Page 3 of The Good Duke
For the first time since Simon and Persephone had been discovered at the shore of the lake by her father, Simon noted details that had previously escaped him: her enormous brown eyes were ravaged. Her well-formed lips were tense and white at the corners.
Then, through his own panic and misery, it hit Simon—she is afraid.
His intrepid, ebullient friend, whom Simon had never before seen shaken by anything, now sat on the edge of tears.
“It is…fine, S-Seph.” It was often hard getting his words out, but nervousness made talking impossible. Never with this girl. That wasbefore. Now,everythinghad changed.
He managed a smile for her benefit, and she brightened. Her earlier worry faded so quick, he thought he may as well have imagined those signs of misery.
Persephone went back to her work, and Simon returned his attention to the still volatile exchange between their fathers.
“How dare you?” Simon’s father shouted. “My boy isn’t an abomination.” There came a hard thump as the earl’s fist struck some wood surface.
“Isn’t he, Melvin?Isn’t he?”
While the pair went on to violently debate the state of Simon’s normality, Simon stole a glance at the oak longcase clock nearby.
“…he is a deviant!”
Eighteen minutes.
He’d now endured eighteen interminable minutes of being called every last insult by the previously always jovial, kindly Mr. Forsyth.
The scratch of Persephone’s pencil upon her page fell in discordant time to the ticking of the Thomas Crawshaw clock.
Simon’s gaze slid away from the Roman numerals upon the exquisitely decorated round dial and up to the swan’s neck pediment that protruded like Satan’s horns—taunting Simon. Mocking him.
What have I done?
There was certainly no going back from everything each gentleman now hurled about one another’s child.
“…it begs the question, what other scandalous behaviors have you allowed that son of yours to get away with? And here I thought he was perfectly harmless. All the while, I let my daughter be alone with him.”
Simon looked at the clock again.Twenty minutes.
Make thattwentyminutes of this fresh hell.
“You have the audacity to callmyson scandalous? Have you evenmetyour daughter?”
Mr. Forsyth sputtered. “There is absolutelynothingwrong with my daughter.”
And Simon agreed wholeheartedly with the gentleman. She had a curious mind and wished to know everything…and oftendid.
His father, however, who’d even engaged Persephone in scientific discussions, was of an altogether differing opinion on this day.
“No, there is nothing wrong with her. There iseverythingwrong with her.” The earl raised his voice to make himself heard over the other man’s outcry. “She is a shameful, wicked creature without any hope for a respectable future. No man will ever have her.”
Simon winced and stole a sideways glance at the current recipient of the wrath from the other side of that door.
And it had long been the reason why he’d been endlessly fascinated by Persephone Forsyth.
Unlike the earlier horror and hurt that had wreathed Persephone’s features when Mr. Forsyth had been insulting him, she gave no indication that she so much as heard his father’s own hate-filled words about her. No, Persephone remained intently focused. With her head bent over her heavily marked up sketchbook, she meticulously completed her rendering of—
Simon’s entire body went hot, and he looked away from the drawing—the subject of which had found them here and on the cusp of losing their special friendship.
Moisture popped up on his brow, and his gaze inadvertently went to the ornate Louis XV frame fixed upon the painted plaster wall directly opposite Simon.
His late mother’s softly smiling visage stared benevolently back. Aside from his father and Persephone, the only other person to have loved Simon and seen him different than the flawed figure mocked by all had been his mother.
