Page 182 of The Good Duke
Reeling, Persephone took a step and stopped. She took another.
All these years, she’d believed Silas a blackguard who’d seduced her and betrayed her. She’d spent a lifetime loathing him. Instead, the truth had been she and Silas had both been victims of his father’s machinations.
Persephone turned and found him peering at her from under hooded lashes.
Hugging herself around the middle, she rubbed at her chilled arms. “At no point did you think to share any of the threats looming over us with me?”
He scoffed. “Persephone,” he spoke to her the way he might a child, “what was there to have talked about? You were even more powerless than I.”
She hid a wry grin. “Of course, you are correct.”
Time had leant an arrogance to Silas that hadn’t been there before.
Unlike Simon, who saw Persephone as a partner and equal in discussions, decisions, and life, Silas had decided he knew what was best for both of them and the best way to handle his father’s machinations.
“I knew there’d come a time when we’d meet again. I was always going to come for you, Persephone. You were destined to be my marchioness.”
Ice descended over his eyes so quickly, she shivered at the speed and ease of that transition from hurting lover to flinty lord.
But for the trickling of the watering fountain and the chirp of crickets, silence hung in the aftermath of Silas’s telling.
Persephone stared at Silas, her first and former love.
She heard the words he’d spoken.
That day his father, the former Marquess of Bute, sent Persephone away had all been…a lie.
“Everything I ever said to you, every vow I made, Persephone, was true,” he said huskily. He took a lazy, languid step closer. “I’d have you trust that. I’d have youknowthat. You were meant to be mine.”
Before she knew what he intended, Silas slipped an arm around her waist.
Persephone gasped, but that exhalation of shock and indignation was lost to his kiss.
He stunk of too much brandy, and maybe too many spirits accounted for this boldness.
She opened her mouth to chastise him, but he slipped his tongue inside, drowning out that sound.
Instead, as she pressed her palms against his chest and made to shove him, other sounds, gasps, and cries filled the gardens.
Silas released her so quickly that she stumbled and struggled to catch herself.
Her stomach churning, Persephone glanced to the exit she’d eyed and should have taken minutes ago. Now, that doorway was filled with a sea of onlookers—a gleeful Lady Jersey, a stunned Lady Isabelle, and Simon—stricken as she’d never seen him.
She whipped her gaze over to find Silas wearing a faint, triumphant smile.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
He’d succeeded where he’d failed years ago—Silas had managed to ruin her.
Chapter 34
The thing about truly knowing someone is that even with the length of a darkened garden between them and not a single word spoken, one could tell that other person’s thoughts.
Simon’s initial shock of finding Persephone in Bute’s arms faded the moment he truly clapped eyes upon her, and he identified the horror, fury, and anguish etched in each plane of Persephone’s flushed cheeks.
Simon seethed.
Bute, having proved a bastard to Persephone long before this, had set out tonight with intentions of ruining her.
