Page 107 of The Good Duke
Ah. Separated from one’s brother. That invariably indicated over the years, some governess, somewhere had been run roughshod over.
Now, there existed the matter of finding saidnegligentbrother.
“We will be all too happy to help you locate him, my lady,” Persephone assured. “Isn’t that right, S—Your Grace?” she caught herself before completing that slip-up.
Lady Isabelle beamed. “That would be most gracious of you, Your Grace.”
As if it’d beenSimonwho’d tendered that offer.
Persephone flattened her lips.
The young lady looked to a spot beyond Simon’s shoulder and brightened. “Alas, there will be no need. I am happy to say my brother has found me.”
Thank the Lord in Heaven. Someone had come to retrieve the girl.
Lady Isabelle raised her hand in an exuberant, happy wave that could not be feigned and bespoke a tenderness for the man charged with her care.
Persephone followed the girl’s gaze to the avenging figure who’d once and for all end this blasted meeting.
But Persephone’s unforgivable happiness at being free of the young woman and alone once more with Simon died a swift death.
A buzzing filled Persephone’s ears. Her body went first hot and then cold. Moisture slicked her palms.
No. It cannot be.
There’d been a time when she’d imagine him wherever she’d went, that smile, those eyes, that beautiful laugh. His laugh had bewitched and been that which she’d fallen in love with first about him.
She blinked slowly, so very certain that with an eventual flutter of her lashes, the sight of him would change to some chap who only resembled him.
But he continued coming.
His piercing gaze as solemn as she’d never before seen it, fixed squarely on Persephone. His hard lips did not turn up in that devastating rogue’s smile he’d always worn when she’d entered a room or when he’d come in search of her.
There came no resonant echo of his deep chuckle, one so deep that when she’d lain, draped over him and naked in his arms, her body had shaken.
It’d taken her a lifetime to bury all thoughts of him. Only to find him resurrected from the ashes of her long-ago pain.
At last, he stood before her, as real and in the flesh as when they’d shared a roof, back when she’d been companion to his younger sister—oneof his younger sisters.
From beside them came Lady Isabelle’s happy cry.
Isabelle.
Issy.
Persephone closed her eyes a moment.
At some point, the girl Persephone once played hide and seek with had become a woman—at that, a stunning one of form and face to freeze a room.
“Silas!” Lady Isabelle exclaimed. “I found you.”
Silas, formerly the Earl of Milford-Haven and now Marquess of Bute, did not take his gaze from Persephone.
“I believe it is safe to say,” he murmured, his deep baritone proving as rich and compelling as ever, “Ifoundyou.”
Chapter 20
Since departing the hothouse, Simon and Persephone had not spoken a word the entire carriage ride back from Covent Market.
