Page 42 of The Good Duke
Hope surged to life all over again, and she pressed on ahead. “Or you might think of Persephone as vital in her role of making the seasons go round, and whose circumstances were a result of those with power over her. Namely, Hades.”
Simon narrowed his eyes. “Are you likening me to Hades?”
“Given the fact I’mseekingto stay here and not as a prisoner of yours, the analogy hardly stands up.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face.
He isn’t going to help.She saw that realization in the hard lines of his features the moment he dropped his arm back to his side.
More of that hated desperation clawed at her insides, and she felt a kindred connection to her namesake, at being trapped, not by any Greek god, but rather by her circumstances.
“Miss Forsyth, the very reason I’ve come to London is so that I might get on with the business of finding a wife,” he said. The gentleness of his tone harkened back to the Simon from long ago, and yet…his stated reason for being here belonged to a stranger, some powerful noblemen she knew not at all.
“It would hardly be helpful to either of us were your presence in my household—the household of a bachelor—to be discovered. You may stay for several days until you determine a safe place to go.”
Nowhere. There was nowhere to go.
Persephone locked her gaze with Simon’s unreadable blue eyes.
“If that place existed, do you think I’d not be there, Simon, and not here with you, a man whom I’ve not seen in more thantwentyyears?” she asked icily, turning that rhetorical question on him.
He drummed his fingertips against his thigh in that way he’d always done when he was lost in thought.
At least, some things remained the same. His penchant for helping her out of a scrape, however, would have been the preferable constancy.
Suddenly, he stopped that noiseless, rhythmic tapping. “I will…see what I can do in terms of helping you secure employment.”
Persephone gasped and charged over, stopping just short of launching herself into his arms the way she’d used to do when he’d come back from Eton.
She rocked back on her heels and adopted the unmistakably cool demeanor Mrs. Belden insisted on from all her instructors. “I am grateful for any assistance you may provide.”
“In the meantime, I’ve instructed my housekeeper, Mrs. Trowbridge, to prepare guest rooms for you.”
“Mrs. Trowbridge is still here!”
That affectionate, always-smiling servant had always reserved dishes of treats for Persephone and Simon and set those sweets in the kitchen for them to snack on.
“She is.”
This time, not even a lifetime of decorum drilled into Persephone by her former employer could squelch her excitement.
She grabbed Simon’s hands in her own and squeezed them. “Thank you so much. While here, I shall be the model of propriety and good behavior.”
Except, both good behavior and propriety dictated a lady not do anything so scandalous as, say, touch a gentleman.
As if on cue, his gaze and hers dropped to their joined fingers. His hands had always been larger than hers; now they dwarfed her own, enveloping hers in a heat both welcome and dizzying.
Dizzying?
This was Simon. She didn’t go all weak-kneed for Simon.
Why, she’d had her first kiss with him. Granted she’d been a girl, but that was neither here nor there.
Let go. Remove your hands from his. Ladies do not hold hands with men.
Even with that stern lecture a voice inside silently delivered, Persephone remained caught, as ensnared as her namesake she and Simon had discussed moments ago. But this imprisonment was over her senses and brought a welcome warmth she was all too happy to surrender to.
In the end, Simon was the one to sever that connection.
