Page 50 of The Good Duke
The lout.
And just like that, Persephone found herself steadied by this bumptious version of her former friend.
Tipping her chin up a notch, she boldly held his stare.
Persephone found herself saved by the servant. The liveried footman said something, commanding Simon’s full attention.
Releasing the curtain, Persephone quit her spot at the window and wandered over to the mahogany side table, where her frayed and aged valises had been deposited the night prior.
The thing of it was, despite her annoyance and regret at the changes time had wrought upon Simon, she did still need him. And she hated that she needed him. She hated that she needed anyone. She hated that since her father’s death, she’d come to realize just how precarious a woman’s lot was, and how very much she—and all women—were reliant upon the charity and goodwill of those who had more power than her—which she’d swiftly learned was, in fact, anyone and everyone.
Absently, she withdrew an ancient, well-loved one of her sketch pads. She caressed her palm over the faded leather cover, and then over the spine with its binding which had begun to unravel.
Persephone hesitated a moment and then headed for the borrowed bed she’d neatly tidied herself upon waking.
She perched herself on the edge of the soft feather mattress—a mattress far more comfortable than any she’d known in her life, including the one she’d slept on during her childhood—and rested the old sketch pad on her lap.
Persephone stared down at it a moment, and then, mindful of the age and specialness of the book, she opened the cover.
Her gaze immediately found the also-faded signature at the front center page. A wistful smile pulled at her lips as she recalled so very seriously penning her official name to signify the importance of the book and the works it contained.
She turned the page, revealing her first sketch. Even with the crude rendering, she could make out the unmistakable form of a honeybee. She continued on to the next, and the next. As the pages went, the skillset of the child-artist improved.
And then she stopped.
Persephone stared at her first attempt at drawings of those in human form.
Simon lay sprawled on the green grass of Frankton Hill’s highest peak. He stared up at the one doing his rendering—her; he’d been staring up at Persephone with the shyest of smiles.
A memory slipped in.
“I don’t want to have my likeness rendered.”
“And why not, Simon?”
“No one wants a drawing of me.”
“I do…”
I do…I do…I do…
Her quiet, somber assurance echoed around in the chambers of her mind, those words as fresh as if she’d just spoken them into existence now, and not some twenty-three or so years ago.
Persephone continued to stare unblinkingly at Simon’s likeness.
He’d been so very timid and uncertain, and so very different than the man he’d grown into. Nay, he’d become a man who know his worth and wealth and rank and was confident in his own skin.
Funny that she’d always urged him to have more confidence. She’d reminded him over and over again of his worth.
She’d wanted those changes for him because no person should go through life feeling inadequate and unworthy in any way.
She just hadn’t expected that transformation would also see him as cynical and…shuttered.
Rap-rap-rap.
That quiet, efficient knocking brought her head up.
“Just a moment,” she called.
