Lovely readers!

If you're in the mood for something different at the beginning of this November, I've got it for you! Til Death Duke Us Part released into the world yesterday! It's a Victorian romance with:

• Class difference
• road trip
• one bed
• morally gray MC

How about an excerpt? Here's a section of chapter 1, entitled "It's Raining Men."

Deep graves were lovely until bodies filled them. Cool earth on all sides, the rich scent of soil. Persephone could close her eyes, rest her aching limbs, and imagine death.

It would be quiet, peaceful, and somehow, not so lonely.

She sighed, six feet under, weight leaning against her shovel, and opened her eyes in just enough time to see the man fall into the grave she was digging.

He landed on his belly with an “oof” and laid there groaning. 

She kicked him. And in such a narrow space, she didn’t have to swing her leg far. “Don’t think this one’s reserved for you. Unless you’re early.”

The man rolled over, shoulder hitting one long side of the grave, and he slowly brushed the soil from his face and chest. “Did you fall in, too?”

“No. Dug my way down here.” She heaved her shovel onto her shoulder. “What are you doing in the Alchemist Graveyard past midnight?”

He sat up, and in the dim light of the fairy orb glowing near her shoulder, he gave her a look. Ha. She knew that expression. He was the kind of man unused to being questioned.

“I could ask you the same,” he said.

“I’m the grave digger.” 

“I doubt that.”

“Why else would I be down here with a shovel?” You great lumbering nodcock. 

Narrow eyes but no answer. He stood, dusting off his knees.

“You do not have a shovel,” she said, “so you have no reason to be here.” She wished he wasn’t here. He was interrupting her work, but also, there was no room in a grave for two. The tight space she loved to be alone in felt much too crowded now. He wasn’t a small man, and the large outline of him was almost all she could make out, even with her little bobbing light. Taller than the grave, shoulders wide, hair bright in the dark. He was dressed plainly but fully from his cravat to his greatcoat. Probably had a pocket watch tucked away in a waistcoat pocket. And that pocket was well-stretched over his muscled chest. “I’d need a wide hole.”

“Pardon me?” He swung around, eyes wide, lips rolled back to shape the tone of distaste that had dripped across those two words. “What in the devil are you talking about? A… wide hole?”

Persephone waved her arms at the grave. “What you’re standing in. You don’t fit very well. If I were digging your grave, it would have to be wider. To accommodate your shoulders.”

He blinked like he was trying to knock her over with his unfairly thick and dark lashes, then he straightened and brushed off his trousers. “Ah. Yes. That hole.” He turned his attention to the sky, to the shelf of ground at his eye level. “How do I get out?”

She kicked at a nearby bucket. “Use that.”

“Makes sense. You being so small.”

No reason to bristle. She was short. She came up only to this man’s shoulders.

“Why are you digging at night?” he asked, kicking the bucket upside down and into place for a quick escape.

“It’s cooler. And it doesn’t bother the daytime visitors.” And she didn’t have to hear the wailing of the newly bereaved. Or the innocent chatter of a child talking to the air, pretending it was their mother or father so recently lost.

He grunted. “Good to know.” Then he placed one foot on the overturned bottom of the bucket, pressed his palms into the ground, and launched himself up. A few competent movements, and he was out, brushing his hands on his trousers.

She whistled. He probably didn’t even need the bucket.

He leaned over and looked down at her. The light from her orb shone up at him, illuminating his face. She wanted to whistle again. A fine-looking man with arrogant cheekbones. Full lips and thick brows. His nose was crooked, like he’d broken it once.

“Well, then… Good evening.” He gave her a little wave and walked off.

She pocketed her orb and scurried up after him. Using the bucket, of course. “Wait!” 

He did not. He walked with long, confident strides into the maw of the darkness. Not even the huge yellow moon, heavy in the sky, could follow him there.

“Wait!”

The wind picked up, whistling through the spindly tree limbs as if to chase the stranger away. The stranger picked up his pace, too.

