Page 27 of The Good Duke (The Licentious Lords #1)

O n the hottest summer nights, the kind that left a girl laying atop the coverlet and flipping a pillow in search of any hint of cool, when sleep proved elusive, Persephone would sneak out of her suite. She’d tiptoe past the room where, despite the sweltering temperature, her noisily snoring Father managed a fitful rest. She’d take the wood stairs, avoiding the place in the floorboards that creaked, and continue walking until she reached the front door. Only when her father was mid-snore did she open the panel, always in desperate need of a good oiling, and take off.

Then she’d run barefoot through the dew-slicked grass, welcoming the cool balm upon her toes, and keep going until she found the spot where her family’s tiny parcel of land ended and a nobleman’s far vaster one began.

Now, twenty years later, with her slippers in hand and meandering barefoot through lush, green grass—also damp from the nighttime dew—Persephone could almost believe she was back in another time, in another place. A time and place where the summer nights and days had been long, and life had been simpler, and Persephone’s greatest worry had been whether there’d been clouds in the night sky that would hide the stars she wished to gaze upon.

Lest Persephone became too lost in the happy dream of another time, from afar, the lone bark of some stray in the distance and the faintest whisper of carriage wheels rumbling over cobblestones shattered the illusion.

The occasional sounds of the city served as an unkind and unnecessary reminder that life had changed. Persephone had grown up, and nothing would ever be simple again. For she wasn’t in the peacefully still English countryside, but rather in the pristine gardens belonging to the Duke of Greystoke.

Persephone glanced at the graveled path she’d wandered from, that stone walkway that cut across the grounds, peppered with flowering trees, and which seemed to stretch forever.

Only when Simon’s palatial residence was a distant white dot on the horizon did Persephone let herself stop.

Dropping her slippers, she sailed onto the damp grass. She drew her knees close to her chest and wrapped her arms about them. Closing her eyes, she drew a breath and inhaled deeply of the fragrant hyacinths and cherry blossoms.

When she opened her eyes once more, her gaze landed upon a small pond; on the smooth surface of those waters, the moon reflected perfectly back.

Persephone stretched a hand toward the stony path and gathered a handful of gravel. Peering down at the little mound within her palm, she used the tip of her index finger to sift through the pile and fished out the larger pieces.

Persephone closed her eyes and as she launched a tiny rock, she silently sent her wish to the skies as she’d once done.

I wish I was a young girl again.

Plink. The pebble hit the water.

I wish time had remained frozen, and I’m still sitting beside Simon and watching for shooting stars.

The wishes continued to come.

Persephone hurled another rock.

I wish my father had never died.

And another.

I wish my father and Simon’s had never fought.

Out of wishing stones, Persephone, a woman possessed, scrambled on her knees and dug up a handful of pebbles and gravel.

I wish I hadn’t drawn him naked.

In the nighttime quiet, her breath came in short, ragged spurts.

Because no matter how much she’d loved drawing, she’d loved being Simon’s friend more, and she would have burned every sketch pad and torched every pencil if it’d meant they’d never been parted by her actions that day.

With a soft little sob, Persephone launched another stone.

I wish I’d never given myself to Silas, the new Marquess of Bute.

Because then there’d be no secret shame that she need spend her whole life running from. Then she wouldn’t have to hide in shadows and beg an old friend for references.

Frantically searching the almost dust within her palms for another wishing stone, and finding none, Persephone tossed the pile over her shoulder.

“I expect it’s the opposite of luck to have wishing stones hurled at you.”

Persephone gasped. The unexpectedness of that quiet murmuring sent her pitching forward on her hands and knees.

Her chest rose and fell hard and fast, and she stared blankly down at the soft emerald-green stalks of grass which had softened her fall.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and she saw his gleaming black boots slide closer.

Persephone came to on a rush of humiliated shame. “ Simon! ”

She made to scramble to her feet.

Simon waved a hand. “I’m quite fine. Just a bit of dust and rock, and certainly no less than I deserve.”

And then as Persephone reclaimed her spot on the damp earth, an uninvited Simon eased his tall, muscular frame onto the ground beside her. They sat there, shoulder to shoulder, her knees drawn up, his long legs outstretched, and stared at the pond ahead.

“I saw you from the library,” he explained.

And he’d felt compelled to follow her here?

“Unable to sleep?” he asked.

Persephone nodded.

“Me too.”

From the corner of her eye, she caught Simon reaching inside his jacket, and Persephone followed his movements.

He withdrew a small-sized purse, setting the coins within ajingle. Then after he’d fished one out, he lobbed it at the now rippling waters.

Plunk.

