The Willfully Wedded Virgin (Beyond Fairytales) Read online

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  The Willfully Wedded Virgin

  Copyright © 2015 by D.L. Jackson

  ISBN: 978-1-61333-834-6

  Cover art by Syneca Featherstone

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

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  The Willfully Wedded Virgin

  By

  D.L. Jackson

  A Beyond Fairy Tales

  Adaptation of “The Singing Bone”

  Prologue

  “They call me Nicodemus, and I am a collector of stories and legends. Step closer. For a coin, I ’ave a tale and wisdom I’ll share.”

  Challenged by height, the bard stood barely four feet tall. He wore a beard like a gnome’s and covered his head in a stovepipe hat. An overturned milk crate served as a stage as he studied the crowd before him. With a gleam in his eyes, he scanned the heads of the crowd as though searching for something or someone. His gaze stopped to rest on a pretty young woman with blonde hair.

  Slipping buds in her ears, she pushed a button on an MP3 player and ducked her head, moving away through the crowd. A tall, dark-haired man turned and followed. As he came alongside her, they laced fingers. Nicodemus grinned as they retreated. “Ah, a love story, perhaps?”

  A blue tarantula crawled from Nicodemus’s tangled beard to perch on his shoulder. The old man reached up and stroked it. “Easy, my friend,” he murmured to the arachnid as it quivered and purred. “Let’s tell them about Henry Dodge’s willful daughter.” With a smile that held the mysteries of the world, he dropped his hat on the ground and several in the audience stepped forward to toss coins in. He paused for a moment, drew a deep breath, and retrieved something from the inner pocket of his frayed coat.

  “You might have heard of The Singing Bone, a tale from the Brothers Grimm of jealousy, deceit, and fratricide, but have you ever heard about The Willfully Wedded Virgin? ’Tis the story of a rebellious young woman who changes fate and finds true love in the most unusual of places. Step up closer, and I'll tell you a tale, one most have never heard.”

  Nicodemus thrust an obsidian skull into the air, holding it over his head. The small crowd in the corner of the Peruvian marketplace went quiet as though under a spell.

  The skull glimmered in the bright moonlight. A red fog flowed from the eye sockets and twisted around the crowd.

  Nicodemus’s voice boomed into the silence like thunder in the mountains. “Without light, there would be no dark. Without good, there would be no evil. Greed and the lust for power are as timeless and enduring as love. And though we know there are good people out there, we often choose to believe the opposite of evil.” Nicodemus paused then his tone sharpened. “It’s easier to go about life in our bubbles, pretending monsters don’t walk among us and we are safe.

  “But. Evil. Exists.”

  The skull glowed brighter as Nicodemus’s voice softened. “True, malevolent forces hide in dark corners, slithering from the places in which we know they dwell, but sometimes they lurk in the spotlight, dressed as someone we trust. If we forget evil is there, it will destroy us.”

  Nicodemus lowered the skull as he began his tale. “Once upon a time, there was a great race to uncover ancient treasures. But some things are buried and forgotten for a reason. When you dig up the past and old bones, sometimes you also bring up the devil that gnawed on them.”

  Chapter One

  June 1905, somewhere in the Peruvian jungle….

  Elizabeth reached up and brushed the damp hair from her forehead. She blew out a breath as a trickle of perspiration traveled down her spine, running beneath the laces of her corset and soaking into the already overly damp muslin shirtwaist, certainly leaving a stain. “Insufferable heat.” A thick vine dangled in her face, taunting her. “Hell would certainly be cooler and much more comfortable. Ooooh—these bloody flies are a nuisance.” She swatted at a buzzing insect, missed, and took a half-hearted whack at the overgrowth with her machete.

  She could only blame herself since she’d insisted they could move faster if they let her help and had refused to take no for an answer. Ah, but she had learned the hard way. Some work suited men much better, especially since they weren’t draped in acres of fabric. If she’d known cutting a path would take so much work, she would have kept her mouth shut.

  “Mind your language. A lady doesn’t curse. It shows ill-breeding, though at times when I hear you speak, it makes me wonder if I should have shipped you off to my sister’s when your mother passed. I should not have let you spend all your time around the institute. I fear it’s put bad ideas in your head and foul words in your mouth.”

  “It is just so—”

  Her father glanced over his shoulder. “You insisted, Elizabeth. I don’t want to hear your complaints.”

