Page 40 of Til Death Duke Us Part
“Your argument kicks in your knees,” he said, twisting at the waist to look into her face as they walked. Evening shadows hid her expression. She’d been so open with him always, so damn free with every word and emotion. He could not stand to have the shadow hide her from him. He wanted to scoop her up and carry her back to the well-lit street where glowing fairy lights would show him all of her again. “Because if the dead don’t need the trees, they don’t need grave work.”
“You miss my point, your grace.”
Oh, he was in trouble now. She’d started calling him Victor after their second physical escapade, and now she was your gracing him. She fairly boiled over with outrage. “And what is your point, Sephy?”
“That cemeteries are designed with love. Those who are left behind need to know that those they love are comfortable. The trees, the grave work… even if you do not believe in an afterlife, heaven or hell, or ghosts, you must believe in the living human heart. And it needs these things even if the dead do not. So yes, the cemetery is beautiful.” She stopped beneath a tree and sat primly, back needle straight, skirts puffing up about her folded legs. “And I cannot believe I’m going to help you chip away at that. Think of the widows, Victor. The ones who will show up to mourn and find their husband’s grave work gone. The husband might never know, but she will. And her heart will break.”
His heart did something odd. Stuttered. Tripped. Felt, actually, like an old rusty chain had somehow slipped about it and was squeezing tightly. He rubbed his chest and sat next to her, leaning against the tree and stretching his legs out in front of him.
They sat in silence, watching darkness settle over the world like a child’s blanket, pulled up to the very nose, only the eyes peeping out.
When Persephone was only a warm silhouette by his side, he said, “Do you believe in ghosts?”
She laughed. “Yes, I believe I do.”
“I suppose I should take your word for it. You’ve spent much time in places like this.”
“I sense an objection on the tip of your tongue.”
“Yes, but I can’t quite articulate it.”
“I think what’s there is fear,” she said. “You do not want to believe in ghosts because you know that after tonight, they’ll haunt you terribly for what you’ve done.”
“What about you? Will they haunt you too?” He winced. Bad idea to remind her she was here against her will.
She stood and brushed her skirts off, then she strode away from the trees and stood in the middle of the cemetery, looking up at the pale moon.
He joined her, that rusty chain squeezing his heart again. She was ethereal in the moonlight, her face shining and her hair a wild mass of untamable curls atop her head, the very edges of which seemed to glint silver.
Take her back to the hotel. Lay her on the bed. Make love to her. Forget everything else.
Mad ideas. Tempting, too. Too bad he couldn’t give in.
He took her hand. It was cold, and he wanted to chafe it warm, to cup it and blow warm air into the little nest he’d make for it between his hands.
He only squeezed it, though, and as footsteps entered the cemetery behind them—mourners come the only time they could, when they weren’t laboring—he said, “Which way to the alchemist vaults.”
The words were wrong. Entirely wrong for a beautiful woman beneath a moon, a woman who stirred him and challenged him and who was like a little ball of fire hurtling through the atmosphere to spark alive that now tormented organ inside his chest. But they were the only words he could say.
She pulled her hand out of his and watched the silhouette of a stooped woman walking through the graves. The woman hummed, a tune low and sad.
Persephone turned away from the moon and laid her palm on Victor’s chest. “No.”
Such a vague little response. Not a clear answer to his request—where are the vaults? But he knew her meaning anyway.
“You have to,” he said, the words so very difficult to push through his throat.
“I do not have to. I came along only to watch over souls living and dead, to save them from you. Then I realized your soul needed saving too. And I tried—” The words crashed to a halt, became a little helpless cry. She inhaled, exhaled, and in the moonlight, he saw her lick her lips. “I tried,” she said, steadier this time, “to convince you, to help you see there are other ways. But you’re too damn stubborn. I should know better than to try and fix a man.”
He stepped away from her, leaving her palm hanging in the air for a moment before her arm dropped heavy to her side. He felt heavy everywhere. Especially in his chest. “What do you want of me, Persephone? To live as you do? In squalor? Always hungry, always worried, often sick? I cannot. I have people to care for, a legacy to rebuild. And damn it, you don’t have to live that way, either!” He didn’t want her to live that way. The idea of her returning to that rickety, crowded, loud building with paper-thin walls and sagging ceilings—he shivered. He’d rather… he’d rather… hell, hard to know, but he’d rather anything other than that.
“No.” She took off for the entrance.
He stomped after her. “Persephone!”
She swung around, arm thrown out to stop him. Her palm hit his chest again, and he flinched to catch it, to press it more firmly against him and keep it there, but she took it back immediately and hissed, “Keep your voice down. This place is not about you, your grace. Hell!” She threw her hands up, spun in a circle. “Most do not choose the life I live, but I did.”
“What?”
