Page 24 of The Good Duke
His grin widened. “Do you prefermy dear?”
“Only when my father referred to me thusly,” she muttered.
He laughed. “Love it is, then.”
Then it hit her like the weight of a brick wall.
Persephone recoiled.
“Love?” he asked concernedly.
“Love. My dear.Sweet?” she repeated weakly and to herself.
Not: Persephone. Not: Seph. Not: Miss Forsyth. Because he’d absolutely no idea who she was.
Are you surprised?She shouldn’t be. Noblemen hardly remembered the girls they’d been friends with as children.
And yet, even knowing that, neither could Persephone tamp down the swell of disappointment that crested in her breast.
“It has been many years,” she whispered. “Though I didn’t think you’d forget me altogether,” she added that last part for herself.
After all, she’d not forgotten him.
Simon continued to stare blankly at her. “Do I know you?” he urged in a slightly desperate but still very even voice.
Sighing, she took mercy on him. “Simon, it is me,Seph.”
Chapter 5
Simon sat conversing…in his bathtub.
Though, in fairness, it wasn’t really conversing, as the dark-haired woman standing beside his tub was content to fill every last corner where silence existed.
As a boy, the village boys had mocked Simon for his struggle with speaking. He’d been so very glad of the day when he’d go to Eton and start a new beginning…only to find the boys there were bigger, meaner, and even more vicious because of his stutter. Oftentimes, he found himself the victim of horrible jests. With time’s passage, the meanness had become more subtle, but so had Simon’s visibility amongst most of the world.
He glanced around, certain that he’d somehow again found himself the subject of some cruel game played by some bored lord.
In the years he’d been traveling, Simon had done, witnessed, and heard all number of scandalous things.
He’d believed himself incapable of ever being properly shocked again.
He’d been wrong.
He’d been so very wrong.
Simon, it is me, Seph.
For, of all the women who could have broken into his house and invaded his room while he bathed, this woman was none other than Persephone Forsyth—his one andonlychildhood friend.
It was as if when he’d seen her initials carved upon the office door, he’d conjured her back from…wherever it was she’d been all these many years.
Persephone, whom he’d not seen since he’d been indecent before her.
Not unlike the way he found himselfnow.
Shock brought him repelling back in his tub. Sudsy water splashed all over the sides, hitting both the hardwood floor and the skirts of the woman standing over his bath.
Nay, not just any woman.