Persephone stared bemusedly as that coin disappeared under the water’s surface.

How very different they were. And how very different their lives had turned out. He possessed a wealth so great, he could cast money aside without a worry, while she sat lamenting the idea of those valuable funds sitting at the bottom of his pond.

She dropped her knee atop her chin and rubbed it back and forth over the cotton fabric.

Of course, that’d always been their destinies—Simon a peer, born into a noble family, and Persephone, a female of a respectable family but, as a woman with no male relatives, an uncertain fate.

Funny that. As children, one didn’t think about the tribulations life would bring or the uncertainty of fate. One lived only in the moment, laughing and carefree and not imagining the hard things to come because, well, a child’s mind that hadn’t yet experienced hardship couldn’t even begin to fathom it.

Simon held a coin under her nose. “A wish?”

Making no move to take it, Persephone smiled wryly. “I’m not tossing an actual coin , Simon.”

“Not even for a wish?”

“ Especially not for a wish.” She snorted. “I will not throw money away for any empty game.”

A lifetime ago, she would have. A lifetime ago, she’d have not given it a second thought. She would have, with a hasty word of thanks, eagerly snatched it from his fingers and sent it sailing with her unspoken wish for company.

Her skin pricked and she glanced at Simon.

He wore an expression the likes of which she’d never seen upon his features—as if her words had deeply affected him.

“Take it, Seph.”

His quiet urging cut through her melancholy. And because it was easier to accept the coin than talk with him, this time Persephone took his offering.

As she did, her fingertips brushed Simon’s. Even that very slightest of meetings sent a shiver of awareness racing through her.

Unnerved, she launched her coin—too far.

The pence went flying over the pond.

“Well, that can’t be good,” Simon drawled. “Though it is harder to say which is worse luck. Having the wishing stones thrown at you or—”

“Are we going to do this, Simon?”

“Make wishes?”

“Act like nothing happened earlier today.”

Simon slowly rubbed his empty palms together. “No, you are right.”

Yes, she was.

And yet neither of them had truly been good to or truthful with one another.

“I’ve been b-bothered by my horrid treatment of you, Seph.”

She gave him a sideways look. “Are you referring to your vile treatment this afternoon?” Persephone lifted an eyebrow. “Or one of the many other times since I arrived?”

He bowed his head. “I deserve th-that.”

“Deserve what?” Persephone said bluntly. “I’m truly asking which because there’s been so many times you’ve been a bastard to me, Simon, I really can’t be sure which time is keeping you from your sleep.”

Simon dragged a hand through his hair. “I-I regret all of it, Seph.”

His stammer indicated Simon’s level of upset. Persephone, however, didn’t intend to sit here and assuage his guilty conscience.

Persephone angled her body slightly toward Simon. “If you want me to say how you’ve spoken to me and how you’ve treated me is all right, then you are wasting your time. We’ve done all this already, Simon,” she said tiredly. “You insult me, making me feel awful, you regret your behavior, and then act like you hate me all over again.”

For too long, she’d held her tongue. She’d not spoken with Simon about her past. She’d not called Simon out for things she absolutely should have. All of it stopped tonight.

Maybe if she’d not kept secrets from Simon from the start, they wouldn’t be in this place where they found themselves now. Or maybe they would have, and this contentious state was just how they’d been destined to end up.

Either way, he deserved the truth because her secrets could—and would—impact him and all he held dear.

Funny how hard it was for words to come when, with this man, it’d always been as natural as breathing.

Persephone rested her cheek upon her lap so she could stare at him. “It used to be so easy to talk to you,” she mused. “There was nothing I could not speak with you about.” I wish it could still be that way.

Persephone hadn’t been honest with Simon, and given he’d offered her employment, security, and future references, it was the least of what she owed him. Instead, she’d allowed the ghosts of her past and the secrets she carried to be an impediment between them.

Now, however, her past threatened his future, and she could not be the cause of Simon not having that which he most wanted in life.

“I didn’t want to leave,” she began hesitantly. Unable to look upon him for this part she’d share, Persephone returned her attention to the moon’s shadow.

As she spoke, she felt Simon’s eyes upon her.

“Earlier, when I asked for my references. I wasn’t completely truthful with you.” Her lips pulled in a grimace. “In fact, I haven’t been at all forthright, Simon.”

He sat in silence and patiently waited, just as he’d always done—and been—when she confided in him.

Before her courage deserted her, Persephone continued speaking. “I mentioned my previous years of employment, and…my employers—”

“The handsy ones,” he interrupted, his tone sharp with such fury and affront that she fought the urge to cry.

It’d been forever since anyone had been angry on her behalf.

