The Architect of Song (Haunted Hearts Legacy Book 1) (31 page)

“Juliet,
shush.
” Hawk’s voice hissed in my ear.

The viscount’s dulled gaze shattered to an inquisitive light. “You stole it.”

“Yes. I was grief stricken over the loss of my—”

The viscount lifted one of my hands to his mouth. “Shhhh.” His breath warmed the pads of my fingers. He released me to reveal a most beautiful smile. “That’s all I need to hear. Thank you for your honesty.” Then his countenance sobered. “I should talk to your uncle now.”

“There’s more,” I said, trying to speak quieter this time.

Hawk stood behind his brother. “He’ll think you’re mad if you tell him everything. You’ll be locked away in a bedlam somewhere.”

Not if I show him you exist …

“I will leave,” Hawk threatened, making his way toward the door. “I’ll disappear on the other side and assure he never sees me. And you’ll spurn a petal in the process.”

A gouging fist twisted in my stomach.

The viscount waited for me to continue, patient.

I sighed, surrendering to Hawk’s pressure, but undefeated in my effort to gain ground. “I should like to beg your forgiveness, my lord,” I said to my host. “For my conduct this morning, for all of my offences thus far. And to assure you,”—my fingers locked hard in front of my waist— “that from this moment forward, I’ll leave your past where it belongs. I
do
respect you … for your patience and gentility, for your intellect and wit. For your generosity toward me and my family. But most of all, for your acknowledgement of your flaws, which has helped me embrace my own. If the offer yet stands, I should like to accompany you today for my fittings. You’re the only man with whom I wish to attend the galas—
only you
.”

Lord Thornton’s features softened to an expression of fragile astonishment.

Hawk cursed from across the room, having settled where Uncle smoothed out his fabric. The glow of pride upon Uncle’s dear face was well worth the awkwardness of stepping outside my dignity. I awaited the viscount’s response.

At last, Lord Thornton frowned. “No. This will never do.” His answer was a punch aimed at my stomach.

“I understand.” Biting back a humiliated sob, I started to back away.

He captured my fingers. “Wait. Yes. I covet your company. But you’re not the only one who should make amends. I have been lying to you, too.” A tremor shook his jaw. “My father isn’t on holiday. He’s in Worthington, in a sanatorium. He is the errand I was to attend while you were being fitted. Do you wish to accompany me still?”

My fingers squeezed the viscount’s. “Yes. On one condition. I would like to meet your father.”

“Are you sure?” The viscount asked, rubbing my knuckles gently. “It is a rather severe setting for a woman’s constitution.”

I almost rolled my eyes. If he only knew how strong I was. How strong all the women I’d ever known were, in fact. We were so often underestimated.

Hawk frowned, moving closer. “This is different than spending time with a dead man, Juliet. Have you ever attended one of those places? I venture it would make my brother’s dungeon look like a child’s carnival.”

I fidgeted. Imagining the inside of a sanatorium was unsettling. But for Hawk’s sake, I would brave the trip. He needed to meet his true father, to rinse his mind of the monster who raised him … tortured him.

“I am sure.” I answered both of the brothers at once.

“Fair enough.” Lord Thornton smiled before turning me loose. He plopped his hat on his head but forgot to tuck in his bangs. My fingers clenched around the settee’s arm, itching to touch the auburn streaks that spanned the hat’s brim.

“Well then …” He reluctantly stepped back. “I should allow you time to prepare. Of course, your lady’s maid will accompany us. And I’ll ask your uncle along, as well.”

I nodded.

The viscount tipped his hat and limped across the room, meeting Uncle’s pleased smile with one of his own.

Relief rushed over me in a balmy wave.

“You should never have acted on your guilt.” Hawk’s husky baritone battered my happiness. “Nicolas is no saint. He locked our father in a bedlam … that is how he managed to get his inheritance to spurn as he pleased. Had he changed as he claims, he would’ve brought our father here by now. To let him share in this privileged life he’s built.”

