Page 118 of The Good Duke
Relief so profound smoothed the tensed lines of his gloriously chiseled face, and he couldn’t have hurt her more had he punched her square in the solar plexus.
“Friends?” he asked quietly.
Persephone made herself smile. “Forever.”
Simon’s gaze lingered on her mouth, and a flash of something very close to desire sparked in their mesmerizing blue depths.
No. You’re just seeing what you want to see, Persephone.Where gentlemen were concerned, she’dalwaysseen what she’d wished to.
First, Silas.
Now, Simon.
“Now, come, silly,” she managed to tease from a place she knew not where. “Let us go meet your Lady Issy-belle.” She briefly tripped over that name.
Before he could say anything more that might break her heart, Persephone pressed the door handle, turned Astrid over to the waiting servant, and exited the carriage.
And Persephone, with Simon following at a slower pace behind her, moved on from one misery and braced for the next, impending one.
Chapter 22
Persephone entered Hyde Park at such a clip, Simon was forced to lengthen his already long strides to come anywhere near reaching her.
The moment the lady exited his carriage, she’d bolted so fast, Simon thought she intended to take flight, keep running, and never look back.
And for a very, very long moment,Simon, moments away from meeting and accompanying Lady Isabelle on an afternoon walk, wanted to fly off after Seph. Nor did this jittery urgency to bolt have anything to do with nerves or now—for the most part—buried insecurities. Or even unease at the public scrutiny he’d receive courting London’s most coveted Diamond of the Season. Or, for that matter, the sense of inferiority he’d always suffered during the courtship process.
He stared regretfully after Persephone. These past weeks, it’d been just the two of them in the world, and it’d felt so very good to be with the one person who’d always managed to make him laugh and insist he see his own self-worth.
Now with him set to meet Lady Isabelle and her brother, the Marquess of Bute, finality hung in the warm, fragrant spring air—a hint of something ending and something beginning.
Simon’s hands balled reflexively at his sides.
Just then his turbulent thoughts were interrupted.
Persephone stumbled a step.
Simon broke out into a run to get to her, but in an instant, an ever-graceful Persephone righted herself and resumed walking.
Several passersby cast curious looks his way, and Simon forced himself to slow his frantic pace. He kept his icy gaze on a vague point in the distance.
Give the gawking pedestrians something to talk about, and they’d swarm like sharks on an injured dolphin. An attitude of indifference, however, sent those mercenary predators swimming elsewhere for a taste of blood.
Simon flexed his jaw.
Not that he gave two shites what anyone said or had to say about him. He’d weathered it all. For that matter, now that Simon found himself in possession of a dukedom, he could duel a fellow in the middle of Mayfair, and his title was enough to protect him.
No, it wasn’t himself he worried about. Rather, he’d not bring any attention to Persephone that might be detrimental to her aspirations here in London.
He’d courted more women than he cared to admit, and not one amongst that ridiculously large number had been capable of all Persephone had managed to do as a young woman. She’d found respectable employment, supported herself, and faced any number of threats, but had become stronger for all she’d done in their time apart.
Simon looked upon her with a new, deeper, and greater appreciation.
Sunlight streamed from the hot sun overhead and cast an otherworldly glow about her, one that held him entranced. Attired in a pale cream walking dress embroidered with pink and red roses, as she was, Persephone had the look of a woman who, with the power of Helios’s light, had sprung from the soil.
And that same earth teetered under Simon’s feet and knocked him off-balance. For in this moment, Persephone Forsyth held him…spellbound.
The laughter and chatter of other visitors to Hyde Park and the echo of horse’s hooves grew distant and muffled in his mind so that the world around him tunneled away, and only he and Persephone dwelled in this luminous plain.