“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “There were those. But they weren’t all handsy. Some of them were respectable and polite.” She paused. “One…was a gentleman.”

Simon stilled.

One was a gentleman.

Simon’s heart thudded at a slow, sickening beat.

Persephone’s revelation hung on the night air.

The one.

She’d made but one vague mention of a single lover and never spoke again about it. Instead, Simon had been left haunted, made to wonder about who that man had been. Now, it appeared Persephone intended to share those parts of her story that’d unfolded in their time apart.

“Do y-you want to talk about i-it?” he ventured, as he immediately found himself transported to the stuttering boy of his past.

Persephone laughed. “No.”

The heartbreak contained within that pain-filled laugh threatened to cut him open.

“Do I want to?” she grimaced. “No. Do I need to…?”

“Persephone,” he said, shifting closer. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to share.”

And Simon knew it was the coward within him that gave Persephone an out.

She shook her head. “I have to.”

Something in that slightly overemphasized word gave him pause; it set off faintly tingling bells of warning at the back of his head.

He hesitated a moment and then nodded.

“I worked in one household,” she began. “The master and mistress were monsters.”

Persephone turned her gaze out at the water, and Simon knew she lived in a moment Simon had never been in but wanted to climb into so he could take apart the ones who’d made her life miserable.

“I take it you had equally monstrous charges,” he said, unable to keep the antipathy from his voice.

“On the contrary. They had young daughters and… a son,” she murmured, and this time her expression grew soft and even further distant. “They were the kindest children I’ve ever known. I worked in that grand household, but with their parents not caring, I could very well believe and pretend those girls were my siblings. The moment their parents were out, I’d school them on the topics they yearned to explore. I was never happier.”

Simon despised himself for resenting that her happiest moments didn’t include him, but were instead with some strangers whom she’d been paid to be with.

“Then,” Persephone was saying, “one day, their eldest brother came to visit.”

All Simon’s muscles bunched and coiled in anticipation of where her story would go.

“A handsy rogue?” he asked, uncertain how he managed to keep his tone so even when he wanted to snap and hiss like a feral beast.

“Wrong again,” she said with a smile.

Of course.

“A rogue, but not handsy.” Once more, her gaze became inward. “At least, not without my permission.”

Here he’d thought this knotty sensation in his chest couldn’t become any tighter, only to find himself unable to breathe under the vise-like hold it had over him.

As if she took Simon’s silence as condemnation and not the savage jealousy it, in fact, was, Persephone spoke quickly. “It didn’t begin that way. He was a loving, loyal brother.”

“That is how he presented himself.” What a bastard. He’d used his siblings to ensnare the innocent governess.

“It’s how he was,” she said.

And her loyalty to the bastard all these years later sent Simon’s jawbone sliding and his teeth scraping. God, she defended him!

“At first, he’d pay visits to his siblings and play with them.” A quiet laugh shook her slender frame. “I’d never known a nobleman could be that way with children. He’d play horse and get down on all fours, have them climb upon his back, and ride them all around the nursery.”

With eyes that twinkled, she looked at Simon like she expected him to share in her wonderment for the bloody bastard who’d held her heart—and, by the happy color in her cheeks, still did.

“He sounds like a swell… chap ,” was the best Simon could manage to say between his clenched teeth.

Not that Persephone required any input from Simon.

“Along the way, we began to talk. He’d sit in the school room while I instructed his sisters in watercolors and painting, and then after they went off for their dance lessons, he’d remain, and we’d talk about art.”

Of course, he had. Simon gritted his teeth. The chap had not only been a rogue, he’d been quite the rogue.

“We’d paint together and his work, Simon?” She shook her head. “I’d never seen anything quite like his renderings.”

So, apparently, the fellow had been a skilled artist after all. A bloody paragon.

More of that searing, all-potent jealousy went through him, and Simon preferred a fate where that green-eyed monster devoured Simon rather than leave him alive with this sensation slowly consuming him.

“We’d sit under the stars,” Persephone softly shared, “and he’d point out the constellations.”

Like Simon used to do for Seph, but never had she cared for him in that way. Not as children, anyway. Hell, aside from sex, maybe not even now.

Simon made himself take a breath. For this wasn’t about him, and he owed it to Persephone to not let his envy overshadow her past pain and memories.

“He asked me to marry him,” she said quietly.

Simon stilled. His heart felt a peculiar way, that organ far past the point of pain to a dull numbness.

“But you did not,” Simon said as a reminder to himself, and to fill the void Persephone’s voice previously filled.

“We did not,” she confirmed. “I knew deep down he couldn’t. Future marquesses didn’t marry servants, at least not in real life.” Her shoulders lifted in a heavy-looking shrug that made a liar of her indifference.

