Page 170 of The Good Duke
“You said you were looking for me.” Persephone gripped the sides of her skirts. “Was there something you needed me to see to, Simon?”
“I also said I wished to know what you are thinking, and yet here I am still awaiting an answer as to what has you all alone outside, lost in your thoughts,” he said wryly.
“I’m just…”Mourning what cannot be. Envying another woman. Wallowing in grief with the potency she’d only ever known once: at her father’s death.
Simon peered more intently at her, and she did something she’d sworn never to do to him—she lied.
“I’m just taking a moment in the quiet to go through, one more time, the details for tonight’s dinner party, Simon.”
His opaque gaze revealed nothing of what he thought, or whether he believed or didn’t believe that fib.
“I wanted to speak to you before the guests arrive.”
“Which should be soon,” she pointed out, heading toward him.
“Which doesn’t matter, Seph.”
The quiet but firm insistence in his voice reached Persephone.
She stepped closer and, when only a pace separated them, she stopped.
Wordlessly, Simon reached behind him and held out a thick envelope and an even thicker folio.
Puzzling her brow, Persephone glanced from Simon to the items in his hand and then back again to Simon.
“What is this?” she asked.
Only, he’d folded his now empty palms behind him once more and gave all his attention to the smattering of stars that twinkled overhead.
“Do you know, Seph”—as he spoke, Simon didn’t take his eyes from the sky—“when I left London, I didn’t miss thisgreatcity at all. With every place I traveled to, and the ships I sailed on, I noticed things I likely wouldn’t have had I let myself be trapped in London.”
Trapped.
Her stomach muscles seized.
With his pensive musings about the sights he’d seen and his longing to leave England, they’d come full circle. That yearning, after all, was the very reason he’d sought a suitable duchess in the first place.
Persephone’s love for him made it possible to ask questions which would only further hurt.
“What did you discover?”
Blinking like he’d been oblivious to her presence until now, Simon glanced at Persephone.
“I realized, Seph,” he murmured, “how beautiful it was to stare up at a star-filled sky and view the moon in all its bright glory, radiating light upon the earth.”
He took a step and eliminated the rest of the distance between them. “When I returned to London, all I wanted was to leave as quickly as possible.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I want you to have whatever you—”
Simon touched a finger to her lips. “But then, with you here, you opened my eyes to the fact that everything I loved, the pure skies and the green hills, were here in England after all. Not here in London, but with you in the English countryside, Seph.”
Her breath caught and, with her heart and mind racing at a dizzying speed, she tried to make sense of what he was saying.
Simon palmed either side of her cheeks. “What I’m saying, Persephone,” he said, his tender gaze locked with hers, “is that I wantyou. I love you.”
I love you.
Frozen in the garden where Persephone consecrated her love for Simon, the echo of his vow lingered in the nighttime still.
