who’d pushed too far and sketched her last improper drawing without consequence.

Nay, this…this was worse. Because now there was no family, no going back. No fail-safe to fall upon if…when?… She lost her post.

She couldn’t. Determined to fight for her security, she spoke before Mrs. Belden could.

“Leonardo da Vinci exalted the human form as a thing of beauty, and his works inspired people and artists everywhere. It resulted in an entire Renaissance, and as such, my partaking in those pastimes cannot truly be bad.” Slightly breathless from that long sentence, she stared hopefully over at her employer.

From behind her spectacles, Mrs. Belden’s eyes formed narrow slits. “Surely you are not comparing yourself to Leonardo da Vinci, Mrs. Forsyth?”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Belden’s eyebrows flew up to her brow.

“No.” Persephone fished about for the correct answer. “Not…exactly?”

Those stark white eyebrows returned to their normal positioning. “Which is it?”

“Somewhat I am,” Persephone clarified. “Not that I’m likening my skillset to the Renaissance artists.” She tried again. “I’m not an artist.”

The other woman folded her hands together and leaned forward. “It’s unfortunate you didn’t recall that detail before you put your pencil to paper.”

“That is, I’m not a Renaissance artist, Mrs. Belden.”

“Clearly,” Mrs. Belden said dryly.

Hmph. Who would have imagined the old dragon was capable of any type of humor?

That moment of the other woman’s levity proved so brief Persephone expected she’d imagined it.

A familiar hardness iced Mrs. Belden’s already hard features. “Throughout your tenure here, how many times have I assigned you the role of art instructor?”

“None?”

“Is that a question, Mrs. Forsyth?”

Persephone folded her hands primly on her lap. “I wasn’t sure whether yours was a rhetorical one.”

“It wasn’t,” the headmistress snapped. She continued her questioning. “How many formal art lessons have you provided to young ladies?”

“Here or elsewhere?”

“Either.”

“None.” Persephone looked sheepishly at her employer—or, as it became increasingly apparent, the woman who was moments from becoming Persephone’s former employer.

“That is correct. Your entire work these past years has consisted of helping young ladies and their families identify and make the most advantageous match.”

It was all she could do to keep from pointing out that outrageously dull, purposeless assignment accounted for the ennui which had led her down the path of talking art with her students.

Tentatively, Persephone lifted a single finger.

“What is it, Mrs. Forsyth?”

“It is just, given the circumstances and my deep affinity for art, perhaps you might consider this an opportune time to offer me the role of art instructor?”

“Art instructor?”

Mrs. Belden flared her eyebrows. “Mrs. Forsyth, I cannot determine whether you are mad, arrogant, or stupid.”

Given the elevated timbre of the usually unflappable woman’s voice, Persephone was about to be unemployed, hungry, and desperate.

“I cannot go about having young ladies of the nobility looking at and possibly drawing these salacious renderings,” Mrs. Belden whispered. “If word is got out about what you’ve done here and what those young ladies have seen…?” She shuddered and let the thought go unspoken.

Coming swiftly to her feet, she collected her cane, marched over to the hearth, and lowered that page to the flames.

Fire licked at the corners, charring them black, curling the sheet…and then the drawing was consumed.

And no more.

Mrs. Belden returned to her chair and, once seated, dusted her palms together. “Good riddance.”

“I agree. Good riddance to penises everywhere.” All they did was land a lady in all manner of trouble.

That was it: the precise moment when Persephone realized all her efforts were in vain. That there was no going back…from speaking that forbidden word aloud.

Horror filled the headmistress’s sharp features.

Oh, hell.

Persephone gulped. “You were referring to the—”

“Do not, Mrs. Forsyth,” Mrs. Belden hissed. “In all my time, I’ve severed the employment of countless women. They have sat before me humbled, shamed, teary-eyed, and weeping. You are the first to ever face the prospect of your demise with this…this…gumption.”

Hope soared. Gumption. That was a good thing.

