Page 3 of The Good Duke (The Licentious Lords #1)

F or all The Great Bard had gotten right in words, when he’d penned the verse “Parting is such sweet sorrow,” William Shakespeare couldn’t have been more wrong.

Seated on the comfortable sapphire velvet squabs of his carriage, Simon Broadbent, former Earl of Primly and current Duke of Greystone, peered out the leaded windowpane.

The cobbled streets of London bustled with activity as they always had and likely always would. The steady clip-clop of horse hooves melded with the equally familiar rattle of carriage wheels turning.

Placid and pampered lords and ladies moved to and fro, while beleaguered servants trailed the requisite several steps behind their illustrious employers. Small, malnourished children desperate for coin hastened to lay scraps down so those vainglorious members of High Society might avoid the puddles left by refuse and waste.

Nothing had changed, and yet, at the same time, everything had.

God, he despised this place.

It was what had driven him to leave years earlier and travel the Continent. He’d have been content to leave it all behind him and exist in a state where no one knew him or of him. The jeering he’d endured behind people’s backs. The jeering he’d had leveled at his face. The pitying looks.

He’d been spared from all of it so long, having carved out and created a new life for himself.

Alas, Chaucer had been more on point when he’d noted all good things came to an end.

Even as a servant rushed forward to open his carriage door, Simon pressed the handle and climbed down. Tugging off his gloves as he went, Simon headed for the limestone steps of the stucco townhouse he’d left—happily—behind.

Only to return.

Of course, his return had been inevitable. An honorable gentleman with lands had men, women, and children reliant upon him. As such, he’d always been slated to return and personally see to all his responsibilities. This unexpected—and unwanted—change in his circumstances, however, had simply sped the inevitable process along.

But then a bachelor lord enjoyed some freedoms to travel the Continent. A newly minted duke, who’d inherited extremely profitable lands and responsibilities from a distant cousin, wasn’t permitted the same luxuries—or freedoms.

The bright blue door, the only decorative element of the otherwise white stucco townhouse, was drawn open by a familiar servant.

“Bouchard!” Simon greeted affectionately.

But for a handful of more silver and grey hairs, the Broadbent family butler, Bouchard, was still the always-smiling man he’d been for most of Simon’s life.

“Lord Prim—That is, Your Grace,” Bouchard gushed. “It is so very good to see you.”

He’d be the only one to feel that way. Nor did that realization come from any self-deprecating or self-pitying on Simon’s part. Rather, it came from a place of truth. He’d never had friends. At best, he’d had acquaintances. He had always been of the fringes of polite society. At worst, mercilessly mocked. At best, subtly pitied. Tolerated, even good naturally by some, but always an oddity.

“Likewise, Bouchard,” he said, handing his cloak over to a waiting footman.

Simon glanced around the foyer, taking it all in. The dark wood flooring still gleamed. The Cararra marble of the fireplace, flanked on either side by columns done in Portoro marble, bore not a hint of ash or dust in its grate. The same urn, filled with fresh flowers, sat on the mahogany hall table.

It was as though he’d stepped back in time, which was also the last thing he’d wanted to do.

What man would want to return to a point in his life when he’d been scorned and sneered at?

“Mr. Grady arrived some time ago,” Bouchard murmured, drawing Simon out of his thoughts.

The fastidious butler looked at Simon with a question in his kindly grey eyes. “If you’d like me to inform him that it is best if he return tomorrow, Your Grace?” he ventured.

Simon gave his head a slight shake to clear those memories of the past.

“No need, Bouchard.” His jaw tensed. “I’ll see him now,” he said, dismissing the servant.

Bouchard dropped a bow. “As you wish, Your Grace.”

As he wished? Nearly all his life, everything had existed outside of his control. Having inherited a dukedom had only dropped another noose upon his neck.

Nay, it had never been about his wishes or dreams.

What he wanted in this particular instant, however, was to settle affairs with his man-of-affairs.

Simon made his way to his office, the one that had belonged to his father and his father before him—and stopped at the old oak panel.

His gaze went to the pair of initials crudely etched into the wood near the bottom of the door, that carving a remnant of the one happy part of his childhood: SMB and PLF.

Mayhap that was why when the housekeeper had suggested replacing the panel some years back, he’d been unable to do so.

He’d not thought of Persephone in more years than he could remember. Since his return, all the old, hated, and painful memories that dwelled in this place had come back to haunt him.

He reached for the brass door handle but stopped.

His gaze locked on his slightly quaking fingers, and he automatically curled them into sharp fists to steady that tremble.

Nausea roiled in Simon’s gut the same way now as it had all those years ago.

“ …You are going to tell your father, what?” Grady scoffed. “That I’ve been unkind to you? Have I spoken anything other than the truth when I’ve said you’re a pitiable creature with that stammer? ”

Stop , a stern voice in his head commanded. You are not the same pitiable person you were.