Oh no. Bad sign, that. It wasn’t the wind’s howling that chased him from the cemetery. She didn’t believe that for a moment. This man trotted because he didn’t want to be caught. 

That meant she needed to catch him. Damn it. A lone man skulking about the cemetery at night meant one thing usually—a grave robber either after jewels to sell in pawn shops or body parts to sell to medical students. 

He couldn’t have them! Not on her watch.

“Stop!” she cried, then rolled her eyes. Oh yes, Sephy, he’s sure to bide by your wishes. Stop indeed.

He did not stop, naturally. In fact, he picked up his pace, a dark shadow slipping through the darker night like water through fingers. 

She ran after him. 

And a wall sprouted out of the ground in front of her.

She yelped, slowing but not soon enough. She slammed into the brick.

No. She didn’t. She slipped right through it then rocked back several steps to study it. The wall seemed real—red brick rising several feet above her head and stretching out on either side as far as she could see. But there’d never been a brick wall here before. And she’d never known one to grow out of the ground like a damn tree.

And…

She stuck her hand through it.

It was an illusion, a glamour.

“Bloody hell. He’s a toff.” What was one of the transcendent ton doing in a graveyard at night? He should be in a huge fancy house in West London, lying in a huge fancy bed, surrounded by at least three courtesans. More if he possessed a title higher than an earl. But he wasn’t. He was in an alchemist graveyard on the east side of London and—

A scream in the distance, followed by a thud.

Likely in another grave, too.

She ran through the fake wall and toward the sound of his scream. She stopped at the short end of a grave she’d dug earlier in the evening and removed the orb from her pocket, set it loose into the air above the hole.

She’d found him, alright, face down and groaning. Again. And when he rolled over, he spit dirt into the air and swiped it from his eyes. Levering himself upright, he bent a knee and draped an arm across it, shaking his head. He glared at her beneath the fairy light, a knife-sharp thing that likely quelled most everyone.

Persephone smirked. “Need help?”

“Go away.”

“Afraid I cannot. If you’re here to disturb the rest of these souls, I’m not going to let you.” She’d fail herself, fail Percy, if she let a thief destroy the dead’s eternal peace.

He snorted and stood, stretching his back.

“Are you hurt?” It would be easier to catch him and bring him to the night watchman if he was.

“Good God, woman. Go dig a hole somewhere else and leave me alone.”

“Can’t. You’re a suspicious character.”

“And you’re… what? Cerberus guarding the gates of Hell?”

“Something like that.”

He gave one loud sniff, and it was all she needed to imagine him in a ballroom, sneering down his nose through a quizzing glass at everyone around him. “You’re hardly a terrifyingly famed figure of mythology. You dig holes, madame.”

“Said as if I’m supposed to be ashamed of it.”

He didn’t have to say Well, yes, you should be ashamed because the wicked twist of his lips said it all. 

“Tell me why you’re here,” she said, “and I won’t tell the constable. Unless you’re here for nefarious reasons. Then—” She shrugged.

“How’d a woman get to be a grave digger?”

“My husband was one. Then I had to dig a hole for him, and I just kept at it.” Percy had not been the best husband, but he deserved her penance. “How’d a transcendent get to be in an alchemist graveyard at night?” 

“Someone dies”—he smirked, ignoring her question—“and you get the job?”

“And who had to die for you to get your position?” Transcendent titles and magic were passed down from eldest son to eldest son, only one man from every family of the peerage for every generation claiming all that power, and only after his father’s death.

He lifted a single brow. “Touché.” He stood, shook his head, and reached up for the ground to pull himself to freedom.

She’d been right. He didn’t need a bucket. 

***

You can find Til Death Duke Us Part at all online retailers for a limited time, including Kobo Plus. It goes into Kindle Unlimited later this November.

Read Til Death Duke Us Part

Book Recommendations

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Happy reading,

Charlie Lane