smell of impending rain
Albert’s mother-in-law hated me.
We spent our courtship in restaurants and clubs and theaters. Sometimes he visited me at the palace but more often than not, I visited his house in the city, not the one that he shared with his wife (though yes, I had been there, but even in Daggerfall, it is a little crass to invite your lover to bed with your spouse in the other room.) but the handsome apartment he kept with a good view of the city. Albert spent as little time as possible at his wife’s ancestral manor. He lived for the city, for eyes to be on him. I cannot fault him for that.
But I did visit the grand manor in Cromwych Hill, even though he avoided it whenever possible. Ah, it was a monstrosity! An elegant monstrosity! It was the sort of manor that gave off the impression that it had been built by no earthly architect but sprouted out of the ground by its own volition, crawling and expanding as it saw fit, dark and gloomy and macabre. Its geometries made no sense.
I remember the first time I visited. He had told me that it was a grim place and so I dressed for the occasion in nothing but black with silver paint upon my lips, even putting aside my usual distaste for lace. What a sight I was! I remember climbing a grand and twisting staircase, my hair tumbling around me like the heroine of a horror novel, and I smelled rain and damp and musty things, the strange smell of the air before lightning, and then here comes a skeletal woman with a blood-soaked dress screeching about how I was desecrating the house, a plague on me, blood and curses, get out or woe upon you, that sort of thing. She had the nerve to claw my face!
Well, I have never been the sort of person to take abuse from the undead, so what I did was stay in that house as long as I pleased, desecrating it and her son-in-law as thoroughly as I damn well wanted to.