Steadied once more, Simon let himself inside.

With a purposiveness, he did a long, slow search of his office. The scent of leather books, from the floor-to-ceiling shelving built along both sides of the room, instantly came up to meet him. Simon inhaled deeply of the beloved smoky smell of those old volumes and found the same calming peace he always had from those pages. Books had saved him many times throughout his life, and this instance proved no exception.

At last, he let himself look at the hated figure—his man-of-affairs, Henry Grady, the same man who’d served the Broadbents since Simon’s late father first inherited the title Earl of Primly.

Simon’s guest was already seated upon one of the leather wingback chairs at the foot of the desk.

Grady came to his feet with a palpable reluctance and dropped a bow.

“Grady,” he greeted, taking a special delight in the way the other man flared his brows in surprise, followed by his mouth dropping open, then quickly closing. No doubt over Simon’s lack of stutter—that hated stammer in his speech that had earned him no friends and only ever been a source of mockery and shame.

Simon took up the chair behind the bronze-mounted Louis XV desk and studied the dark-haired man across from him.

“Your Grace,” the servant returned in his ever-familiar, always annoying nasally tones. “I understand you wished to speak with me posthaste. I trust you wish for a review of the estates.”

Grady thought he should lead this meeting. Simon shook his head wryly. Still presumptuous as ever. Nothing had changed in that regard.

Grady snapped his leather folio open and proceeded to withdraw a page from inside. “You will be pleased to learn—”

“I’m not looking for a review,” he cut in. “And I am most certainly not pleased .”

Grady started.

With a deliberateness meant to both steady himself and unnerve his opponent, Simon steepled his fingers together and stared at his man-of-affairs over the tops of them.

High color flooded the rotund fellow’s cheeks. Yes, not only that steadiness in Simon’s voice, but the frost therein would merit the other man’s surprise. If he, or anyone else, believed Simon had returned the same man he’d been when he’d left years earlier, they were destined to be disappointed with the transformation time, determination, and experience had wrought.

“Your Grace?” Grady ventured hesitantly.

Abandoning the pretense of casualness, Simon ceased the deliberate tap of his fingertips and leaned forward. “Why don’t you begin your review with an accounting of the funding for Guillaume Tell , the French-language opera in four acts by Rossini?”

Grady’s enormous Adam’s apple jumped. “Your Grace?”

“Or perhaps I should say the lack of funding for the performance?”

“It was the wisest course, you see, Your Grace,” Grady said in his ever-familiar, lofty tones that would have better served a lad’s tutor than a servant.

“The wisest course? And who is it that determines the wisest course for my funds, Grady? You? Or me?”

Grady wavered.

His man-of-affairs appeared to have belatedly registered the trouble he was in.

“Y-you?”

Simon quirked an eyebrow. “Is that a question?”

“N-No!” Grady said on a panicked rush. “Not at a-all.”

And here Simon had once thought he’d never wish another person the discomfort of that defect, only to find himself relishing the smug servant’s sudden lack of articulateness. Simon inwardly flinched at that realization, at discovering himself capable of the same ugliness he’d hated others for.

The servant yanked his gaze to the folders on his lap and proceeded to fumble through them.

All the while, he stammered explanations as to why he’d singlehandedly decided to deny funds Simon had specifically allocated for that specific sponsorship.

“Did you believe there would be no accountability? Did you believe you were free to directly override the instructions sent by your employer? By me ?” Simon’s voice emerged with a deadly calm, his cadence measured. In his head, he heard the clicking of the metronome, keeping his speech even and flowing.

“It was the wisest course, Your Grace,” Grady rebuked. “The Paris performance saw significant cuts after just three performances. It was filled with issues.”

The other man’s arrogance, combined with his chastising tones, displayed Grady’s usual pomposity that would have once set Simon to stammering.

Simon curled his lips into a hard, unforgiving smile. “Would you have me believe in my absence, in addition to a head for figures, you’ve become something of a connoisseur of the theatre?” he drawled.

“Generally, no.” Grady scrambled to the edge of his seat. “However, given my role, it behooves me to be aware of those ventures which might prove otherwise calamitous.”

“And you decided this one was calamitous ?”

Grady’s former view of his employer likely accounted for his inability to recognize a rhetorical question.

“It was fraught, filled with themes that are even dangerous , Your Grace.”

“Dangerous?”

His man-of-affairs nodded.

With a renewed display of calm, Grady closed his folders and set them down on the chair beside him. “Rossini has created quite a scandalous piece about a figure who symbolizes the struggle for political and—”

“Individual freedom,” he said, interrupting the other man. “I assure you I’m well aware of the composer, performers, and details surrounding everything from the inception to the reception.”

Unlike most lords or ladies who set themselves up as patrons of the arts and then merely attended performances to gossip and gawk, Simon had both an appreciation and understanding of the theatre that defied those superficial views.