I paid no mind to Hawk’s accusations regarding the viscount, too busy tripping over his observation of my own motives. For guilt alone could never have resulted in laying my pride at Lord Thornton’s feet. Something more—something deep, real, and unexpected—was taking root within me …

Something neither me nor Hawk could bear to face.

I traced the terrarium’s dome, captivated by its intricacies. The glassy mesh felt like icicles beneath my fingertips.

“A fitting gift for you, Juliet,” Hawk muttered from over my shoulder. “A cage of ice. The perfect size to hold a dead man’s broken heart.”

I could not contain a sob.

Lord Thornton’s colorful berline offered warm transport, cutting through the heavy winter mist and snow-powdered roads. We arrived in Worthington around one of the clock.

First, we stopped at the haberdasher for my dress-fittings. After listening to my opinions of dress reformation, the seamstress, Miss Hunny (who true to her name had silvery-gold hair scented with honey-water), showed me an array of mourning fabrics: bombazines, satins, and crapes, even some silks. After I chose several, she adjusted her spectacles, took measurements, and promised to have at least one new gown prepared in time for Monday night’s opening gala.

When Lord Thornton mentioned a riding habit, I feared Uncle would be anxious. But it appeared they’d already settled the matter. Hawk, having been silent up to that point, stressed that the viscount had betrayed my trust. But in truth, Lord Thornton never once agreed
not
to tell my uncle. His ability to get my stand-in father to comply was a testament to the bond of respect between them.

Miss Hunny brought out a riding habit that another customer similar to my build had ordered a month earlier but never purchased. Made of fawn-colored brushed cotton, it featured a tailored jacket with an attached bustle of soft netting, puff sleeves, and long tapered cuffs. Its crowning glory was an ankle-length split skirt with a double row of filigreed buttons that pinned back the fullness for ease in riding.

I tiptoed into the display room to model it for the viscount. So tickled to be wearing the equivalent of men’s trousers, I beamed in the mirror. Behind my reflection, Lord Thornton’s image beamed right back.

The waist required a few alterations which I was capable of doing myself. Lord Thornton purchased the matching suede gloves, then led us next door to a cobbler to order a pair of leather lace-up riding boots, insisting I pick the color. I chose a deep chocolate that favored the viscount’s hair. He assured me he’d send a footman to fetch them Friday so I could have my first riding lesson on Saturday before the guests arrived.

We stopped for lunch in a small chophouse set within a pink stone cottage, rumored to serve the best cuts of meat in town. Upon tasting my braised fillet of mutton, I had to agree.

At half past four, we took the winding road to the sanatorium. The building loomed on a high hill. Scarlet bricks, wearing webs of tenuous ivy, stood dark and foreboding against the wintry backdrop. On the upper levels, every window had black bars welded across the panes.

At lunch, Lord Thornton had explained his father didn’t stay at a typical bedlam but more of a maison house: a four story composite of small apartments. The patients on the ground floor—most of whom were wealthy and self-diagnosed with little more than exhaustion or a lust for gambling and gin—were free to roam about the enclosed courtyard and ornamental gardens.

Seven physicians and twelve nurses occupied the second-floor apartments, each owning a set of keys which opened the padlocked staircases to the third and fourth levels. There the morbid and incurable cases of mental unrest resided, locked within their rooms.

The elderly Lord Thornton lived upon the third floor due to his failure to grasp reality. With the addition of his blindness, he became easily excited. Since his physician insisted he receive only two visitors at a time, Enya and Uncle opted to wait in the courtyard.

Uncle squeezed my hand. “I intend to find some blooms of heath to share with Enya,” he mimed the words and winked. I smiled, squeezing his palm in return.

Lord Thornton waited for me at the gate. A nurse unlocked the entrance, and led us up to the third floor where the bars over each window pane threw shadowy lines along our path, daring us to cross them.

Lord Thornton offered his free arm and I took it gratefully. Trudging through the sterile corridor to his father’s room made me feel like a pathogen—a menacing intruder bent on disrupting the poor man’s solitude.

