“Angelika has not eaten her breakfast. I am asking you again to leave. I am not being taken out of here all of a sudden, like a criminal.” The words gave him a pinch, and brought back the memory of being a small boy again. But with his greatest advocate beside him, he felt unmovable.
“And you are not a criminal,” Mr. Thimms placated, giving Christopher a hard stare. “We believe you have had a significant trauma and your circumstances have been . . . most unusual, but God has been with you. Please, we would be most grateful to allow Father Porter an audience with yourself.”
Christopher was irritated and said to Angelika, “Where is Victor? We told your servant to fetch him, but she grew so flustered she could not explain to us where he was. Utterly tongue-tied, she was. She is a nice girl, but you need someone more suited to this household.”
“Victor is asleep,” Angelika guessed, “and my housekeeping staff is absolutely none of your business. Sarah is perfectly fit for the role, and I appreciate her many skills and abilities.” She could go from bland to razor sharp in a blink.
“What’s your proposal?” Christopher asked Arlo, turning his icy blue glare back on him. “When we meet at the church, how can everything be cleared up?”
“I’ll bring a shovel,” Arlo replied, and the three guests fell back in their seats in shock.
It was at this exact moment that the front door banged open. Huffing, puffing, a shirtless Victor Frankenstein appeared, gleaming in sweat. An apple was in his hand.
“What are you doing up so early?” Angelika was aghast. “Where is your shirt?”
“I’ve got nothing but early mornings in my future; I am adapting myself in advance.” Victor leaned in the doorway and raised his eyebrows in greeting at Christopher, carelessly ignoring the other two visitors. He bit his apple and spoke with his mouth full. “Do you ever run for fitness, Chris? We could go together.”
Arlo wasn’t invited. He understood why. He still felt sad.
“We are here on something serious, Victor,” Christopher replied after a shocked laugh, masked as a cough. “Perhaps you ought to take a seat, so I may introduce your guests and we can explain it.”
“After a quick wash,” Angelika pleaded wearily, knowing when she was beaten. “Please, Victor, you absolutely stink.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
This feels a little extreme,” Victor said from above as Arlo shoveled dirt up beside his boots. “I can’t believe you, of all people, agreed to this, Chris.”
“It was his idea,” Christopher pointed out, putting his shovel into the ground and leaning on it. “And if it puts this nonsense to rest, then I’m all for it.” He resumed digging, but his pace was much slower than his first couple of hours when he’d glanced up at his beautiful onlooker with every repetition.
Arlo was this close to knocking him on the back of his blond head and reusing the grave.
“How are you feeling?” Angelika asked Arlo from her seat beside the headstone.
She had tasked a clerk to bring her a chair as though spectatorship was to be reasonably expected, and she sat on the fine mahogany piece under a dome of night sky that bore ribbons of sunset pink. She looked every bit the fairy queen, seated beneath the yew tree clasping around her. She had dressed in a midnight-black gown, beaded with so many jet stones that she sparkled brighter than the cosmos. Beneath the skirts were long black boots, laced up to the knees.
Arlo decided he’d leave those boots laced up when he undressed her later.
“Are you all right?” Angelika prompted him. “You look a little pale.”
Arlo’s physical exhaustion, the pain that shimmered across his skin to grind deep into his joints, his icy-dead hands, the astonishing mental toll it took to dig beneath a marble stone bearing one’s own name and birthday . . . none of that interested him now, because Angelika smiled down at him. A star streaked across the sky above her.
His emotions overflowed.
“Angelika, no woman is as beautiful as you.” Arlo knew this to be absolute truth, because he now had every memory his brain had decided to retain, from dropped-corncob moments to the life-altering losses of his grandparents and Michael. Waist deep in his grave, he leaned an elbow on the edge and made a memory of this moment. “I love you so much.”
In reply, she cooed and leaned down to cup his chin in her palm.
“Keep digging, Sir Resurrection,” Christopher interjected in a complaining tone.
“Did you mention our news to the commander, my love?” Recharged, Arlo sank his shovel into the ground and his news like a dagger into Christopher’s heart. “I asked Angelika to marry me, and she said yes most emphatically. I am sure you are very happy for us.”