Chapter 3
MORE TOMBS AND A TUB
If Persephone had to open one more damned door, she was going to knee this damned duke between the legs like she should have done hours ago. But she wouldn’t. Because she needed to know now.
Why were all the prototypes missing from the tombs?
Every single one. They’d investigated every tomb on the ground level and had begun to move downward. Surely, they’d opened at least half of the tombs on the first lower floor. She wrapped her arms around herself and locked down a shiver. Couldn’t suppress a yawn though.
“What time do you think it is?” she asked around the yawn.
“Time to keep opening doors.” Morington nudged her to the next unopened one.
“It’s just going to be more of the same.
Someone got here before you.” And she’d not even known.
They must be coming in during the day. The only person she ever saw near the tombs or in the graveyard was the Master of the Alchemist Guild, but he was a pious man.
He was kind to visit the departed during the lonely months.
He was rather handsome, too. All golden good looks and well-tailored suits.
She sighed and pressed her fingertips against the barely-there lines that worked the lock.
The door clicked open, and she stumbled inside, the dastardly duke behind her.
“Damn,” he hissed. “Nothing here either.” He ruffled a hand through his hair. The hours and the darkness weighed heavy in the shadows beneath his eyes. He shook his head and strode for the door. “Next.”
“Noooo,” Persephone moaned. But she followed him out the door. Tried to.
He popped back inside, pulling the door shut with him and wrapping his hand around her mouth.
“Mrf!” she said against his palm. His palm. The gloves on his hands were a glamour. She’d always heard they had no substance, but she’d never experienced it before. How odd to see something and feel nothing, but that was not the focus right now. “Mrf!” She struggled against his hold.
“Shh. There’s someone coming down the hall. From lower.”
She nodded and swatted his hand away then peeked through the small crack he’d left between the golden door and the frame. Too bad he couldn’t steal the door; then at least they’d be through with this interminable torment.
The duke settled in behind her, his body pressing against hers so well she could feel the hard muscles of his thighs, the taut planes of his abdomen.
It had been so long since she’d touched a man.
She missed it. She missed the large hardness of them, the way all that mass made her feel safe, how—when applied gently—it had made her feel loved.
The man at her back offered none of that, even if he wasn’t what she expected.
Transcendent men, she’d heard, were soft and willowy.
This man was anything but. He was shaped more like an alchemist—hard lines and useful muscle.
Morington was shaped like the man walking down the passageway in the semi-dark.
When the large shadow passed through the fairy orbs closest the door, she saw his face just before Morington pulled her farther into the shadows of the tomb.
She swallowed a gasp and rolled her lips between her teeth to keep silent.
When the man had disappeared into the darkness, she couldn’t help but drop her jaw.
“You know him?” Morington asked, studying her face as he stepped away from her.
“He’s the Master of the Alchemist Guild. Mr. Stone.”
“He carried a satchel. Full. Lumpy. I think we found our thief.”
“No. Absolutely not. He would never. He’s our leader. He’s… he’s… No. Just no.”
Morington leaned a shoulder against a wall. “Wonder how far he’s gotten. There’s still more loot lower in this damned crypt. That much is clear. Who the hell knows how far down we have to go to get it. And then… are they older down below? The inventions?”
She nodded. “You mean the dead.”
“No, I don’t. Hm. Older. Then they might be useless. A man who invents something and hides it away hundreds of years ago is not likely to be the only man to think of such an invention in all that time.”
She couldn’t argue with that. She’d heard many stories about how grandpa’s death work had been created in someone else’s forge after his death.
He scratched a hand down his face. “Let’s go then. No use staying here anymore.”
She almost skipped all the way up the stairs and out of the mausoleum. The dim light of morning made her blink, and she rubbed her eyes then clapped them together, taking a deep breath of early morning air.
“It has been an absolutely horrible time meeting you, your grace. I hope to never meet you again, I hope your progeny suffer a cursed existence for your disrespect toward the dead, and with that, I bid you goodbye.” She marched off toward the cemetery entrance.
Tried to.
He grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Home!”
“No, you’re not. You’re taking me to another graveyard.”
“I am not!”
“You are. Surely there are other Alchemist resting places in East London.”
