Page 62 of The Good Duke
“Persephone,” she insisted. “If I’m to be your beloved goddaughter—”
“My late parents’ goddaughter.” Good God, just like her, he now found himself obsessing over irrelevant details.
Persephone cleared her throat. “Yes, well, as I was saying, given our ruse, we should at least refer to one another by ourgivennames.”
Simon silently agreed that going forward, she’d simply be Persephone for no other reason than because it would put an end to any and all talk about names and titles and how they’d once spoken to one another.
He wiped a weary hand across his forehead. “Thisis what you’ve come to discuss?”
She shook her head and smiled serenely back.
Serene?Now,thatwas a new expression for her. Simon was instantly suspicious.
“What have you come to discuss,Persephone?” he asked, making no attempt to mask his annoyance.
She gave a happy clap of her hands. “Persephone!”
If possible, Persephone brightened all the more, with a glow to rival the sun streaming through the window and enough to knock him briefly off-balance.
She patted him on the shoulder. “Now, that wasn’t so difficult. Was it?”
“Persephone,” he repeated, adding a layer of warning to those four syllables that made up her name.
“Oh, yes, of course.” She motioned to a nearby seat. “May I sit?”
“I’m afraid I’m bu—”
The stalwart minx had already made her way to the chair, and while Simon stared bemusedly on, she dragged a bulky, baroque upholstered seat to the other side of his desk.
Persephone positioned herself squarely between Simon and his view out those wide bay windows.
“Please do,” he finished dryly, even as he knew sarcasm was hopeless on this one.
“As I was saying, I woke early so we might begin our work, only to learn you’d already broken your fast, gone on your morning ride, and returned.” She wrinkled her nose. “And when asked, the servants did not prove helpful in locating you.”
Because he’d given specific instructions that servants were not to report to Persephone on Simon’s whereabouts.
He’d give the lot of them a raise for their loyalty.
“I went around and around.” Persephone whirled a finger in the air, and he followed those dizzying movements before registering what he did and made himself stop. “From room to room. And finally found you, already hard at work making a list.”
“A list,” he echoed.
Apparently, no reply was required on Simon’s part, for Persephone had bowed her head and began flipping page after page in her notebook. “Ahh,” she said to herself. “Here it is.” She looked briefly up. “We were of a like mind this day.”
They’d once been of a like mind…but it’d been a lifetime ago, and he’d wager whatever time the good Lord had slated for Simon to write that they’d never again have thoughts that moved in any form of harmony.
“Now,” Persephone said, having already redirected her attention downwards, “might I suggest we compare notes… so as to see how far we are from one another?”
Good God, what was she on about?
“How far we are from one another on what,Seph?” he asked, making no attempt to disguise his bafflement.
She darted the tip of her tongue out, and Simon stilled and stared, absolutely riveted by the sight of that pink flesh as she touched it to the tip of her index finger—an act so innocuous and yet, at the same time, seductive as hell.
It shouldn’t be. Not for a man of his age and experience, and yet he couldn’t stop the flood of wanton musings that filled his mind. Thoughts of Persephone and that bold mouth of hers silenced as she took his length in her mouth. His body went hard and his blood hot.
“Simon?Simon?”
