Page 141 of The Good Duke
Simon dragged a hand through his hair. “I-I regret all of it, Seph.”
His stammer indicated Simon’s level of upset. Persephone, however, didn’t intend to sit here and assuage his guilty conscience.
Persephone angled her body slightly toward Simon. “If you want me to say how you’ve spoken to me and how you’ve treated me is all right, then you are wasting your time. We’ve done all this already, Simon,” she said tiredly. “You insult me, making me feel awful, you regret your behavior, and then act like you hate me all over again.”
For too long, she’d held her tongue. She’d not spoken with Simon about her past. She’d not called Simon out for things she absolutely should have. All of it stopped tonight.
Maybe if she’d not kept secrets from Simon from the start, they wouldn’t be in this place where they found themselves now. Or maybe they would have, and this contentious state was just how they’d been destined to end up.
Either way, he deserved the truth because her secrets could—and would—impact him and all he held dear.
Funny how hard it was for words to come when, with this man, it’d always been as natural as breathing.
Persephone rested her cheek upon her lap so she could stare at him. “It used to be so easy to talk to you,” she mused. “There was nothing I could not speak with you about.”I wish it could still be that way.
Persephone hadn’t been honest with Simon, and given he’d offered her employment, security, and future references, it was the least of what she owed him. Instead, she’d allowed the ghosts of her past and the secrets she carried to be an impediment between them.
Now, however, her past threatened his future, and she could not be the cause of Simon not having that which he most wanted in life.
“I didn’t want to leave,” she began hesitantly. Unable to look upon him for this part she’d share, Persephone returned her attention to the moon’s shadow.
As she spoke, she felt Simon’s eyes upon her.
“Earlier, when I asked for my references. I wasn’t completely truthful with you.” Her lips pulled in a grimace. “In fact, I haven’t been at all forthright, Simon.”
He sat in silence and patiently waited, just as he’d always done—and been—when she confided in him.
Before her courage deserted her, Persephone continued speaking. “I mentioned my previous years of employment, and…my employers—”
“The handsy ones,” he interrupted, his tone sharp with such fury and affront that she fought the urge to cry.
It’d been forever since anyone had been angry on her behalf.
“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “There were those. But they weren’t all handsy. Some of them were respectable and polite.” She paused. “One…was a gentleman.”
Simon stilled.
One was a gentleman.
Simon’s heart thudded at a slow, sickening beat.
Persephone’s revelation hung on the night air.
The one.
She’d made but one vague mention of a single lover and never spoke again about it. Instead, Simon had been left haunted, made to wonder about who that man had been. Now, it appeared Persephone intended to share those parts of her story that’d unfolded in their time apart.
“Do y-you want to talk about i-it?” he ventured, as he immediately found himself transported to the stuttering boy of his past.
Persephone laughed. “No.”
The heartbreak contained within that pain-filled laugh threatened to cut him open.
“Do I want to?” she grimaced. “No. Do I need to…?”
“Persephone,” he said, shifting closer. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to share.”
And Simon knew it was the coward within him that gave Persephone an out.