“There are, but you won’t like what you find there. This one is where the big names are buried, the ones with money and power and education. The grave work you find at another cemetery would not be valuable to you. Now release me!” She yanked her arm.
But Morington held fast. “Where then? Surely there’s another city, another place, another—”
“All the way in bloody Manchester, you arse. I welcome you to go there. But I’m not going with you.”
“You are.” He clasped her wrist and held it up between them. “I need this hand.”
“Then cut it off me.”
He reared back, disgust twisting across his face. “I’m ruthless not murderous.”
“Good to know there’s honor among thieves.”
He shrugged. “Not much, but when you have a title like mine, you must maintain some dignity.” His grip on her wrist loosened, and he looped their arms together. “Come along. I’ll take you to your home first so you clean that dirt off you and gather some personal belongings, then we’ll be off.”
“I’m not coming with you.” But he was guiding her toward the cemetery entrance, so she set her steps to his long strides. She’d escape once they were in the street.
“You are, and let me tell you why.”
“Because I don’t want to lose my hand?”
“I’m not entirely sure a dead hand would work, so you’re safe there.”
“Get a different alchemist.”
“Why would I do that. You already have all my secrets. If I release you into the streets and find someone else, that will be two people who know the Duke of Morington is robbing graves.” He recoiled. From himself. “It’s humiliating.”
“I have to work. I cannot galivant across the country with you.”
“I’ll pay you.”
In the growing morning light, as they stepped carefully past fading tombstones, he looked…
resplendent. His clothes (those gloves) were as pristine as if he’d just stepped out of a coach and into a ballroom.
Only his face and hair were mussed, dirtied, scruffy.
She’d felt the truth of his gloveless hands beneath the glamour earlier. She wondered…
She whipped in front of him and pressed her hands against his chest. His very muscular chest. His very muscular clothed chest.
He stopped as soon as she touched him, an eyebrow raised. “Yes?”
“Just making sure you’re wearing clothes beneath that glamour.”
“I’ve known a man or two to go about naked beneath theirs. I find it rather gauche. And waltzing with your cock out sounds uncomfortable.”
“And think of the accidental spills. Soup. Tea.”
He winced. “Precisely. Now”—he folded her arm within his again and tugged her past a husband and wife newly buried—“as I was saying, I’ll pay you well.”
She snorted. “You have no money. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”
“True. But I will have money. And once I have it, a portion of it is yours. If you help me.”
It was wrong. Horribly, sinfully, damned to hell wrong to take from the dead.
A betrayal of her people, of everything and everyone, but…
The duke had it right. She didn’t want to dig graves the rest of her life.
She wasn’t pretty enough to be a mistress, though she could probably pull in a few coins from a street corner.
But that way lay painful, diseased death.
No doubt about that. Not even the infamous Lady Guinevere’s potions could cure the pox.
Persephone had tried working for the potion mistress once, but she’d gotten the measurements wrong so many times, she’d shown herself out the front door after her first week.
It had been lovely, though. The smiling faces of the other women, the scents of the potions brewing, the bright yellow gowns and starched aprons they all wore. She’d felt happy for the first time since her husband’s death.
But she didn’t deserve happiness. And she was terrible at cooking. So she’d quit.
She deserved dirt and death. Even Percy would say that. Especially Percy would say that.
“Which way do you live?”
They were standing at the street, the wide iron gates that led into the cemetery at their backs. Horses and carriages lumbered down the street from both directions, looking as sleepy as she felt. A low fog swallowed feet and wheels, and sunlight was breaking through it.
Persephone swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded right. “This way.”
“That way?” The duke’s lip curled. “Farther east?”
“Yes.”
He tugged at his cravat. “Are we likely to be stabbed? Shot? Robbed?”
She rolled her eyes. “You do not have to go. I do not want you to go, you cowardly, insulting old duke. So release me, and I’ll never see you again.”
“No, no. I’m coming. I’m sure it’s safe.”
“It’s not, but I live there, so…” She shrugged.
With each step they took the polish of the city crumbled away with the stones beneath their feet. The streets grew narrower and more crowded, and—
“Good God, what is that smell?” He slapped a hand over his mouth.
“Piss, likely. You stepped in it just now. You can go home.”
He said nothing, simply clenched his jaw and continued on at her side.