“One day, his father came to me and informed me that his son asked him to sever our connection. The marquess indicated he’d been aware of his son’s…relationship with me.”

Like she feared meeting his eyes for the remainder of her telling, Persephone dropped her gaze to her knees.

“The marquess expressed his gratitude for my providing valuable services to all of his children, but that as his son had tired of me, my employment would no longer be required.” Anguish filled her eyes and broke his heart. “But for work well-rendered, he’d ensure me work and references that were both good as long as I never spoke of or came near his family again.”

Had the outcome been different, Persephone might have now been married to the dashing gentleman.

But his loyalty and love for Persephone proved even greater than his miserable jealousy, for he yearned to thrash her former sweetheart within an inch of his life and leave him alive only long enough to beat the bastard all over again.

“I was desperate to believe those words were merely the scheming of a powerful nobleman who didn’t approve of a match between me and his son the heir.” Her throat worked wildly. “But my belongings were swiftly loaded into a carriage. Even when my father died and I didn’t know where to go or what to do, I still didn’t feel the panic I did that day at the marquess’s.”

Persephone should have been cared for and safe. I should have been there when her father passed. I failed her…

Everything inside him hurt.

There should have been no dastardly rogue or villainous marquess, and the profound regret of that would never, ever go away.

Through the tumult, her voice continued coming. “Desperate, I looked for any sign of the man to whom I’d given my heart and virginity too. He wouldn’t let this happen. He loved me. A man cannot feign the love he showed me.”

Oh, God, I’ll not survive this telling.

“Or that’s what I’d believed,” she said with a sad, quiet cynicism left by the earl who’d broken her heart.

“And then I saw him. He stood in the library window, his arms clasped behind him, his face a perfect mask, and just stared at me the way he might a stranger.”

When she’d finished, Simon sat motionless, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, because when he did, he’d be transformed into a rabid beast who’d hunt down every earl and marquess, destroying each one in his wake until he’d slaughtered the pair responsible for Seph’s suffering.

Fighting his demons so he could be the rock Seph needed now, Simon rested his palm over hers.

She glanced up.

“He didn’t deserve you, Seph,” Simon said gravely.

“I know that. I did the moment the carriage pulled away. Knowing didn’t make the hurt any less painful.”

“No, I know. I…do.” He knew because at last, after a lifetime of not even acknowledging the truth to himself, Simon let himself accept he’d always loved Persephone. He’d loved her since she’d been a young girl with gangly legs. It was why he’d resented her when he’d not even realized he had.

She’d deserved better from her former love and better than Simon.

Every man had failed Persephone—including her father, who’d not ensured she’d be properly cared for after his death—and it left a bitter taste in Simon’s mouth, knowing he fell into the ranks of all those wrongdoers.

Simon broke the quiet. “I can kill them for you.”

Her shoulders shook with laughter, and a welcome lightness filled him that he’d chased away some of her sadness.

With a sigh, she rested her head against his shoulder, and it felt so, so good to be with her this way. He wanted to freeze this moment so it was the only one that’d ever exist and could carry on into eternity. “The devil already took care of one of them for you.”

“And the other?” Simon asked, feigning a casualness he didn’t feel. He wanted the name. He needed the name.

A stilted silence followed his question.

“Seph?”

Persephone came up quickly on her knees beside him. “I didn’t tell you these things to anger you but rather because you deserve the truth,” she said, running her gaze over his face. “And you have from the start.”

Simon stilled. Warning bells began to chime, and the sick, unwelcome truth settled somewhere in the pit of his belly.

He knew the man.

“Who?” he asked hoarsely.

“I’m telling you because I should have been honest from the start. I need you to understand why I asked for references and that you set me free.”

An odd humming filled his ears.

She’d put her plea to Simon after his— and her —meeting in Hyde Park with the Marquess of Bute and the gentleman’s sister.

Oh, God.

“I will not ruin what you most want, Simon,” Persephone said earnestly.

What he most wanted? What was Seph even talking about?

His mind trapped on that recent walk she’d taken around Hyde Park and the serious-looking conversation she’d had with the marquess.

He only faintly heard Persephone’s next words.

“ Lady Isabelle is one of my former charges .”

From that revelation, Simon knew what was coming. He knew what she’d say before she even spoke her next words, and he didn’t want them because then the rival would be real, and a relationship with Persephone he’d fought since they’d been reunited would be impossible.

Persephone held his gaze, took in a deep breath, and said words Simon never wanted to hear.

“The Marquess of Bute was my former love, Simon,” she said quietly.