Chapter 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.
He wanted to pat her on the head. Good girl. But she wasn’t good, not in any way he wanted her to be. A damn nuisance was what she was.
“No, I’ve not seen a grave digger before.” He pretended to inspect his fingernails and saw only his glamoured gloves. But he felt the dirt beneath his nails. At least he no longer employed a valet to chastise him over it. “Dukes do not often make the acquaintance of such creatures.”
She snorted. “A duke? Ha. And I’m a lady.” She dropped a wobbly curtsy. “Nice to make your acquaintance, your grace.”
“Do not expect me to say the same.” He started down the passageway and into the glowing steady light of the orbs.
He heard her little puff of annoyance behind him and the stumble of her small footsteps. “Are you truly a duke?”
“Of Morington.”
She appeared beside him, almost running to keep up with his long strides. “I am surprised to find a duke robbing graves, but not surprised you are robbing graves.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“That you give off an immediate aura of general trouble.”
“I’ve never been so insulted,” he grumbled.
“Now I see the duke in you. What exactly is it you're looking for?”
“A grave.”
“Truly? A grave? How surprising.”
He almost laughed.
“What are you looking for at the grave? I know it’s not solace or to mourn a friend or family member. I don’t buy that for a moment. You don’t have the look of someone who cares overly much about anyone.”
“You’re like an ill wind. You never stop, and it’s not pleasant.”
“I’d like to think of myself as tenacious. Tell me or I go get the constable.”
He sighed and stopped. She stopped, too, taking the opportunity to gulp in several breaths.
When she recovered, she stood before him, arms crossed in an imitation of him.
A tiny dirt-covered mirror. But then… right now…
He inspected the sleeve of his jacket, the revealed cuff of his shirt at his wrist…
Right now he was rather dirt covered, too.
“Very well,” he said, throwing his arms out wide.
“You’ve caught me. I’m looking for something that was left at my brother-in-law’s father’s grave.
An heirloom. He wants it back.” His brother-in-law did not in fact want the object back.
But he wouldn’t find out it was missing from his father’s grave until Victor had already turned it into blunt.
“The problem is I don’t know which tomb is his. ”
She peered at him from beneath thick, dark, dirt-speckled brows, and damn but those green eyes seemed capable of peering into his very soul. She must have approved of whatever she saw there because she loosened.
Her little face became amenable.
He didn’t trust it.
“Whose grave are you looking for?” she asked. “I could help.” Her voice arched a bit too high for believability. Horrid little liar.
But better to keep her by his side than have her running off after the constable. He could use her help to find the grave then return tomorrow night when she, hopefully, was somewhere else to… unburden the dead man of his treasure.
“Nicholas Bowen Senior. A copper alchemist.” Who had apparently invented a device of particular importance then requested he be buried with it instead of leaving it to his penny-poor son to sell for remuneration.
And food. Or a housekeeper. Or a decent suit not painted with soot from his forge. Fool.
And now the fool’s son was married to Victor’s sister, Jane, who should have been married to a decent man with enough money to buy them all out of penury. But no. She had to fall in love with an alchemist toymaker who thought children’s smiles more valuable than gold. Fool. Fools the lot of them.
Not Victor, though. He’d known the lowered voices from the other room weren’t meant for him to hear, but he’d listened anyway.
Why not? A man had to be cunning when his pockets were empty.
Jane and Bowen’s conversation had been, mostly, inane, mortifying stuff, filled with ‘darlings’ and punctuated with the stomach-roiling sounds of kissing.
But it had also contained gold. Metaphorically speaking.
If only, Bowen bemoaned, he had his father’s device.
Then his toymaking could proceed at a faster pace.
More toys meant more money and more money meant more time for Nico to lavish his wife with darlings and kisses and…
Victor had stopped listening at that point.
Not only out of disgust. The words revolutionary device had caught his attention. So had the ones buried with the old man.
What a waste. The dearly departed Nicholas Bowen certainly did not need whatever it was. Even if his bones remained after all this time, he would possess no muscle to move them. Best not to share any information with the lying vagabond beside him, though.
She could do nothing truly to hurt him. She possessed no status to put gossip in the right ears, and whatever constable she called would look away when Victor placed the right number of coins squarely in his palm.
Not that Victor had many coins to use in such a manner.
But he kept a stash of them specifically for emergencies.
And bribery was sometimes necessary for the greater good.
The greater good being reviving Victor’s family’s fortune.
The little gutter rat girl would possibly, though, prove useful if she kept her mouth shut and caused him no trouble. She had more knowledge of alchemists than he did, and considering the number of secrets that lot kept, he’d welcome any insider perspective.
She might try to do him some harm, of course. Shut him up in this tunnel, for instance. But if he could find her greatest fear, then a single glamour would disarm her. The wall and the fog had slowed her down.
He ambled casually down the hallway. Doors began to appear on either side a little farther ahead, and he was going to open every damn one if he had to. But until then, he’d go fishing.
“I hope it doesn't get any darker.” He dropped the sentence into the air like the dynamite it was. Or perhaps it was more like a torch probing into the dark crevices of her psyche. Hopefully she did not catch on to what he was doing.
She snorted. “Scared of the dark, are you? Naturally. I’m not surprised. A man like you is no better than a child.”
That stopped him cold. “Child?” The termagant! She’d given him sass instead of secrets! “I am four and thirty.”
She waved away his age as if it were of no more consequence than a gnat. “Do you dress yourself, your grace?”
“Of course not. I have a valet for that.” He used to. Now he dressed himself, but one must keep up appearances, even with grave digging urchins.
“Do you cook your own food or procure it from market?”
“Never in my life.” His old housekeeper took pity on him and brought him a basket of provisions once a week. Humiliating. “I’ve servants for that. A cook.” He could not see her face, but he imagined it drawing into a satisfied sneer.
“Who”—she fluttered her lashes—“your grace, neither dresses themselves nor feeds themselves nor knows how to obtain their own necessities?” She bounced up on tiptoe and pressed her lips so close to his ear, they almost touched.
Her breath, hot and humiliating, spilled over the skin of his neck.
“You are naught but a squalling, wriggling, helpless babe.” A jeer. A taunt.
His blood boiled, and he curled his hands into palm-cutting fists.
But he would not bite at her bait. “There’s doors up ahead.
” They were arched and appeared to be made of some sort of copper or bronze.
No… each door was made of a different metal, but each possessed a dim metallic sheen in the soft, glowing fairy light.