Page 40 of The Good Duke
How she hated that he’d always doubted his worth, just as much as she despised the wall he’d built up in their years apart.
Persephone took a step closer to him. “You were always perfect tome,” she spoke with a quiet insistence.
“You’ve not lost your rose-colored outlook,” he drawled. “How charming to find life never jaded you, Persephone Forsyth.”
Life had been, to quote Simon’s beloved Shakespeare, the son and heir of a mongrel bitch to Persephone. And had Simon bore a hint of her friend of old, mayhap she would have shared all the ways in which her life hadn’t beenrose-colored.
Simon set his decanter down and retained his hold on his newly filled cognac. “I trust you’ve not come all this way from…?”
“Leeds,” she supplied.
“To discuss spirits and tea tables and my stammer.”
“No.”
He stared at her. “And,” he went on, placing an emphasis on that single syllable, “I trust you are going to explain how it is you came to be in my bedchamber?”
“Yes, well, that was a mistake. I’d sought a place inside your household and happened to stumble upon your rooms, and—”
“Miss Forsyth,” he said warningly.
Persephone pressed her lips into a firm line. Must he use that proper form of address? It made things…well, proper, and formal, and it was hard enough coming to a friend one hadn’t seen in twenty years. It was impossible to be made to beg that same friend for a favor.
“I am in need of assistance,” she finally brought herself to admit. “I am without employment and without references—”
“And you expect I should employ you.”
She pursed her mouth. “I’m not so hubristic as to have expectations of what you should or should not do. Given the nature of our last meeting, that would be a bold expectation on my part.”
“Indeed. I trust it isn’t every day a prospective employee puts an appeal in the master’s bedchamber while the prospective employer is bathing.”
“I referred to our last meeting in Cheshire.”
He just stared at her.
“When our fathers fought—”
“I recall our last meeting,” he said tightly, and then said nothing more.
Persephone filled the gap of quiet. “It’s just you mixed up that meeting with our reunion a short while ago, and as such, it isn’t entirely clear you did, in fact, recall.”
“I did, and I do.”
“You’re c—”
“Very certain.”
He continued to assess her. This time, Persephone didn’t make any attempt to speak into the silence. She remained still and unspeaking through his scrutiny. In fairness, her inability to talk came from this new, unwelcome awareness of him as a man.
As if to taunt and torment her for this unholy realization of him, Simon hooded his eyes and stared at her under impossibly long golden lashes.
“You need work,” he murmured, more to himself. “Which begs the question, what manner of services do you think you might provide me, Persephone?”
And all the wild butterflies he’d set free in her belly with a mere flutter of his lashes vanished.
Now, he’d use her Christian name.Now, when he was being all rakish and seductive.
Persephone flattened her lips.
