Page 4 of Til Death Duke Us Part
He must know. Alchemists were sure to be… displeased about the situation. They didn’t like the little details of their rites and rituals to escape the boundaries of their own communities.
She found the end of the cemetery where a large stone structure rose only a foot or so above a tall man’s head. Grecian columns stretched out on either side of the entrance at its middle, and the white marble shone in the dark.
She found the man, too. He had her fairy orb, and he was squinting at the entrance to the building, reading the inscription she knew to be chiseled into the closed marble door.
The might of metal over the illusion of death.
Her father had always loved that saying. He had it engraved above the fire in his home forge. Alchemists were odd birds.
“Who are you looking for?” she asked. She kept her tone polite. Perhaps it would be a better strategy. “I can help you find them.”
The potential thief yelped, jumped skyward like a bird taking flight. But he was too big, too long limbed, so he looked liked a giant dog trying to fly and failing. Flailing.
She doubled over laughing.
“Good God,” he barked, “I thought you were a ghost.”
“Not a”—wheeze—“ghost.” She slapped her knee and stood up straighter, dragging air into her lungs in case he shot off again and she had to run after him. Again.
“You’re more annoying than a ghost. Go dig a hole somewhere.”
“Not a chance. I won’t let you steal anything. Or dig anyone up. I don’t care how much those doctors are offering you per organ delivered to their doorsteps.” They’d been particularly interested in alchemists lately, ever since that one was given a title. What was his name? Temple something or other…
“And just how am I going to dig anyone up?” he demanded. Oh my, but his scowl was fearsome, wasn’t it? “I don’t have a shovel.”
“Ah…” He was right about that.
“I’m looking for an old friend.” He turned back to the low marble tomb. “Ah. Here it is.” He reached out, and the marble in front of him pushed over with the heavy scratch of stone against stone. Nothing but dark beyond, silent and lifeless. “Just leave me the hell alone.” His voice dark and lifeless, too.
He was a… mourner?
She didn’t believe it.
And she wouldn’t let him defile the remains of those buried here. She’d failed to bring peace to Percy while he’d lived. He could have been entombed here with the honored alchemists whose inventions had moved the world forward. But he’d been buried near the front of the cemetery, a small stone the only marker. She’d be damned before she let anyone disturb his peace—or the peace of any other alchemist—in death. It was all the dead had left, after all.
2
GRAVE WORK
A man would do anything for money. A duke with empty coffers? He’d not even stop at death to get everything back.
So even though stepping into the marble mausoleum for metal men made a chill shoot up his spine, made him shiver like he’d just stepped into a pile of steaming, odiferous horse shit, Victor Dean, Duke of Morington did it anyway. He held high the convenient fairy orb he’d procured from the dirt-smeared, trouser-wearing urchin stubbornly sticking to him like a briar to his arse.
He felt her warmth behind him, and when she smacked into him, he stumbled forward into the dark.
Not dark for long. Fairy orbs flared to life on either side of them, mounted on the walls and stretching as far as he could see down a long, eternal hallway of white marble.
“Not at all disconcerting,” he mumbled.
“Less disconcerting than an intruder with nefarious purposes.” The woman snatched her fairy orb out of the air where it floated near the side of his face and pocketed it.
And he saw her clearly for the first time. Her men’s clothes draped off her frame loosely. She was rather slender underneath, and he could see a hint of curve in places where sweat clung the rough linen of her shirt to her chest. She must be strong if she dug graves every night.
And dirty. She was everywhere dirt smudged. It was smeared across the cheeks and forehead of her heart-shaped face and entirely coated the small lobe of one ear. Her hair was piled messily atop her head, and several tendrils escaped to hang about her neck and her temples. One long hank of it dragged down her back.
Her eyes… they were the clean green of a spring morning, like the blades of grass that clawed their way into sunshine after a long winter.
When she realized he was studying her, she widened her eyes and stabbed her chin at him. “Never seen a grave digger before?” Her arms shot across her chest, tightening the fabric across her breasts. Hm. Bigger than he’d thought. His cock lifted its head like a curious dog. Down boy. She didn’t want him, and he didn’t want her. She was trying to keep him from his purpose, and by the way she pulled every one of her few inches up tall, he knew she would not be easily set aside.
