“Now, my lad, what have you done to yourself?” he asked softly.
Clara sent him a startled look, as though surprised he could speak in anything but a growl. A fair assessment, Alden supposed. He’d been snapping and snarling at everyone for the last twelvemonth, when he could bring himself to speak at all.
“I can’t shift the stone,” she said, continuing to pull on it. “It’s stuck fast. There’s only a little depression here, and it feels like his claws are caught on something. If we could dig down under it…” She began scrabbling in the dirt next to the dog’s spindly leg.
The other paw, with razor-sharp, untrimmed claws, lay very close to her hand. The dog let out a faint whine, sniffing at Clara’s bonnet that dipped to him.
Alden reached a gloved hand to the stone. “Easy, lad,” he said when the dog’s whimper became a warning rumble. “Let me help the lady.”
The piece of granite didn’t move to Alden’s tugs. He jammed his walking stick under its edge and tried to lever it up, using his weight to assist. Nothing.
Alden eased off, catching his breath. A third person would certainly help, but there wasn’t enough room for anyone else to come through the door.
The walls around them were solid stone, the tomb made to seal the deceased inside, out of the weather. Alden didn’t like to think of who was lying close to them, sleeping their last, their bodies dissolving in spite of their family’s efforts to keep them whole.
Tombs like this were nonsense, Alden always thought.Let the earth take back its own. It is the cycle of life. The body isn’t needed anymore, no matter how alive they once were.
Alden’s eyes stung, and he blinked rapidly. Blasted dust.
He shut out the thoughts of what he’d lost and focused on the living things before him: the impatient Clara and the desperate dog.
The floor beneath the dog’s paw was less hard, made from limestone cement instead of actual stone. Tombs were expensive, and so decorative substances were used as façades over brick and concrete. This floor was crumbling from damp and whatever roots were forcing their way in.
“Stop a moment,” Alden said to Clara. He removed a flask from his pocket, which his valet, Milford, had filled to the brim with brandy. To keep the damp from seeping into his bones, the man had said. Milford was always certain Alden would come to grief as soon as he was out of sight.
Clara frowned at him, her pale gloves now stained with dust and moldy slime. She opened her mouth, as though to demand to know if he was contemplating inebriation, then she seemed to understand.
She shifted herself out of his way, though staying as near as she could to the trembling dog.
Milford would cluck at Alden for wasting an entire flask of brandy, but Alden hadn’t touched a drop of it so far this afternoon. He feared that if he took one sip in the morose atmosphere of Highgate, he wouldn’t cease until the brandy was gone. Then maybe he’d see the legendary ghosts too.
Alden poured the liquid into the crack between stone and floor, soaking the ground beneath the dog’s paw. The dog wrinkled its nose at the odor, confirming Alden’s belief that dogs were wiser than humans.
“I believe it’s moving.” Clara eagerly dug her hands into the wet and crumbling cement, scraping away mud and pebbles under the stone.
Alden pulled on the unyielding piece of granite once more, grunting as he strained. The dog, who seemed to take on new hope, wriggled his front legs with enthusiasm.
Another icy blast hit Alden in the back, and at the same time, he felt the stone move. A fraction of an inch, but it was enough.
Clara continued to gouge out the shallow depression, and the dog, its tail moving the faintest amount, wrenched its paw free.
Clara’s cry of triumph rang through the stuffy tomb. Alden unwedged his walking stick from under the stone, breathing a sigh of relief.
“You’ll have to carry him out,” she informed him.
The dog, now released, tried to climb to his feet, but his back legs, weak and trembling, collapsed. He subsided, licking his sore paw.
Alden heaved a resigned sigh and leaned down to grasp the dog. It tried to scramble away from him, brown eyes wide with fear.
Clara sank down next to the dog again. “It’s all right.” She put her arms around him, no matter that the beast was filthy and stinking, his odor covering even the sharp scent of brandy. “Try now,” she said.
The dog had calmed, relaxing into Clara’s hold. Of course he’d succumb to the touch of a beautiful woman. Again, why dogs were wise.
Alden made his movements slow and as unthreatening as possible as he once more reached for the dog. Clara kept her arms around him, and together they half lifted him, the dog’s whimper loud in Alden’s ear. The nose that touched his cheek was cold and damp.
As Alden straightened, Clara relinquished her hold. She rested her fingers in the frightened beast’s fur, and together they carried him out of the tomb to the glow of an evening sunset.
Chapter Two
