Page 14 of The Good Duke
Ignoring her, Persephone came to her feet once more. “I was sacked.”
Gracie took her hand. “It was—”
“The penis,” Agatha supplied, earning a glare from Gracie.
Agatha returned the dark look. “What? It was. Persephone’s drawing of the penis. A penis has never brought a woman anything but trouble,” she muttered with a frustrated shake of her head.
“I was going to say it was Lady Claire.”
“We are saying the same thing, Gracie. Claire took Persephone’s nude drawing, but all that truly matters now is that Persephone has no employment, no place to go, no family, and—”
“This isn’t helping,” Persephone said weakly.
Thankfully, both women went quiet—for a moment.
“Are there any friends who might take you in?” Agatha asked quietly.
“Friends?” she managed her first laugh of the day.
“Ones you had before you came here?” she clarified.
No, they were the only ones. As a girl, she’d been an oddity with the village children. None had known what to make of her, so they’d made nothing of any relationship with her instead.
That was…but for…one.
Persephone froze.
One who then and, according to the papers she’d read over the years,stilladhered to a strict and…predictableschedule. A schedule that also meant a vacant household in London while he returned to the country for…lordly affairs.
She sat up straighter.
“What is it?” Gracie asked.
Persephone’s mind raced.
He wasn’t really a friend, per se. When they’d last seen one another, she’d been responsible for his great shame, and then there had been all the vicious, hateful things her father had said of him.
But then friendships never really died. Not truly. It was why she’d kept abreast of all mention of him through the years. Why, when gossip columns were given to the dragons with the sole purpose of learning about members of theton, she’d scoured and searched for information on just one person. And it was also why she’d clipped out all the mentions of his name until she’d stopped because it’d struck her how pitiful she was following the goings-on of a long-ago friend who’d never made an attempt to either speak to Persephone or write to her.
But a friend was a friend was a friend.
“Persephone?” Gracie asked hesitantly.
Shaken from her musings, Persephone looked at the two women staring concernedly at her, and a slow smile turned her lips up.
“I…might have somewhere to go after all.”
Chapter 2
For 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.
