Page 16 of The Good Duke
His gaze locked on his slightly quaking fingers, and he automatically curled them into sharp fists to steady that tremble.
Nausea roiled in Simon’s gut the same way now as it had all those years ago.
“…You are going to tell your father, what?” Grady scoffed. “That I’ve been unkind to you? Have I spoken anything other than the truth when I’ve said you’re a pitiable creature with that stammer?”
Stop, a stern voice in his head commanded.You are not the same pitiable person you were.
Steadied once more, Simon let himself inside.
With a purposiveness, he did a long, slow search of his office. The scent of leather books, from the floor-to-ceiling shelving built along both sides of the room, instantly came up to meet him. Simon inhaled deeply of the beloved smoky smell of those old volumes and found the same calming peace he always had from those pages. Books had saved him many times throughout his life, and this instance proved no exception.
At last, he let himself look at the hated figure—his man-of-affairs, Henry Grady, the same man who’d served the Broadbents since Simon’s late father first inherited the title Earl of Primly.
Simon’sguestwas already seated upon one of the leather wingback chairs at the foot of the desk.
Grady came to his feet with a palpable reluctance and dropped a bow.
“Grady,” he greeted, taking a special delight in the way the other man flared his brows in surprise, followed by his mouth dropping open, then quickly closing. No doubt over Simon’s lack of stutter—that hated stammer in his speech that had earned him no friends and only ever been a source of mockery and shame.
Simon took up the chair behind the bronze-mounted Louis XV desk and studied the dark-haired man across from him.
“Your Grace,” the servant returned in his ever-familiar, always annoying nasally tones. “I understand you wished to speak with me posthaste. I trust you wish for a review of the estates.”
Grady thought he should lead this meeting. Simon shook his head wryly. Still presumptuous as ever. Nothing had changed in that regard.
Grady snapped his leather folio open and proceeded to withdraw a page from inside. “You will be pleased to learn—”
“I’m not looking for a review,” he cut in. “And I am most certainly notpleased.”
Grady started.
With a deliberateness meant to both steady himself and unnerve his opponent, Simon steepled his fingers together and stared at his man-of-affairs over the tops of them.
High color flooded the rotund fellow’s cheeks. Yes, not only that steadiness in Simon’s voice, but the frost thereinwouldmerit the other man’s surprise. If he, or anyone else, believed Simon had returned the same man he’d been when he’d left years earlier, they were destined to be disappointed with the transformation time, determination, and experience had wrought.
“Your Grace?” Grady ventured hesitantly.
Abandoning the pretense of casualness, Simon ceased the deliberate tap of his fingertips and leaned forward. “Why don’t you begin your review with an accounting of the funding forGuillaume Tell, the French-language opera in four acts by Rossini?”
Grady’s enormous Adam’s apple jumped. “Your Grace?”
“Or perhaps I should say the lack of funding for the performance?”
“It was the wisest course, you see, Your Grace,” Grady said in his ever-familiar, lofty tones that would have better served a lad’s tutor than a servant.
“The wisest course? And who is it that determines the wisest course for my funds, Grady? You? Or me?”
Grady wavered.
His man-of-affairs appeared to have belatedly registered the trouble he was in.
“Y-you?”
Simon quirked an eyebrow. “Is that a question?”
“N-No!” Grady said on a panicked rush. “Not at a-all.”
And here Simon had once thought he’d never wish another person the discomfort of that defect, only to find himself relishing the smug servant’s sudden lack of articulateness. Simon inwardly flinched at that realization, at discovering himself capable of the same ugliness he’d hated others for.
