Chapter 10 #2
An old woman sat near the sarcophagus, singing, eyes closed. Her lined face soft and gentle, and gray hair poked out here and there from her bonnet. She patted the sarcophagus as she sang, as if she were patting a baby to sleep.
He watched her sing when he should have been stealing silently into the room.
When he should have been approaching the sarcophagus on tiptoe, he remained where he was, studying the almost joyful lines of her face.
When he should have been snatching up with quick fingers the device at the head end of the sarcophagus, he was pressing his eyes closed to keep the heat behind his eyelids from spilling over.
And when he should have been stealing away, back into the night, he slumped against the wall.
Her song might live in him forever, damn it.
“Well hello there,” a voice like a bell said. “Who are you?”
Victor opened his eyes. The woman’s eyes were open now too, and she smiled at him.
“I’m… Victor.”
“Who are you visiting, Victor?”
He shook his head.
“Was that you I heard arguing in the cemetery with your sweetheart?”
He stood straighter, stepped into the doorframe, and scratched the back of his neck. His sweetheart. Persephone?
The rusty chain squeezed his heart.
“I suppose so, yes,” he said.
“Don’t worry, dear. You’ll make up, and it will be delicious when you do. Here visiting your people or hers?”
“Hers.”
She glanced at his hand. “Where’s your ring?”
“I… ah, I’m not an alchemist.”
“But if she was…” She tilted her head to the side, mouth screwing up in a question.
Damn alchemist secrecy. He had no idea what her half statement alluded to. But he tried. “I’m not her first husband.”
“Ah. I see.” She nodded. “Still, you need something to bind you, don’t you?”
He rubbed his chest. Bind you. Yes, he felt bound. Didn’t need a ring; he had that rusty chain of his own making. He shrugged.
“Come here, then.” She waved him over. When he didn’t move, she waved harder.
“Come on then. Come here.” He obeyed, and she took off a glove.
Then she took off a ring that was nestled, too big, around her finger.
She took his hand, opened his palm, and put the ring in it.
“Have a friend split that up, add something new to it that you both choose, and make two rings out of it.”
“Your alchemist ring?” He knew what those could do. He shoved the ring back toward her. “No, thank you.”
“Yes, yes. I don’t need it anymore. You couldn’t unbind me from Charles any more than you can unbind my muscle from my bones.”
Technically… that could be done, but he wasn’t going to argue.
“We’ll be reunited soon, anyway,” she said. “And I’d like to think this hunk of metal made a difference in the land of the living after I’m gone.”
He glanced at the grave work—a tangle of copper wires and foggy glass tubes—and raised a brow. “What about that? Shouldn’t that be used for the living?” He inched toward it.
She swatted his arm. “Don’t you dare, young man. That’s not mine to give away.”
“Ah. Yes.” She had a point.
“Now take that ring and find your wife and bind her up tight, you hear?”
But Persephone wasn’t his wife, and he was a duke. And he’d never be able to bind her. Not with a ring. Not in his arms. Not with that organ cinched tight with a rusty chain.
She shook her head. “I suppose you’re terrified of being bound yourself. Men these days are such cowards. But listen here, Victor. You can’t bind someone up without binding up yourself, too. Both must give if they wish to take.”
“Give what?”
She stood on shaky legs and pressed crooked fingers into his chest, just over his heart. “That. Now help me out of here.” She took his arm, and—what other option did he have?—he escorted her out into the night.
He walked the woman home, too, to a nice little square and a neat little terrace house.
Then he walked. Let himself get lost, the old woman’s ring burning a hole in his pocket.
By the time the sun began to brighten the sky, he’d somehow found his way back to a street he recognized, and by the time yellow poured over all the people bustling to work, he’d found the inn yard, already busy.
He cut through the crowd, anxious to get to Persephone. He needed to tell her—
“Oh, my dear duke!”
“My dear Morington, over here!”
Victor turned around. Persephone’s parents waved at him enthusiastically from the street.
Parts of her mother’s hair waved like two stiff flags above her head, and her father’s mustachios curled like smoke streaming out of his nostrils.
They ran to catch up, stopping right before him with smiles so wide, they looked rather painful.
“What do you want?” Victor winced. He should be better behaved. Persephone would swat him. But they didn’t deserve him better behaved.
Not that they noticed his rudeness. They scurried forward, wearing big bright smiles, their fine and fashionable clothing glowing in the morning light, which irritated him because Persephone’s clothes were thin and threadbare and four years, at least, out of date.
“Morington,” Mr. Smith said, “I come bearing a wondrous proposition for you.”
Mrs. Smith’s head bobbed up and down, up and down. “Oh yes, a fine thing. A very fine thing.”
“I’m not in the mood for business proposals.” He swung back toward the door and stepped through.
They followed.
“It’s not precisely a matter of business,” Mrs. Smith said.
“Some might call it that,” Mr. Smith said.
“Though we are not so uncouth,” Mrs. Smith assured him.
The inn was still and abandoned so early in the morning, though it would soon be crowded and busy. He wanted to be out before then. He made his way up the stairs, took them two at a time then froze at the top when he realized he wasn’t alone.
