Page 111 of The Good Duke
Oh, hell. At every turn, he made a blunder.You’ll make her feel inferior, believing she should know the family.
“In terms of Lady Isabelle,” he quickly continued, lest Persephone feel any more self-conscious about the station difference, “given the lady’s age, we’ve not met before today.”
While Persephone scratched away at the page with her pencil, Simon did a swift tabulation. Lady Isabelle would have been in the nursery when he’d been in university.
He grimaced.
Good God.
Granted, that was the way of society. Older fellows who’d sowed their oats and tired of carousing went on to marry, and when they did, the brides to be chosen from happened to be ladies a score of years younger.
With her daintily nipped waist, pert breasts, and delicately flared hips, Lady Isabelle possessed an otherworldly golden beauty that would’ve roused envy and anger in the gods.
His eyes went back to the lady across from him.
It was just…so very easy to appreciate the bold confidence, sophisticated humor, and keen wit Persephone possessed as a mature woman—all those traits he’d never find in a simpering, doe-eyed debutante.
He stared at her bent head while she wrote.
Had life been different, had they not lost each other and their way, she would have made him the wife he’d once longed for and dreamed of.
But that boy was no more. A man had taken his place; a man who traveled and wrote and wanted to continue to see the world, and whomever he wed would need to be left behind to oversee that which Simon wouldn’t in his absence.
He wasn’t the man Seph deserved. He hadn’t been that in a long, long time. No man was worthy of her. But certainly not Simon, who wasn’t long for England and couldn’t make her the star of his universe.
Nay, that was why Simon must select a woman such as Lady Isabelle…or one just like her. There couldn’t be emotions involved; no hearts engaged; no feelings intertwined. Someone would only get hurt and he’d sooner cut his own heart out than intentionally wound Persephone Forsyth.
Regret had a taste, and it was unpleasant and acrid, and it would be with him always.
It was a moment before he registered Persephone’s fingers had ceased flying across the page and that her eyes were on him the same way his were on hers.
Even as the carriage swayed and dipped, the rest of the whole world may have ceased moving; Simon and Persephone remained locked in a transfixed frozen state.
“And?” she asked softly.
And…
“What else do you know about the family, Your Grace?” she clarified in a hushed, murmured way, so calm and so at odds with the tumult in his head and heart.
The family?
Lady Isabelle.
Of course.
“In addition to the marquess, the lady has another older brother.”
He clenched his jaw, and his teeth ground painfully together, and just like that, the visceral rage that had compelled him, the insatiable hungering for revenge against those who’d wronged him, roared to life.
All the old remembered indignity and shame swamped his maudlin thoughts of before and swallowed them whole until Simon was left with a greater resolve and reminder of what he wanted—and what he would achieve.
“Lord Lysander.”
As locked in as Simon was on the seductive thoughts of avengement, it was a moment before he registered Persephone had spoken that name aloud.
Lord Lysander, as in Lord Silas’s younger brother.
Simon gave his head a tight nod. “Lord Lysander,” he repeated for good measure. Just a year or so younger than Simon, during their university years, the other fellow had quite the time of it with the older boys making Simon miserable.
