The Architect of Song (Haunted Hearts Legacy Book 1) (20 page)

I nestled beneath the warm, lavender scented covers, and watched—captivated—as iridescent colors glided along his crystalized silhouette in the way a sunrise torches a serene lake. Our contact from the night before came back in a delightful rush, how he touched me, how close we came to kissing. Anticipation sluiced through my veins for our next such moment together, and all that it might entail. I planned to ask for a bath to be drawn every night. Perhaps even in the mornings.

“Seven petals—withered and fallen.” Hawk mumbled the words, breaking up my fantasies. “We are down to eight.”

The chill of morning clamped my shoulders as I shoved off my blankets, forcing my gaze to the bureau where seven brown petals spattered the white surface beneath Hawk’s flower.

I groaned. “No. How? I watered her last night.”

Hawk didn’t answer.

For a moment, I considered planting her in the winter garden to see if she might blossom anew. But once the patrons arrived, the possibility loomed that someone might pluck her remaining petals. “All she needs is some fresh soil and a larger pot. That will encourage her to bloom.” So difficult to portray a hopefulness I didn’t feel. “She’ll be fine soon enough. The journey was too much. It shocked her.”

He sat, unmoving. “The journey? Or our physical contact?”

I opened my locket and found the petal within still fresh and silver. Shutting it, I settled the locket back in its place against my skin. “The one in my necklace is safe. It was the transfer here. It had to be.”

“Or my interaction with the water. Each time I touch you, whether flesh to flesh or spirit to spirit, we pay a penalty. If we lose another seven, we’ll be left with but one. Are you willing to risk it, Juliet?”

His logic frayed to splinters and bruised my heart. I fell back onto the mattress, drew the covers over my head, and wept.

“The viscount cannot see you like this.” Enya had been scolding me since she came in and caught me with my face stuffed in the pillow, the locket clenched in my hand. My crying had awakened her.

Bewildered, Hawk sat on the edge of the bed where he’d perched after his observation about the petals brought me to tears. He had tried to apologize, tried to comfort, but I was inconsolable.

To wake in this strange place and encounter yet another barrier between us after such a glorious taste of hope; to anticipate breakfast with a man who embodied all of my beloved ghost’s features, behind which he harbored enough dark secrets to out-bluff the devil in a game of poker—it was too much. I was emotionally spent, and wanted nothing more than to crawl back to the gods of sleep and find my way to the dreams of death and music that brought me such comfort.

Enya clutched my elbow and steadied me to standing. “We’ll dress you, and find a way to hide the puffiness.” She patted the skin around my eyes, then moved the chair from the window and seated me before the mirrored bureau. I refused to look at the dead petals. Instead, I focused on my maid’s heart-shaped mouth in the reflection.

“We will call for a pitcher of water and make a compress.” She cinched her shawl around her chemise and rang the bell pull.

At the mention of water, Hawk growled in frustration and I bit back a new rush of sobs. My reflection didn’t help things—frizzed tangles and swollen eyes—the chaotic result of convulsing beneath the covers like a landed fish.

Finding a brush on a silver tray, I dragged it through my hair, wincing as the bristles snagged. I gave up and let the brush hang there in the knotted strands—a leech of wood and hog’s quills—sucking away every remaining ounce of my dignity.

Hawk stared out the window, silent as death.

“Tell his lordship I am ill,” I said to Enya when she returned to stand behind me. “I’m going back to bed.”

The maid clamped my shoulders and spun me along with the chair to face her. The brush, still attached by tangles, swung around and thumped my cheekbone. I winced at the resulting ache.

“You will do no such thing.” The freckles on Enya’s nose bounced as her face twitched. “You are to attend this breakfast. You are to be charming and demure. You will win the viscount’s heart and give your uncle the peace of mind and solitude he so richly deserves.”

Her command leveled me to awe. “
Solitude
? You want Uncle to be alone?”

Enya turned me around again and looked down so I couldn’t see her mouth. Had Hawk not been there to translate, I would have missed her response. “He will not be alone. He shall have me. Only me. At last.”

Hawk and I exchanged glances.

Enya tugged on the brush stuck in my hair, oblivious that I knew her heart’s deepest secret. I hardly noticed the pain at my scalp now. The gravity of her confession numbed all other sensations.

“I’ve suspected for some time,” Hawk said from beside the glass doors.

Why had I not seen the signs? A sidelong glance, a lingering pat on the back, the appearance of Uncle’s favorite food at each meal …

Enya and I had stayed up after our baths last night and ate together. First, she spoke of the weather, then of the mourning dresses I’d be wearing during our stay. But gradually, she opened up about Miss Abbot, how the head maid had been with the Thornton family since the viscount’s childhood. How she’d worked for his father before moving, along with several other familial servants, to the Larson estate under the young Lord Thornton’s request.

After that, all of our conversation centered around Uncle.

There was only one mention of the incident in my room in Claringwell. I explained that the pillow had been tucked behind my bed’s head frame making it appear to float—that Enya couldn’t see the wrought iron bars since they were the same white as the pillow dressing. She accepted the excuse too hastily, because she was eager to shift the subject back to her heart’s dearest obsession.

“On my mother’s grave,” I said aloud. “You love Uncle Owen.”

The tangled brush slipped from Enya’s hand and cracked my cheek again. Cringing, I patted what was sure to be a striking bruise to offset my puffy eyes.

Enya stumbled over to my bed’s edge and sat, burying her face in her hands. Hawk leaned against the double doors, looking on with interest.