“Shit.” He turned slowly and found two pairs of eyes blinking up at him.
“What do you two want again?” He couldn’t let them near the room.
Persephone was in there, likely pouting, and they’d know his story about Jane wasn’t true.
He wasn’t about to ruin Persephone’s reputation, that honor she held so dear.
“Wait for me in the private parlor below.”
Their smiles brightened, and they scurried away as mouselike as they’d followed him. As if he were a bit of succulent cheese.
Persephone would like that image. He’d tell her.
But when he reached their room, she was gone.
Worry hit him like a bolt of lightning and left him feeling sick.
She’d been accosted on the way back from the cemetery.
She’d been upset with him, crushingly angry with him, and he’d been disgusted with himself, frustrated with her for not understanding, but he should never have let her go off alone.
Then he saw the note—folded and blindingly white against the beaten dark table top. He knew without reading it. He didn’t want to fucking read it.
But he did.
Victor,
I stole some of your money for the mail coach.
It may come as a shock to read this, but I feel you need to hear it.
I love you. Odd, yes? Three days we’ve known each other. I suppose I give my heart away too easily. I’ve always been a bit of a fool.
Persephone
Three little words almost strangled him, stole the air from the room, knocked his legs out from under him.
His legs?
Yes, even those. He was slumped on the floor against the bed. No idea when that had happened. Probably when he’d read those three little words.
I love you.
Damn her.
I love you.
He pushed to his feet and gathered his belongings. She’d taken nothing but a few measly coins from his purse. She should have taken all of it. He could make more. She… she was on the road alone.
“Damn you, Persephone.” He said it as he swung out of the room and stomped down the stairs. He could catch up to her. He could try at least.
“Oh, duke!” Persephone’s father.
“Where are you going?” A light, irritating chuckle. Her mother.
Victor stopped, looked over his shoulder. He’d forgotten about them.
Persephone’s parents waved at him from out of the inn’s private parlor.
He stomped back toward them. “I’m not in the mood for business negotiations.” A very foolish mood indeed, then. But that was the point. He was a fool. Like Persephone. Like himself? He must be mad.
“Not quite business… remember?” Mrs. Smith’s voice held an edge of worry now, but also one of wheedling.
Victor pinched the bridge of his nose. “State your business. Succinctly. I’ve no time for—”
“Marriage,” Mr. Smith said. “To our daughter, Persephone.”
Victor opened his eyes, and his arm fell like dead weight to his side. “Marry Persephone? Why would I do that?” A million reasons why. A million reasons he couldn’t as well.
Mr. Smith stepped forward. “She would come with a generous settlement.”
“What would she get out of it?”
Mrs. Smith stepped forward. “She would get to be a duchess.”
Victor herded them back into the private parlor one long step at a time. “And you? What would you get out of it?”
“A duke as a son-in-law, of course. Social circles that are difficult for people like us to enter without particular connections. Access to investors of the transcendent class.”
The back of their legs hit a low sofa, and they fell together, breath rushing out of their lungs, surprise lighting their eyes. They composed themselves quickly as Victor towered over them, crossing his arms over his chest, legs spread wide.
“Well?” Mrs. Smith ventured.
“Do you accept our proposition?” Mr. Smith asked.
“Persephone,” Victor said, barely able to squeeze the name through his lips, past his rising rage, “is not a coin for you to barter with, you black-hearted imbeciles.”
They gasped. Their mouths hung open.
“How dare you?” Mr. Smith sputtered, rising.
Victor shoved him back down with a single finger to the man’s chest. “How dare you?”
“We’ve done nothing.” Mrs. Smith tried to rise, but Victor sat her once more with a single glance. “Nothing.” But she wouldn’t look at him anymore.
“Nothing but throw off your daughter and leave her destitute, in the poorest circumstances you can imagine.”
Mrs. Smith raised a hand. “Her husband—”
“You knew he had died! Even if you disapproved of the man, you should have cared for her when she needed it most! I’m perfect by no stretch of the imagination, but even I would not have left her in such a situation, no matter how I’d disapproved of her choices before.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Mr. Smith mumbled.
“You exaggerate her situation,” Mrs. Smith insisted.
Victor threw a hand up, arching it across the room, and everything shifted, changed from bright and clean to shabby and dirty.
The Smiths gasped, embraced one another, as if by clinging to what they knew they could deny what Victor was showing them.
“Look at it,” Victor growled. “This is her room in London, across the corridor from a prostitute who seems to have more kindness in her exhausted fingertips than the two of you have in your whole bodies.” As if he could speak of kindness. Hypocrite. She’d called him that. She’d been right.
“I don’t believe you,” Mrs. Smith said, eyes glittering.
“Look at every damn detail. It’s true. Every inch of it. Sagging, breaking bed, leaking ceiling, spotted floor, thin walls, dusty cupboards. Her gowns threadbare and almost useless.”
“Yesterday—”
“I had glamoured her gown so no one knows. And she likes it, likes to look pretty, and she should get that little joy. But you denied her all pleasure, all safety and security, and left her at the mercy of a potion-addled addict.”
“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.