  “I did not insist on this sticky humidity or the bugs, and I most certainly didn’t insist on wearing a skirt and corset into the jungle. And these boots are much more suited to a country outing. I have blisters on the tops of my toes, for heaven’s sake. If only you’d let me wear the dunnage—”

  “Clothes, Elizabeth. Don’t speak like a Philistine. We are not discussing that again. I will not have my daughter
traipsing about in men’s breeches. I raised a young lady, not a son.”

  “And she must dress so, lest a potential husband see her as manly,” she mumbled under her breath, still irritated she couldn’t don pants as some of the female adventurers she’d read about—women like Isabella Bird—did. Oh, she’d devoured all Bird’s tales, regardless of her father’s feelings on the matter, and thus felt compelled to shun social inequalities. He’d no idea how far women had come, and the new century was certain to usher in more of the freedoms the previous one had denied females. She fully planned to lead the charge.

  The tribal women they’d seen didn’t even wear blouses, yet her wearing trousers offended him? Every woman around here seemed more relaxed than Henry Dodge’s daughter. Heaven forbid anyone see her not at her best. She didn’t want to skip naked through the forest or anything. Merely wear something that didn’t constrict her movement, garments other females had already adopted.

  She reached up and touched her locket. What would her mother have said about his insisting he’d find her a good husband when they got back? From what she’d heard about her mother, her headstrong ways he always complained about didn’t come from her father. Her mother would more than likely have taken her side on this, letting her find her own spouse when good and ready. “This is a new century, and women can actually dress in trousers, and not every ‘young lady’ wants or needs a husband hand-picked by her daddy. I’m perfectly capable of securing a man on my own, when I decide I want one.”

  “What?”

  She snorted. “Nothing.” Not worth the argument that would follow. She hacked at the vine again and sighed. “Can we stop to rest? As you have so kindly pointed out, I am a female, delicate and so thoroughly exhausted.”

  At first, a grand adventure had seemed like just the thing she needed to shake off her stagnant life of tea parties and gossip and make her stand, raising her banner for equality, but the whole ordeal had quickly proved more work than she’d expected.

  How she craved the excitement of days gone by. Life had been a bore since she’d become old enough for marriage. Of course, her father put the institute off limits when he realized she was no longer the little girl in braids, following him around like a puppy, but a woman grown…with puppies of her own.

  Unsuitable puppies.

  Elizabeth swiped her glove-covered hand across her forehead. In Egypt, they were discovering the tombs of kings and treasures so immense it would leave a person breathless. They were making history—she’d wanted to be part of that. Who wouldn’t?

  “Here is as good a spot as I’ve seen.” Her father nodded, and she blew out a breath.

  “Finally.” Thank God for proper English gentlemen and old-fashioned chivalry. She wiggled her toes in her boots and groaned. Most likely, there were blisters on top of her blisters.

  “We’ll set up camp here for the night. Clear a spot, gentlemen.”

  Elizabeth dropped onto a large rock and plucked at her tan summer-skirt, picking off a leech stuck on one of the folds. “Oh, that’s bally vile.” Were there any others? She shook it off her fingers, flinging it somewhere in the jungle’s depths, and began to examine the acres of fabric that made up her skirt, sifting through the folds like a monkey picking lice.

  “Your mouth, young lady. I don’t know where you acquired such vulgar expressions, but I don’t want to hear any of them again.”

  He ought to know. He worked every day with the same people who taught her to sling a naughty word or two. She rolled her eyes and then her shoulders, dropping the fabric, satisfied her blood would be safe for the night. One of the guides offered her a canteen, which she snatched out of his grasp, swilling down its contents to the last drop in a most unladylike fashion. “Thanks,” she muttered and shoved it at him, returning it empty.

  He stared at it for several seconds and then gave the canteen a slight shake, jabbering something in Spanish that sounded rather unpleasant and more than likely was, if she could translate. She’d never applied herself wholeheartedly to her foreign language lessons.

  The guide stormed off to where her father had their tent stretched out over the ground and helped put it together, babbling in Spanish and pointing at her. Her father glanced her way, frowned, said something she couldn’t hear, and patted the man on the shoulder, most likely begging his pardon for her behavior—an all too familiar action. If she’d had a cock, the man would not have reacted the way he did, assuming the thirst came from hard, manly work, and therefore could be excused. But because women were held to higher ideals…. No need to go further. She’d silently made her point, even if they didn’t get it.

  “So, does it really exist—this lost city of gold?” she asked her father, blowing out a breath and waving her hand in front of her face to break up a cloud of gnats zeroing in on her perfume. If she’d known expensive fragrance would attract them, she would have opted to roll in poo instead. Oh, the horror. She put her fingers to her mouth to stifle a giggle when her father glanced her way.

