The Architect of Song (Haunted Hearts Legacy Book 1) (18 page)

The food arrived, but I couldn’t swallow much of the stew.

Hawk moved closer to the conversation on the other end. “It’s rumored Nicolas had a weakness for gambling. He frequented the gaming hells quite often. Lost much of our father’s wealth. Some seven years ago.” Hawk narrowed his eyes just as I realized what he was thinking. That was right around the time Lord Thornton acquired the Larson estate and the ochre mines. How could he have afforded such a purchase, if he had already lost his money?

“Interesting,” Hawk answered, watching one of the viscount’s drivers answer the matron. “According to the tiger, Nicolas has been squandering money left and right for that manor ever since. He sold his family’s stables and estate from under his father’s nose for funding. And no one has seen the eldest Thornton for some time.”

Hawk’s gaze met mine and I gulped a half-chewed bite. I watched the matron leave to tend other patrons. The tigers still spoke among themselves, and Hawk seemed captivated by their words.

What happened to the eldest viscount? Do they know where he lives now?

“Perhaps the question we should be asking is if he lives at all,” Hawk said. “For a nobleman to inherit his father’s title and estate without the predecessor first dying is nigh unheard of. Maybe the elder viscount’s body is buried alongside me. Somewhere in the mines.”

My sip of chocolate soured on my tongue.

“Or perhaps he’s in the castle at my brother’s lofty estate,” Hawk continued, his attention still on the tigers. “They speak of a secret room in the dungeon. They’ve seen boxes opened after they’re carried down, all of them containing disturbing and monstrous oddities. Medieval torture devices, mutated animal fetuses in jars of formaldehyde, creaturely skeletons wired together in mismatched masterpieces—fused and mounted for display, like scientific experiments gone awry. He has a proclivity for the macabre and demented, Juliet.” Hawk moved back next to me. “I fear what you are going to encounter at this manor of nightmares.”

My skin prickled beneath my clothes, not only for Hawk’s formidable insinuations, but because right at that moment, Lord Thornton returned.

He took a seat on the other side of Uncle, his hair messy and his clothes torn. Slashes of fresh blood shimmered on his knuckles and smeared his shirt—belonging either to him, or to the man he’d escorted out.

The viscount caught me staring and wiped his hand on a napkin, then drew his cape across his disheveled shirt, his eyes hooded in darkness once more.

When at last we crossed into Worthington, a violet sunset struggled to break through low-hanging clouds. My eyelids grew heavy with weariness, and my heart with fear. I couldn’t tell Uncle of the unsavory rumors surrounding the viscount. In much the same as I couldn’t tell him of Lord Thornton’s familial connection to the gypsy woman we rescued. For somehow, though Hawk and I had yet to unravel the mystery behind their birth-parting, these men shared Romani blood.

How would I explain knowledge of such things?

During the final two hours of our trip, Hawk and I secretly spoke of his brother until I became overwrought. He put a stop to the mental dialogue, vowing to protect me by any means necessary. And he’d proven with the wolf and the inebriates at the tavern he could do just that.

From the top of a tall hill the estate appeared, nestled within a valley of snow-capped trees meshed together like crocheted lace. We took a steep, cobbled roadway, sanded in preparation, and wound through the forest toward a set of wrought iron gates. On the other side was a clearing surrounded by a wall of stone. In the center, the castle loomed over two smaller edifices.

Twilight moved across the glistening snow. I had hoped to look upon the manor in the light of day. Seeing it in darkness tightened the shackles of mystery and apprehension already locked around me.

Our berline swayed as the head tiger descended to open the black barred gates. Two slivers of wood hung on the stone walls at either side, bearing strange markings painted in ochre-red and glazed by moonlight.

“Gypsy rune-signs,” Hawk informed me.

I didn’t question why the viscount would have such symbols upon entrance to his Manor. I wanted to assume, per his earlier handwritten note, that just as he purchased the mines, he did this in honor of Chaine and his heritage. But after learning of Lord Thornton’s darker tendencies, I wasn’t so sure of the motives behind anything he did.

“The one on the left is the pentacle of Solomon,” Hawk explained. “It attracts prosperity. It’s harmless enough. Though I can’t decipher the one on the right.”

Hawk’s memory had sharpened with each step closer to the quarry. In the hours since supper, he’d experienced several images from his past: a table cluttered with mechanical drawings; the same old man who read him fairytales, working over a jumbled array of gears; and the scent of ink, coal-oil, and feathers. Although none made any sense, it encouraged Hawk to have them.

As we rolled through the gates, I concentrated on the unsolved rune and memorized the symbol so I might draw it later in my chamber. Surely Hawk would recognize it in time, if he could study it.

I didn’t notice the other carriages parting ways with us, taking the viscount with them, until we came to a stop and Uncle patted my hand from the seat opposite me.

He took Hawk’s flower as the carriage door opened to reveal two footmen in scarlet waistcoats and pumpkin orange breeches waiting at the bottom of the step. I staunched the fear within, and pasted a false smile over my suspicions, as I reached for their hands and stepped down into the viscount’s world of shadows and lies.

My legs gave out upon my descent from the carriage, atrophied from sitting in one position too long. The viscount must have apprised his servants of my deafness, for neither footman spoke a word as they supported me.

“Oh, they are speaking,” Hawk assured me. “Albeit furtively. They consider you an upstart for aspiring to marry their master, a man above your class.”

