Page 45 of Til Death Duke Us Part
“Marry her, Morington, and you can alleviate all her woes.” Smith had found his spine.
And Victor had lost his wits. Here was everything he’d been searching for, no thievery necessary: marry the girl and get the money.
“How much?” he asked, hearing himself speak as if through water. “How much are you selling your daughter for?” The notion Persephone could be sold was laughable.
“Five thousand pounds a year.” Mr. Smith sat up straighter, capable now of ignoring the evidence of his daughter’s poverty. “And that is on top of fifteen thousand pounds she would bring with her.”
“That much.” They possessed that amount of wealth to give away and still live, he presumed, as comfortably, as richly, as they ever had.
“That much.” Mrs. Smith’s head bobbed.
Marry the girl, get the money, solve all his problems. But he understood Jane a bit more now. Understood how she could defy everyone to marry a man who wasn’t rich. He’d been so angry with her, had called her the downfall of their entire family.
Now he could call himself that, too.
“No,” Victor said. “Keep your damn money. You’re worse than a grave robber, the both of you. You steal opportunity, abundance, joy, and health from the living. And for no damn reason but… what? Your pride? Ha. I say again, keep your damn money.”
“But!” They cried the word at the same time, bouncing to their feet. Victor strode from the room, slammed the door closed, and shoved a nearby armchair beneath the door handle, locking them in, his glamour still intact. Behind the door, they screamed.
A maid cast the door, and Victor, a startled glance.
“They think they’re encountering a dragon,” he said. “Don’t worry. It’s not real.” Nothing about him was.
11
DIG OR CLIMB
The moon was just a sliver of silver through the trees, like the top of her shovel when it was deep in dirt. Persephone’s fairy light was brighter, brighter, too, than her mood. She was tired. And sad. And pitiful. And each heft of dirt onto the ground above her head rained clods of soil into her hair and made her muscles scream.
But she didn’t stop. She hadn’t taken a break all night, and she’d worked three nights in a row, something she’d never done before. She needed her body screaming to drown out her duke-obsessed mind.
That duke was none of her business.
That duke didn’t matter, though the world said he did.
That duke was a blackguard. He had no soul, he… he…
A sob broke through her lips.
Victor had a soul. She’d seen it, and in those rare moments when it broke through all his walls, it was beautiful. To her at least.
She’d done it again—fallen in love with a man who refused to solve his own problems. She couldn’t fix them for him. And she wouldn’t try to anymore. And she wouldn’t bind herself to him more than she already had.
That did it. Her own walls broke, and she dropped to her knees, slumped against the dirt and cried. She’d make a mud puddle to drown in with all her tears. But she couldn’t stop them, and she didn’t want to. She’d allowed herself to cry so little since Percy’s death. She’d cried more in the weeks leading up to it, as he’d withdrawn from her, as he began to look at her with disgust. He’d never bothered to hide how much he’d despised her.
And she’d taken that into herself.
But digging and digging wouldn’t save her from self-hatred. She could dig deeper into it. That’s all she’d been doing. She cried harder, her wails climbing up out of the hole and into the lightening sky.
A small squeak above her.
“Don’t be scared, Julie,” a voice said. “It’s just a ghost. Won’t harm you.”
Footsteps rattled off into the coming morning.
And Persephone laughed, wiping her tears away. She was a ghost.
But if she could dig, she could also climb.
