Page 71 of The Good Duke
There came another quiet, but this time more tentative, rapping. He must have unnerved her at their last meeting.
Except, a voice in his head mocked.Did you forget she’d promised to hand deliver his bride.
Surely, she’d been jesting. Surely, she hadn’t disappeared only to return with a young woman for him to consider as his future duchess.
The pencil slipped from his fingers, and swallowing wildly, Simon stood on suddenly uneven legs. His muscles went taut, and his shoulders ached from the steel he infused into his spine.
“E-Enter,” he managed to call.
With an agonizing and infinite slowness, the panel was drawn open revealing—
Simon cocked his head.
“Lord Pruitt,” his butler, Bouchard, announced.
Simon sharpened his eyes, not on the loyal servant, but the grinning gentleman alongside him—Pruitt.
It’d beenthisgadfly who, with hisbrilliantplan, brought all this trouble and disruption to Simon’s now wretched existence.
Granted, Simon knew Persephone often better than he knew himself. As a girl, she’d been endlessly fascinating and hilarious, and well, that’d all only redoubled since she’d grown into a woman.
As such, he really had no one else but himself to blame. In this particular moment, however, he welcomed an alternate target whom Simon could put his frustration on.
“You,” Simon seethed.
“It is lovely to see youtoo, old chum.”
Without so much as a bow, Simon dropped into his seat. “Lovelyindeed.”
In a display of patently false contemplation, Pruitt caught his chin between his thumb and forefinger and rubbed. “Bouchard, is it me, or does His Grace’s response seem to be dripping with sarcasm?”
“More like oozing it, my lord.”
Pruitt laughed.
Simon glared.
And if Bouchard hadn’t been a devoted servant in his family’s employ for years, Simon would have sacked him for that insolence.
Alas, it’d always been impossible to be angry with the always-cheerful servant.
Bouchard seemed to catch Simon’s expression, for he schooled his features. “I indicated you were not accepting visitors but…” Without any discreetness, the servant tipped his head Pruitt’s way.
Simon appreciated the older man’s attempt.
“Worry not, Bouchard.” He leveled another glower on an absolutely shameless Pruitt. “Pruitt is the problem here.”
Best friend and butler exchanged less than discreet winks, and then, with an ease befitting the master of the household, Pruitt dismissed Bouchard.
The moment he’d gone, Simon snapped.
“Don’t go ordering my servants about, Pruitt.”
“My, my.Someoneis in a foul temper.”
“Me,” Simon said between tightly clenched teeth. “I’mthe one.”
Pruitt sauntered over. “It was a rhetorical observation.”