  “The letter from my colleague says it does. The map is in the handle of that ceremonial knife. If I read it correctly, we should be at the City of Souls no later than tomorrow afternoon.”

  That colleague would also be Doctor William Davidson. Well-respected. Married just six months ago. She’d heard his young bride already had had a child on the way after only two weeks of wedded bliss.

  She blushed thinking about what intimacies with one of the Davidsons would be like, especially the tall and handsome Alexander Davidson, William’s younger brother. Oh, she couldn’t blame Sarah Davidson for taking her wifely duties so seriously, if William looked anything like his brother.

  “City of Souls? That doesn’t sound like a golden city.” Propping her elbow on her knee, she rested her chin in her palm. She was able to bend in such a casual way only because she had refused to have her corset drawn tightly. If not for the wife of one of the guides, she would have been able to forgo the garment altogether. Drat. With another woman available to lace her up, she didn’t have the option not to wear it in her prim and proper father’s opinion. “Sounds like a graveyard,” she mumbled past her fingers and mushed cheek.

  Her father shot her an ugly glare. Elizabeth sat up lest she get a lecture on posture and grace.

  “It’s not. My colleague stated that hints to El Dorado’s location are buried there. Along the way, we’ll search for clues to William’s whereabouts. The map is so well drawn, I doubt he’s lost if he followed it.”

  “In this dreadful place, everything appears the same, if you ask me.”

  “It’s not, my dear. It’s why the men are in charge of this expedition. We simply have a better sense of direction.”

  “Obviously William didn’t, or he wouldn’t be lost.”

  “More than likely something else happened, an injury of some sort. He’s a clever chap, and it’s likely he could still be alive out there. Maybe in a native village somewhere.”

  Doubtful. Elizabeth sighed, earning another glance from her father before he returned to his task. The jungle was about as inhospitable as a place could be. In her experience, the natives wanted them in their villages as much as the vile little monkeys in the trees that screeched all the time and occasionally flung poo at them. Another of the many charms of Peru.

  Alexander had come back from the recent expedition in Peru, reporting his brother missing nigh on four months past—one of the many reasons they were here. The night he’d arrived with the bad news had been the first time she’d met the dashing younger brother of the missing doctor.

  Evidence of the city couldn’t be more blatant. Elizabeth had seen the relic in her father’s study. The ancient metropolis existed. She believed that wholeheartedly. As to William still breathing…. Even Alexander had told her he doubted it.

  And the relic? She’d also begun to believe it cursed, much like the Hope Diamond. Ill fate certainly seemed to follow it. William had sent them the artifact by post shortly before he vanished. The parce
l contained an obsidian knife with a solid gold handle forged into the shape of a feathered serpent with inset emerald eyes. Breathtaking and priceless.

  When it was shown to the local natives, they’d jabbered bruja over and over again. Her father’s team had had to leave the village because every person there had refused to help them in any manner. After that, her father had kept the knife under wraps. Superstitions held power in this part of the world, and the locals feared witchcraft. Their ignorance generated obstacles to archaeology not easily overcome, as Elizabeth and her father had recently discovered.

  Her father, archeologist Henry Dodge, worked for private collectors. Sometimes his work wasn’t exactly on the up and up. For the right price, a treasure could easily find its way into a private collection. Selling the past seemed so wrong, but seeing a tomb loaded with precious stones, statues, pottery, and art or a city filled with gold would be a once in a lifetime opportunity she refused to pass up, no matter the final destination of the treasures.

  Elizabeth had begged for weeks to take the trip after seeing what could to be gleaned from the jungle, but her father had argued that a woman’s place was at home. He’d refused to listen to anything she had to say on the subject, especially since one man had already come up missing. After a month of searching, during which she had sadly misplaced messages from several suitable candidates, Elizabeth had been unable to find a reliable replacement for William Davidson, and her father gave in to her pleas to accompany him, but not without terms. First, she would have to map out finds and document everything, and, second, she would have to refrain from wearing the trousers she’d nagged him relentlessly about, or any other unladylike garb.

  “I’ll go secure dinner.” Alexander Davidson strode by, rifle in his hands.

  Elizabeth watched him go. Six foot four inches of lean muscle and far too handsome for the good of her own virtue. Butterflies danced in her stomach, even though she knew it could never be. Alexander came from the wrong side of the silver spoon. Father would never approve unless the handsome Mr. Davidson had money, which, Alexander had told her, was why he’d come along on this expedition, chancing the risky trip after he’d already lost his brother. He wanted to ask for her hand and needed a fortune to do it.