“No, that is not a good thing,” the older woman said brusquely. “The other former instructors who found themselves in your position pleaded for their posts and vowed to not again do whatever it was that resulted in their being in the very position you find yourself now.”

Pleaded? “Did it make a difference?”

Mrs. Belden cocked her head.

Persephone clarified her question. “In the cases of any of those other instructors, did you rethink your decision?”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Belden said tersely.

“Then I daresay it doesn’t matter what I say or do, as the outcome is certain to be the same.”

The old woman’s eyes bulged like the megacephalous bug Persephone once captured in a jar to study.

“Get out,” Mrs. Belden thundered.

Persephone quickly came to her feet and hurried to gather her things. She paused. “I don’t suppose I might inquire as to whether you would be willing to write a letter of reference on my be—”

“ Nowwww! ” Mrs. Belden shouted.

“Of course.” Persephone scrambled from the room, closing the door quickly behind her.

As Persephone exited Mrs. Belden’s office, she stepped into a swarm of big-eyed girls from ages thirteen on up to eighteen, so great in number they’d crammed the narrow corridor and made the hall impassable.

All her students remained with their rapt gazes locked on Persephone.

Or, rather, all her former students.

After all, it had been made official just moments ago—Persephone had been sacked. Discharged. Dismissed. Let go.

She fought to breathe, suffocated by both her circumstances and the crowd around her.

And as if facing a now uncertain fate wasn’t cause for misery enough, her humiliation had been witnessed by at least half of the students at this horrid institution.

Only for once, the girls stared at Persephone with something akin to wonder and admiration. Sentiments all vastly different than the usual disdain these same girls reserved for all instructors in this miserable school .

How very typical. They should finally come ’round to liking her after she’d been sacked.

“That will be enough.” That sharp directive rose amidst the quiet, followed by an impressively loud clap that managed to part the sea of students.

Mrs. Agatha Lovewell and Mrs. Gracie Harrington, two fellow instructors and also Persephone’s only two friends in the world, stepped through the cluster.

“Off to your classes.” Agatha’s deeper contralto had never failed to rouse fear in the girls here, and this moment proved no exception.

The students scurried off, scrambling in various directions and tripping over one another in their haste to be free of the three—or rather two—instructors.

When the corridor had cleared, Agatha and Gracie remained rooted to the floor.

Only, it was as if they’d used the last words they’d ever be capable of on the gaggle of girls.

Gracie, barely five feet tall and possessed of the prettiest blonde curls, and Agatha, nearly seven inches taller and with ink-black hair, couldn’t be more different in appearance, and yet they remained silent, continuing to stare at Persephone with identical expressions of wide-eyed wonderment.

A nervous laugh bubbled up Persephone’s throat. She silently willed her friends say something . Otherwise, she’d drown in a swift-rising sea of panic.

“I gather you heard that, then?” she asked.

Still as one, both women only nodded.

“Then I take everyone else also heard.”

Which, of course, they had. Persephone had caught more than half the school outside Mrs. Belden’s office.

“You shook the dragon,” Gracie whispered, and it was as though she’d freed the three of them.

Agatha clasped her hands at her big-bosomed chest. “I never thought I’d see the day,” she marveled. “It was…it was…”

“Magnificent!” Gracie supplied.

At last, words .

Her friends speaking made things normal and kept her from dissolving into a puddle of panic.

Yes, it had been the impossible feat, one that none of the instructors bent on retaining their posts would have dared attempt and had gone out of their way to avoid.

The trio fell into lockstep, the heels of their serviceable boots clicking in time as they headed down the corridors toward their shared chambers. As they went, young women ducked their heads out of their rooms. Whispers followed in their wake.

And under any other circumstances but the current ones, it would have felt like a triumph, for Persephone had managed two impossibilities—knocking Mrs. Belden off-balance…and earning the respect of the attending students. Students whom she was oftentimes certain had entered into a pack to hate all the instructors with an equal ferocity.

The moment they reached their rooms, Agatha closed the door behind them.

While her friends squealed and spoke excitedly over one another about the grand feat they’d just witnessed, Persephone stood, her heart pounding, and took in this small room she’d shared with the two other women.