Removing the already gleaming, wire-rimmed monocle from his nose, Grady proceeded to pull free a kerchief and clean that already flawless lens.

“Your Grace,” his man-of-affairs went on in the beleaguered tones of a tutor who’d doled out too many of the same lecture to a recalcitrant charge, “there are certainly more appropriate endeavors for you to invest your monies in.”

Simon didn’t rush to speak. Rather, he merely pressed his still steepled fingertips together. He pressed and relaxed. That soothing, rhythmic habit he’d developed and employed as a calming mechanism had served him well in battling his galling stutter. He filled his lungs with a breath and let it out slowly; that rhythmic breath helped to center him.

Grady still remembered the man Simon had been. He, along with every other man in England, recalled Simon Broadbent, the namby-pamby, stammering earl. The man all of London thought had no backbone because of his speech.

“You are, of course, correct,” Simon said coolly, and the smug servant grew an inch under that acknowledgement. “With that being true, my first, best, and wisest course is to direct my funds toward greater, more valuable investments—beginning with the position of man-of-affairs.”

Grady was already nodding and taking notes…before those words registered.

With a frown, the servant glanced up. “ Your Grace? ” he croaked.

“Your services will no longer be required.” And when the other man continued to sit there, gawking back at him, he dropped an elbow on the surface of his desk and leaned in. “Did I stutter?” he taunted when Grady remained soundless and motionless. “Let me try again: You’re sacked. Dismissed from my employment. Discharged.”

“B-but…b-but…”

Simon took mercy. “Grady, you were always loyal to the late Earl of Primly.”

Grady was over a decade older than Simon; he’d started with the former earl while Simon was at school. Behind his father’s back, Grady had been as much of a bastard to Simon as the bullies he’d had to face in school. Grady had openly bemoaned the day Simon would become the earl. It was one thing for Simon to be bullied by his peers; it was quite another to be bullied by a grown man.

Simon still to this day didn’t know why he’d kept the bastard on.

Nay, he did. He’d done so out of loyalty to his late father. Simon’s respect, devotion, and love for his late father marked the only reason he’d returned in the first place. Simon had come to appreciate, however, that he could honor his father’s legacy without employing a man who’d been a bastard to Simon through the years.

Grady must have taken Simon’s deep contemplation for a sign that he’d wavered in his decision, for hope filled the man-of-affairs’ eyes.

“I held your father in the utmost esteem. Very few would have entrusted the role of man-of-affairs to a man just out of Cambridge, and with no experience, and yet your father did, and I demonstrated with my work, and my regard and respect for the late earl, which should factor some in your decision, Your Grace.”

“There has never been a doubt as to your loyalty toward my father.” He sharpened his gaze on the man across from him. “But you were always a bastard to me.”

Grady’s face dropped.

“I want you out of this household immediately.” Simon inclined his head. “We are done here.”

An ashen, slack-jawed Grady found his legs. With stiff, slow movements, he stood. “You are making a mis—”

“Grady,” he interrupted, infusing a warning edge into his voice. “It is because of your work and loyalty to the late earl that I’ll furnish you with future references. That being said, if you utter so much as another word, you can count on leaving my employ without even that generosity.”

Grady instantly closed his mouth. His thin lips formed a harsh line under an even thinner black mustache that gave him an almost comically villainous look.

Then, with jerky movements, his former man-of-affairs grabbed for the estate papers.

“Grady,” he said, staying the servant. “Leave them. All your books belong to me.”

Fury, loathing, and outrage roiled from the depths of the other man’s eyes. Then, without a word and only a single hate-filled look, Grady turned on a stiff heel and marched from the room.

With the first break he ever recalled from an always unflappable Grady, his former man-of-affairs slammed the door hard behind him.

That thunderous bang resonated in the otherwise now quiet room.

Simon leaned back in his chair, brought his fingertips together, and tipped his lips up at the corner in a harsh grin.

If the gentlemen he’d once been jeered and bullied by expected to find the same pathetic, pitiable man he’d been, they were destined to be disappointed.

He’d returned to London to take care of business: to take a prized wife, the cherished sister of any one of his former bullies—and there were so very many to choose from. And when he’d accomplished that coup de grace, he’d leave that same lady in charge of handling his affairs in London so he could continue to live a life for himself—traveling and writing. In there, there’d be the matter of siring an heir.

And unlike before when he’d been rejected and rebuffed, he’d succeed in having whatever it was he sought or desired.

For now, Simon wasn’t the desperate, wretched earl paying court and stammering out Shakespeare’s sonnets in the hopes of currying a lady’s favor. Nay, he’d come back to London an even more powerful duke, with an even vaster fortune, and, more importantly, in full control of himself, his heart, and his voice. A voice he had been judged for since he was first learning to talk.

No, his days of diffidence and floundering for words were at an end.

For it wasn’t the Earl of Primly who’d returned to London, but rather the Duke of Greystone.