“There’s nothing of solitude here.” Hawk said from the opposite side of me. “Be thankful for your deafness, Juliet. There are sounds in this place which could unnerve the dead.”

I didn’t need working ears to sense the wilderness of dementia we entered. I could see it: in the onslaught of fingernail scratches along the walls; I could taste and smell it, in the stench of urine and feces diluted by splashes of ammonia; and I could feel it … in the icy slap beneath my shoes upon tiles scuffed from patients being dragged to their rooms.

I shuddered. The viscount noticed my reaction and drew me closer, his muscle firming where I tightened my clamp on his arm. He assured me with a nod that all would be well.

By the time the nurse reached the end of the long hall and unlocked the elderly viscount’s door, I had myself prepared for the worst. Yet as I stepped into the room behind the viscount, where only a bed, table, and chair testified to a human occupant, I found an orderly, peaceful scene instead.

The nurse nodded toward an old man seated in front of the table beside a lone window, back turned to us. He tilted his head as if hearing us, all the while tapping his fingers across the shiny trinkets spread out on his table top.

His hair, shoulder length and yellowy-white, sprung up in thick knots. The viscount mentioned his father wouldn’t let anyone but family brush his hair or shave his face. So Lord Thornton made weekly trips to tend him.

“What does my father smell like, Juliet?” Hawk stood behind the elderly viscount’s willowy, hunched shoulders. Emotion broke over his voice like a wave crashing on the rocks. It was the first time he’d met his real father—at least that he could remember—and he had nothing tangible to grasp onto.

I weighed the scent against the stench in the halls still clinging to my nostrils.
Oil perhaps. And feathers, unmistakably
. I studied the table’s contents and the memory Hawk shared upon our journey to the Manor of Diversions rebounded in my mind. Copper glinted on the table, gears of some sort, along with a vial of oil and several feathers used to lubricate the copper teeth. Lord Thornton had mentioned his father being a watchmaker during our talk in the winter garden.

Hawk inched closer. “’It is him. The same old man from my memory. And the one who read to me.”

Time-wise, it made no sense that his father would’ve known him as a child. Had Hawk been a man when his father read to him? We assumed him a youth because the telling of Hansel and Gretel. Could we have been wrong? Perhaps it had been
after
he met his brother.

Hawk’s trembling hand reached up as if to pat the elderly viscount’s hair. It hurt to watch him try to make contact. I pressed my fingers to my lips, in an effort not to cry.

The gesture caught Lord Thornton’s attention. Assuming me overwhelmed or mortified, he pointed his cane, indicating I should sit on the mattress’s edge. As I settled, the bed springs groaned—a vibrating sensation beneath my hips. The nurse handed Lord Thornton a brush and razor then left the room with a promise of water.

I watched, astonished, as the viscount propped his cane against the table then took his place next to his phantom brother. For an instant, they were the family they should’ve been. The three Thorntons, all together, side by side. An obscure past that never had the chance to see the light of a future star.

The viscount stroked his father’s hair to sooth him as he brushed through the knots. I wondered how many times in Nicolas’s past Miss Abbot had combed his boyish tangles, and if she used the same tenderness.

If only he’d known his mother.

Hawk observed the poignant exchange—unmoving and contemplative. I knew he, too, would’ve given anything to have experienced such love. Either from a father or a mother.

A conversation began between the two viscounts—the young, industrious architect and the waning elder.

“Our father tells Nicolas that all the music is gone from his world.” Hawk relayed the exchange. “He asks why Nicolas never sings him songs anymore. Says it was money well-spent, all those years of voice lessons.” Hawk’s gaze fell to the floor. “I wish I could sing my lullabies to him.”

Sympathy clenched my throat like a vicious talon, making it impossible to swallow. My ghost scooted closer to the table, palms propped on the edge, so intent on relaying the conversation it was as if I listened to the two viscounts myself.