I settled beside Enya. The mattress sunk beneath our combined weight.

She met my gaze, a lovely pink coloring her damp cheeks. She looked terrified, as if she feared I would level her life to ashes.

“Enya.” I took her hand in mine. “I love you like a sister. Your secret is safe with me.”

Her eyes filled with fresh tears. “He thinks I am a child.”

I stroked her hand, not knowing what to say.

“But with your mother gone,” Enya continued, “and were you to leave as well … I hoped he might turn to me, lean on me. He may never come to love me, but, to be needed would be salve enough to ease the burn.”

No sooner had she spoken than she shot to her feet and clambered for the chamber door. She unlocked the latch and Miss Abbot entered with a pitcher of water. The older maid’s face turned sour the moment she looked at me.

I stretched my arms over my head as if just waking, letting the brush dangle from my hair for effect. I padded to the glass doors, watching in the reflection as Miss Abbot spoke to Enya then left.

My maid found my merino-wool mourning gown and laid it out on the bed before digging through the trunks in search of my crinoline. Without the cage beneath my gown, the skirt length would trip me. That was precisely why I had slipped the contraption from the luggage before we left. By leaving it on my bed at home, I had successfully limited my daily options to my princess panel and walking mourning gowns. Though less posh and elaborate, they were form-fitting and easy to move about in. I had decided if I was to be forced into this trip, I could at least be comfortable in my misery.

“Wicked girl,” Hawk said with a smug grin, joining me at the curtains.

Silently, I watched Enya’s busy reflection in the glass, lost in her confession.

Hawk shook his head. “It would appear we aren’t the only ones ensnared in cupid’s insidious barbed web.”

Yet it’s just as impossible a romance. She’s too young for him. Too young to know her own heart
.

“She’s older than you, China Rose.” Hawk smiled sympathetically. “And you know your heart well enough. Besides, she was the age you are now when she first met your uncle. And he’s a mere eight years her senior.”

Neither of us said what we were both thinking: it was the same age difference as between me and Lord Thornton. In our society, women often married men twelve or more years their senior and had families.

Enya’s reflection moved to another trunk. Pinpricks of nausea rushed through my stomach. Not because I was about to be scolded severely for leaving behind my crinoline, but because I didn’t want either of my loved ones to get hurt.

Uncle is still grieving Mama. What if Enya is confused? He’s been her father figure for so long. What if she’s mistaking feelings of gratitude for something more?

“I suspect he was never a father figure in her eyes.” Hawk glanced out at the snow-dusted courtyard—rich with vine-covered arbors, flowing streams, pebbled pathways, and yellowed grassy slopes.

I lifted a gauzy drape to hide myself beneath it, following his line of sight through a block of clear glass in the midst of the tinted ones.

“Love is inside each of us … a dormant seed.” Hawk’s voice resonated within me. “Once it has been planted, whether in the soils or the fallows”—he pointed to a stony path in the distance where winter heath burst through the rocks to dot the snow with splashes of purple—“it will take root and either flourish to something beautiful and dramatic, or grow dormant, content in its stasis. But there’s no right or wrong season for it to bloom.”

His poeticism didn’t surprise me. I’d already seen his knack for emotive sentiments and dramatic visuals on every page of his tragic childhood journal.

What amazed me was that although his colorblindness kept him from fully appreciating the beauty within the scene outside—the way the frosted ground contrasted yet complemented the flower’s vivid stir to life—he still retained that spark of wisdom.

Didn’t Uncle’s heart—so giving, so loyal and kind—merit a keeper, someone that would fill his colorless days with happiness and life? A blossoming young woman, with eyes only for him? Were they to marry, he could one day be a father in truth.

The right thing to do was allow nature to take its course.

Hawk grinned and his attention settled on my hair. “Speaking of nature, it appears a rare breed of bristle bird has taken up residence in your tangles.”

I snorted and tried once more to wrestle the brush free. With a mischievous glint in his eye, Hawk twirled the drapes, winding me within the thin fabric. I laughed so hard, I forgot anyone else was in the room until my ghost shushed me.

On the other side of my curtained fog stood not only Enya, but Lord Thornton and Uncle Owen as well, all three staring. And there I was, wrapped up like a demented caterpillar. I strained my arms within the curtains, unable to budge.

I said the first thing that came to my mind to save face. “Enya was showing me how to dust using the curtains …” I wriggled my backside from one panel to the other—letting the drapes swipe the glass clean.

Both Uncle and the viscount gawked in stunned wonder. A slight tremor played at the corner of the viscount’s mouth. Whether an amused smirk or a disgusted convulsion, I couldn’t be sure.

“I-I don’t understand …” Hawk translated Uncle’s words since I couldn’t read his lips for the hazy film over my eyes.

Enya tapped her foot. “Ladies often discuss cleaning tips first thing in the morn. We’re too busy the rest of the day to prattle about such things. If it bothers you, then perchance you should knock next time before opening the door of a lady’s room, whether it be ajar or no. It is highly improper for either of you to be looking upon us in our bed gowns.”

Uncle’s face reddened as if he’d just noticed Enya’s sparse attire. She shooed the duo out, shutting the door behind them.

The instant she freed me of the curtains, I hugged her, tighter than ever before. At last, I had my dear friend back, and a flesh and bone accomplice. I knew she would be loyal, no matter how eccentric any request or scheme, as long as I kept her secret.

And who better to honor silence, than a deaf girl?