I hadn’t considered what the viscount’s servants would feel towards me for trying rise above them. An awkward shame flickered within my chest.

“No, Juliet,” Hawk scolded. “They should be ashamed for judging you when it’s my brother beneath your station. With a history like his, he doesn’t deserve even a passing glance from such a lady.”

Uncle Owen handed me the flower pot and climbed out behind me. After assisting Enya, he turned his attention to the footmen. Their mouths moved but I made no attempt to read them in the darkness. Only our steps were lit by the torches. I trusted Hawk to relay anything of importance.

Behind us, the star tower rose to the sky. A giant clock nestled at the top, with a face as square as Hawk’s pocket watch—so similar in fact, it appeared to have been made by the same craftsman. Hawk heard my silent observation, and we shared a curious glance.

The snow-crisped air carried the underlying scent of ochre. The
Rat King
picture danced in my mind’s eye along with a memory, solely belonging to me and Hawk: a young girl in the belly of a tunnel with her mud prince.

“The castle is being prepared for the patrons.” Hawk’s voice drifted to me, offering a reprieve from my macabre musings. “We’re to stay in the Viscount’s townhouse with the rest of his staff.” The spacious three-story edifice sported two-tones of paint. Morning would reveal what extravagant and discordant color scheme the viscount had chosen, but even at night one could discern the exquisite design and unusual ric-rac paneling which ran the length of the townhouse and tipped the coned and spiked turrets.

Uncle guided me behind the footmen bearing our personal luggage. On our way to the door, I noted a circular balcony on the third floor at the left corner of the home’s front, arranged along a turret with picture windows on each of the two lower stories.

There was movement from behind the window on the first floor, and I wondered if we would have to face the viscount again tonight.

“He’s busy overseeing the placement of your birds and plants in the enclosed garden,” Hawk answered. “But, he has arranged baths for all of you in anticipation of your weary bones. How fortuitous.” He grinned and held his pocket watch up. “Time to try this on for size.”

I bit my lip to hide a smirk, but heat flared through my neck and face, knowing he was only half-teasing.

We followed Uncle and Enya into the house, led by a middle-aged, lantern-bearing housemaid dressed in an orange frock, scarlet apron, and a mossy-green snood over her hair. I wondered upon the staff’s outrageous uniforms, how similar their vivid color schemes and fabric designs were to the items in the trunk that had belonged to Hawk’s gypsy aunt. Perhaps everything here was meant to honor the viscount’s gypsy heritage.

The head housekeeper, introducing herself as Miss Abbot, asked for our coats and gloves. She then brought us to an expanded hallway along marble floors polished to such perfection I felt as if I skated on ice.

Arched pilasters guided the eye to two sets of stairs on opposite ends. Evergreen and berry garlands ornamented the walls in honor of the upcoming Christmas holiday, and a citrus tang—reminiscent of the special wassail Enya made each year—tickled my nose as we passed dwarfish orange trees trimmed with red and green bows.

A house steward came to lead Uncle in the opposite direction, explaining that the ladies’ south-side quarters were isolated from the men’s on the north wing. Uncle hugged me and bid me goodnight, though he glanced over his shoulder several times as we parted.

We ascended our staircase with Enya and Miss Abbot almost nose to nose in conversation and tossing glances my direction. I hugged Hawk’s potted flower, clenching the cold wrought-iron rails with my other hand. As we passed the second story, curiosity got the best of me and I broke down to ask Hawk what the maids spoke of.

But he didn’t hear, too intent on the high stucco ceiling.

“What hell is this,” he mumbled and I paused mid step, slanting my gaze upward.

A line of macabre rats was sketched within the white plaster by an artist’s tool. The design ran amuck along the ceiling to taint what otherwise would have been an architectural masterpiece.

“Do you think it’s true?” Hawk perched next to me. “That he had all of this done for me? Some form of … brotherly penance … to make amends for his better life? Or was it a sadistic barb at my expense?”

I had no response. I’d realized tonight that this man—who wore my beloved ghost’s features like a mask—could be any number of things: A murderer, a rogue, an architectural genius, a sadist, a loving brother, a kind guest and host.

I had no idea which was his true face.

The maids waited on the staircase four steps ahead for me to follow. At the top of the stairs, we walked a long corridor with closed doors running both sides. Coming to the end, Miss Abbot wriggled a key within a brass knob and swept us into a spacious corner chamber where cheerful flames danced inside a white brick fireplace. Tall ceramic vases filled with lotuses and lilies released a stale wine scent from either side of the hearth.

“This is the Water-Lily Room. My brother insisted you have it.” Distrust edged Hawk’s voice as he translated the maid’s explanation. His attention stalled on the larger than life-sized portrait of a Romani beauty—in a colorful dress and long, brown braids interwoven with red ribbons—taking up most of one wall.

“Her eyes … I know those eyes.” Hawk’s ghostly whisper was so reverently quiet, I almost didn’t hear him. He stopped before the painting, and I didn’t respond, giving him privacy in hopes it might spark the memory he was struggling to reach.

It wasn’t difficult to give him his distance, for I was enthralled with my surroundings. I stepped inside, my feet springing atop an imperial carpet of delicate fleurons staggered upon a rich salmon background. Turquoise wall paper—with flying birds and ivy-covered trellises hand-blocked in aqueous tones—stretched around the room to meet in the center of the domed ceiling. It gave the illusion of standing within a globe with water pressed against the surrounding glass walls. A reverse aquarium.