Page 165 of The Good Duke
A laugh burst from his chest. “Not those ones, Seph.” He tenderly stroked her beautiful and beloved face. “I’ll allow those ones.”
They shared a smile.
Simon grew somber once more.
He registered the faint rattle of carriage wheels and ignored their distant rumble. His gaze remained locked, fixed and focused on his friend and lover, and a long overdue profession.
It’d been a lifetime. He’d finally say what he’d wanted andneededto say but had been too much a coward to utter—until now.
He took in a deep breath. “Persephone, I l—”
Persephone’s eyes went wide. All the color leeched from her cheeks, and her always healthy-hued skin turned to the color of death.
The speech he’d spent the better part of forever formulating flew out of Simon’s head.
The horror in Persephone’s face sent his gut churning; all his stomach muscles clenched in a painful, unrelenting knot.
Of a sudden, his cravat grew too tight, and Simon wrestled with the fabric—his efforts proved in vain. “Th-that is t-to say,” he croaked. Simon cleared his throat. “What I’m trying to s-say…”
By Persephone’s absolute detachment from the moment, he could have announced he’d been made the new King of England, and she wouldn’t have heard.
Frowning, he followed her gaze to a slow-moving, cerulean-blue barouche now ambling into the rear courtyard.
All his own insecurities vanished in an instant.
Fuck.
Madam Colette had warned she kept a strict schedule and required her highest-paying noble clients to honor the timeline she set to preserve the privacy of those gentlemen. In remaining here, talking with Persephone as he’d done, he’d inadvertently set Persephone up in the worst possible way.
“Come,” Simon said gruffly, even though he knew it was too late.
That she and Simon had been caught in the back entrance of Madam Colette’s—the place only entered and exited by a gentleman and his mistress.
Persephone remained fixed, her previous joy-filled expression fraught with shock and horror.
“I promise,” he said quietly. “It will be all right.”
If need be, he’d burn down every corner of London to keep anyone from whispering.
Stricken, Persephone didn’t hear him. For how silent and motionless she’d gone, she may as well have looked into the eyes of the serpent-headed Medusa.
“Seph,” he implored as the conveyance drew several yards from Simon’s. “Let’s leave this…”Place.
His words trailed off as he followed Persephone’s unblinking gaze to the opulent carriage that rolled to a stop near Simon’s.
The exquisitely and uniquely painted conveyance would have been enough to catch any person’s attention, but it was not, however, that grand horse-drawn vehicle, but rather the seal upon it that drew Simon’s gaze.
Afamiliarseal—one Simon knew all too well.
And with dawning horror, and in a moment that somehow seemed to move infinitely slow and dizzyingly fast, Simon stared on as that shiny blue door was opened, and the gentleman stepped out.
The very last gentleman Simon wished to see in his goddamned life.
And possibly the only man Persephone wanted to.
The Marquess of Bute stepped down from that magnificent carriage. The gentleman reached up and handed down a statuesque, scandalously clad brunette beauty.
Lord Bute turned and froze.