This little space, which had become the only home she’d known since her father’s passing.

The three narrow bedframes, each covered in a colorful quilt Gracie had made for each of them in a project that had taken the young woman three years to complete. The delicate porcelain vase she’d brought with her and filled daily with wildflowers from the gardens below her window called to her, and Persephone wandered over to the beloved piece.

She picked it up and caressed a finger over the pink and red roses painted upon the vase; those colors, once vibrant, had begun to fade.

Persephone returned it to the oak nightstand next to her bed.

They were such small things, and yet they’d made this cold place a home.

And now it was all gone, just another loss.

Her heart ached, and that pain proved a welcome distraction from the panic of figuring out what to do now.

“That was a…magnificent display, Persephone,” Gracie squealed, recalling her from her misery. “You went toe to toe with the Dragon!”

Persephone managed a smile. “I’m so happy you enjoyed it,” she drawled.

The diminutive young woman, of a height and frame to pass for a child, failed to hear the sarcasm Persephone had infused in those words.

Smiling, Gracie began to pace. “Never has it been done. Everyone has said it could not be done, and yet you have. You spoke up for yourself, and you didn’t cry or beg or wilt. You—”

Gracie stopped abruptly, her almost elfin-like features stricken, and Persephone knew it was the moment the gravity of what had transpired hit her.

“You were sacked,” Gracie whispered.

“Yes, there was that too,” Persephone said with a drollness at odds with the dread finally beginning to root around her insides, rising up past the adrenaline of her challenge to Mrs. Belden.

She’d been sacked.

Oh, God.

All the energy drained from Persephone’s limbs as she sank onto the edge of her lumpy mattress and wrinkled the beloved coverlet.

Her friends instantly took up a place on either side of her.

She briefly closed her eyes.

This was bad. This was…very, very bad.

There was no employment or references.

Persephone’s breath came in quick little spurts.

Agatha patted her on the back. “Nice and easy,” the other woman murmured.

Ignoring her, Persephone came to her feet once more. “I was sacked.”

Gracie took her hand. “It was—”

“The penis,” Agatha supplied, earning a glare from Gracie.

Agatha returned the dark look. “What? It was. Persephone’s drawing of the penis. A penis has never brought a woman anything but trouble,” she muttered with a frustrated shake of her head.

“I was going to say it was Lady Claire.”

“We are saying the same thing, Gracie. Claire took Persephone’s nude drawing, but all that truly matters now is that Persephone has no employment, no place to go, no family, and—”

“This isn’t helping,” Persephone said weakly.

Thankfully, both women went quiet—for a moment.

“Are there any friends who might take you in?” Agatha asked quietly.

“Friends?” she managed her first laugh of the day.

“Ones you had before you came here?” she clarified.

No, they were the only ones. As a girl, she’d been an oddity with the village children. None had known what to make of her, so they’d made nothing of any relationship with her instead.

That was…but for… one .

Persephone froze.

One who then and, according to the papers she’d read over the years, still adhered to a strict and… predictable schedule. A schedule that also meant a vacant household in London while he returned to the country for…lordly affairs.

She sat up straighter.

“What is it?” Gracie asked.

Persephone’s mind raced.

He wasn’t really a friend, per se. When they’d last seen one another, she’d been responsible for his great shame, and then there had been all the vicious, hateful things her father had said of him.

But then friendships never really died. Not truly. It was why she’d kept abreast of all mention of him through the years. Why, when gossip columns were given to the dragons with the sole purpose of learning about members of the ton , she’d scoured and searched for information on just one person. And it was also why she’d clipped out all the mentions of his name until she’d stopped because it’d struck her how pitiful she was following the goings-on of a long-ago friend who’d never made an attempt to either speak to Persephone or write to her.

But a friend was a friend was a friend.

“Persephone?” Gracie asked hesitantly.

Shaken from her musings, Persephone looked at the two women staring concernedly at her, and a slow smile turned her lips up.

“I…might have somewhere to go after all.”